One day last November, after more than a dozen years of membership in the University and College Union (UCU), I resigned.
I woke up that morning to an article in The Washington Post about a young Ukrainian couple, Artem Kovalenko and Diana Haidukova, who became engaged in a bomb shelter but then died together when a Russian bomb hit their apartment in Zaporizhzhia. Why, out of so many atrocities, their story settled the matter for me I cannot say, but I quit that day.
I left for the same reason many other aggrieved members had: the ridiculous motion passed by UCU congress in May 2023 to “stop arming Ukraine”. I lasted six months longer than most, with hopes of reversing the policy.
I knew the motion had passed by thin margins, by merely nine votes out of 288, with 37 abstentions. My branch president had voted for it and, when I expressed my disappointment to her and told her I was contemplating resigning, she advised that it would be more constructive to remain and overturn it. Jo Grady, UCU’s general secretary, was saying the same.
So I remained. I drafted a motion that my branch passed overwhelmingly a month later, the first in the country to challenge congress’ Ukraine motion. We observed that congress had not sought informed input from scholars in such fields as Slavonic studies or international relations, acknowledged the Ukrainian labour movement, or shown respect for such longstanding principles of labour internationalism as the rights to self-defence and self-determination.
To halt arms to Ukraine, we stated, would result in certain victory for Russian annexationism. We called for an e-ballot of the whole UCU membership on the grounds that the membership deserved the opportunity to decide whether “stop arming Ukraine” actually reflected their views. We were certain that it did not.
Other branches followed suit, but the national leadership did absolutely nothing.
As summer turned to autumn and Russia’s Ukrainian bloodbath dragged on, people like me were left in a terrible bind. I was a staunch union member who participated in every single strike day and greatly preferred UCU’s vision of the sector over senior management’s. Yet I found it cringeworthy to send dues payments to an organisation so witless as to call for the denial of arms to a country besieged by Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian right-wing regime. The intensity of my perspective was informed by having taught at universities in Poland and Hungary, spoken in Moscow and read extensively in Russian history.
I faced a specific professional dilemma as well. Because of my research in American political history, I am frequently asked by news outlets to comment on American politics. Under the sway of Donald Trump, who has myriad links to Russia, much of the Republican Party has turned soft on Putin. Accordingly, House Republicans last autumn were holding up military aid to Ukraine in Congress. How could I take issue with that in media interviews while remaining a member of the UCU with its identical stance?
That is how my mind came to resolve itself while reading of the pointless deaths of two young lovers. Not one more penny, I thought. I’ll send my money to Ukrainian children’s charities instead.
Nevertheless, I continued to agree with much of the UCU platform and felt affinity with any members who stayed to change the policy. If they succeeded, I would rejoin. So I awaited the May 2024 congress with anticipation. When UCU staff struck the event, congress was a logistical shambles. Oblivious that congress’ Ukraine stance had cost it all moral credibility on international events, delegates debated a series of motions on Gaza.
One motion alone addressed Ukraine – and it was magnificent. Affirming the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination and self-defence, the proposed motion condemned the Russian invasion and occupation as imperialist, demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops and endorsed Ukrainian unions’ call for humanitarian and military aid.
The UCU was on the cusp of redeeming itself, but then congress bungled it by approving a two-part amendment.
First, it deleted “military aid”, meaning UCU once again refused to acknowledge Ukraine’s right to arm itself. Second, it called for “an immediate ceasefire”. The more naive of the delegates might not have been aware that Putin seeks precisely that, because it would leave Russia in control of the 41,000 square miles it has occupied in Ukraine.
As a consequence, the UCU policy on Ukraine is now inchoate. It affirms Ukrainian self-determination but will not accept the legitimacy of Ukraine’s requests for weapons, weapons without which it will be conquered. It calls for withdrawal of Russian troops but also for an unconditional ceasefire that would leave Russia in possession of an enormous swathe of Ukraine.
How can this be rectified? In two ways: one external, one internal.
The external pressure should come from the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (USC), an excellent left-wing coalition that includes John McDonnell and Peter Tatchell, among others. For all its faults, the new UCU congress motion does have the outstanding merit of, for the first time, affiliating the UCU with the USC.
But this produces another contradiction, because the USC requires its members to support Ukraine’s right to arms, a principle it will codify in a new constitution this month. I suggest that on the basis of this constitution, the USC classify UCU’s affiliation as probationary, requiring UCU to affirm Ukraine’s right to armed self-defence within a year if it wishes to remain in USC. That would compel the 2025 UCU congress to affirm Ukraine’s right to arms, as it should have done years ago.
Reform of UCU governance processes is the second way forward. Congress is ostensibly the union’s highest body, comprising branch delegates and held annually, but on Ukraine it has proven manipulable and unrepresentative – a performative playground in which pathetic tiny sects gain over-representation and outmanoeuvre independent delegates. The whole of the union should not be forced to endure the resultant bad congress decisions for years on end.
Instead, UCU should adopt a referendum process. If a threshold of support is met (say, 5 per cent of members), proposals to repeal or amend specific motions passed at congress could be put to a vote of the membership as a whole. Why should the union’s “highest body” be a cluster of representatives selected in a scattershot manner? Shouldn’t ordinary members themselves hold that power? Why fear direct democracy?
Self-determination is not only for Ukraine. It starts at home.
Christopher Phelps is associate professor of American studies at the University of Nottingham.
