On 13 March, the UCU Yorkshire and Humber Regional Committee sponsored a talk by Ilan Pappe on 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' at the University of Sheffield, in conjunction with the Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the University of Sheffield Palestine Society. Being aware that Pappe promotes a one-state solution and strongly feeling that it was wrong for the Regional Committee to be sponsoring a speaker with such a brazenly partisan approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, I tabled the following motion for the Huddersfield UCU branch meeting which was held on 9 April:

Huddersfield UCU objects to the sponsorship by UCU Regional committee of a talk given by Professor Ilan Pappe at Sheffield University on 13 March, organised by the Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Prof Pappe is a well known and inflammatory exponent of the disestablishment of the State of Israel and Huddersfield UCU believes that endorsing a strongly partisan talk in such a highly complex situation is very unhelpful.

Huddersfield UCU supports the right of Prof Pappe to free speech, but believes he should not be accorded the privilege or benefit of UCU endorsement for the following reasons: -

o UCU is a broad coalition of political interests that should not be adding its imprimatur to a person or organisation openly calling for the destruction of a sovereign state.
o Endorsement of Prof Pappe by UCU Region and the presence of the UCU logo on associated publicity implies that he has the general approval of UCU which is clearly not so.
o The UCU would in any case be better advised to concentrate its resources on issues closer to home and of more obvious relevance to ordinary members.
Huddersfield UCU thus calls on the UCU regional committee to withdraw support from this event and to be more critical in any future decisions regarding the support of partisan fringe pressure groups .

(Thanks to David Miller of Leeds UCU for assistance with the proposed wording.)

The branch executive was initially reluctant to allow the motion to be discussed at the meeting, on the grounds that they preferred politics to be kept out of local branch affairs. Eventually, however, they allowed me to propose the motion. There were about 10 people at the branch meeting and, apart from some minor concerns regarding the wording, there was no opposition or hostility whatsoever. (This surely confirms Engage’s belief that the vast majority of ordinary UCU members have no interest in the Union getting involved in the Israeli-Palestinian debate at all and certainly do not wish to see it taking an openly partisan position.) After some debate, the result was that the motion was passed unanimously in the following, slightly amended format.

Huddersfield UCU notes the sponsorship by UCU Regional committee of a talk given by Professor Ilan Pappe at Sheffield University on 13 March, organised by the Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Huddersfield UCU further notes that Professor Pappe advocates the disestablishment of the State of Israel.
Huddersfield UCU supports the right of Prof Pappe to free speech, but believes he should not be accorded the privilege or benefit of UCU endorsement for the following reasons: -

o UCU is a broad coalition of political interests that should not be adding its imprimatur to a person or organisation openly calling for the destruction of a sovereign state.
o Endorsement of Professor Pappe by UCU Region and the presence of the UCU logo on associated publicity implies that he has the general approval of UCU which is clearly not so.
o The UCU would in any case be better advised to concentrate its resources on issues closer to home and of more obvious relevance to ordinary members.
Since the event has now taken place, Huddersfield UCU calls on the UCU Regional Committee to sponsor an event where a speaker from the Engage group presents an opposing point of view.

The amended wording was then forwarded to the regional secretary and was tabled for the Yorkshire and Humber Regional AGM which took place on 19 April. I spoke in favour of the motion.

On Saturday, I proposed the motion at the Yorkshire and Humber Regional AGM.

The motion was opposed by a member of Leeds UCU and the Socialist Workers Party. He said:

- Engage is hostile to the Union

- That the decision to sponsor Pappe was in line with the policy adopted by UCU at Congress last year

- That the motion was contradictory - if I was saying the UCU would be better off concentrating on local issues, it was contradictory to request the Regioanal Committee to sponsor an event with Engage. He suggested this was evidence of "another agenda" - he didn't elaborate on what he meant.

- He thought the UCU should have nothing to do with Engage.

A delegate from another institution then proposed a "remission" - that we should postpone voting on the motion because he had not heard of Engage and wanted to check it out first. The regional secretary expressed her view that Engage had started on the left but had now moved to the right. (A view I find incomprehensible!)

A vote was taken on whether to remit or not, and this vote was carried by 14 votes to 12. This meant I had no opportunity to respond to the delegate from Leeds UCU. My understanding, though, is that this means the motion will be debated at the next meeting when delegates will have had the opportunity to find out about Engage. If there had been a vote on the motion on the day, it would probably have been defeated. This seems to me to be a decent result.

Following the meeting, three delegates from another institution, including the one who had proposed the remission, came up to me and said they were sympathetic but hadn’t come across Engage.

So, what advice (if any) can I give to others?

Firstly, do not give up your local branch or even your local region. If it is anything like mine, branch meetings will have a low attendance and so, if you can enlist the support of just a few others, you can propose and carry a motion.

Don’t let the boycotters claim a monopoly on the branch or regional meeting – it belongs to you just as much as it does to them!

Secondly, why not stand to be your branch delegate to the regional UCU meetings? It is important to be at these meetings and to be a voice against the boycott and for an alternative approach: it is our Union as much as anyone else’s.

Thirdly, that there are ordinary UCU members out there who may not have come across Engage but nevertheless welcome attempts to stand against the boycott and the demonisation of Israel.

James Mendelsohn, April 2008