UCU: Biting the Hands That Feed It

The sorry tale of how academia's main union has become the moral arbiter and gatekeeper of everything pure, at the expense of academic freedom.

Trade unions as we know them, began to flourish in the wake of the industrial revolution and the first half of the 19th century saw a wave of activity where workers organised and set up various unions to manage disputes with employers. At a time when working practices involved dangerous machinery and which placed employees at risk of death, it was important for the workers to organise and effectively challenge their powerful employers to improve working conditions. 

Over time, there developed a sense of stability and assurance in the members of the workforce, chiefly that in the event of a worker being unfairly treated or sacked, the union could step in and support the worker who, in turn, would pay subscription fees as a kind of insurance; and so, this was the central focus of the relationship between worker and union. That is, until now.

In recent years there appears to have been a shift in ethos within the unions, to that of moral arbiters, as opposed to workers’ rights. This is especially the case with the University and College Union (UCU), where workers with particular opinions on some issues are finding themselves dropped and left without support in the event of any dispute over their position/role, despite having been paying members of the union for many years.

Below, are just three such high profile examples of where UCU were either reluctant to get involved in supporting their member, or worse still, actively threw them under the bus:

Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, has in recent years become drawn towards the subject matters of feminist philosophy, sexual objectification, the challenges of law and public policy with regards to females and trans issues, lesbian rights and the nature of sexual orientation. Both writing a book about ‘why reality matters for feminism’ and her signing a declaration which states, a woman is an ‘adult human female’ and that lesbians are females attracted to other adult human females, meant she was subjected to a sustained campaign of harassment, aggressive/threatening behaviour and hounded off campus, resulting in her leaving her role at the university.

In a contradictory turn of events, Stock’s employer eventually spoke up in support of her, while her union, UCU, made a public statement which decisively condemned her and left her to the wolves.

Jo Phoenix, professor of criminology at the Open University and whose work on sex, gender and justice is known around the world, expressed concerns about the silencing of debate on trans issues and Stonewall’s influence in Universities. She also asserted that “male-bodied prisoners should not be in female prisons”. As someone who had both lived and had academic experience of such issues, Phoenix was surely in a prime position to speak up about these matters. In response, she was comprehensively vilified by hundreds of her own colleagues and compared to “the racist uncle at the Christmas dinner table”.

Selina Todd, professor of modern history at Oxford University had expressed her educated and expert opinion about historical examples of women dressing as men, saying, her “research suggests that women who posed as men in the past were often lesbians seeking to protect themselves, or because they want to do jobs that were only available to men.” After saying this however, the reaction was so harsh, the university had to provide her with security to accompany her to lectures after students alerted them to ‘credible’ threats which were being made against her on their email networks. UCU, were once again, silent on the matter and failed to support Professor Todd. Speaking on the matter of unions moving away from supporting their members and instead, backing the aggressive and harassing students, professor Todd said,

“The job of a trade union is to represent its members. Every worker should be afforded the right of representation, and all workers should be employed free of harassment. What sort of union accuses a worker of 'weaponising' her employment rights, as UCU did Kathleen Stock? A union's job is to represent workers including those with whom union officials may disagree. It is on this foundation that the union movement builds solidarity between workers, forges shared interests and fosters the ability to democratically debate differences of opinion. UCU has dismissed all of this in favour of a niche identity politics that discriminates against women and celebrates unprecedented levels of workplace harassment.”

Jo Grady was elected as UCU chief back in 2019. Grady had already asserted her views previously when, in 2018, she subscribed to TERF Blocker and a few months later was seen unashamedly broadcasting it, despite it being widely known that TERF Blocker was developed by trans-identified male, Aimee Challenor, whose father was convicted of a number of sexual offences against a 10 year old girl, who had been imprisoned in the attic of his home.  Aimee, who was campaigning to become a Green Party MP at the time, had arranged for his father to act as his election agent, knowing fully of the crimes his father was accused (and eventually convicted) of. Nevertheless, despite people tagging Grady to draw her attention to the above facts, she never addressed the issue or apologised for it.

Grady is also very friendly with fellow UCU member, Professor Sally Hines, a colleague of hers at the University of Sheffield. Hines, known for random and occasionally abusive statements, once produced this cracking tweet – see below – but that doesn’t seem to have stopped Grady from supporting her. It is fascinating to see how willing some are to turn a blind eye to public abuse while happily condemning the academic view and opinions of others who are members of her own union; the very members her union is supposed to support, when they are in trouble.

To add to the surreal nature of these shenanigans, in 2009 UCU published a statement on academic freedom, (which remains on their website) outlining their commitment to defending it, stating they had “growing concerns about the threats to free academic enquiry and opinion”.

One wonders how UCU feels about that statement now, in light of their own failure to defend these academics’ freedoms and subsequent abuse from activists on campus. Clearly, UCU and Grady et al have nailed their pink and blue colours to the mast. In doing so, they have abandoned the very academics they claim to support. Worse still, as seen in the actions of the Sussex University UCU branch, their proactive support for the aggressive and threatening behaviour of brattish and entitled students, emboldens activists to further attack academics and force them out of their roles. This is serious and will not end well. This puritanical form of identity politics threatens academics’ freedoms to put forward ideas and views, whether controversial or not. If we are to allow a ‘cleansing’ of academia in order to suit the fragile feelings and underdeveloped morality of a younger generation, the seasoned experience and learned knowledge of the academics being forced out will disappear with them. We cannot allow this to happen.