At UCU Congress next week a new boycott motion is being proposed by the National Executive Committee of the UCU. This motion profoundly violates the core equality values upon which our union is built. It also violates the law. The NEC knows that it violates the law. The leadership of our union is behaving recklessly and is putting our union at risk.

You can see this motion here.

Whether or not we are happy that our union is governed by law, the fact is that we are drifting into a situation where we may be taken to court on a charge of racism. This is because the boycott proposal discriminates on the grounds of nationality for no valid reason; it is also, in a number of ways spelt out in the legal advice, indirectly antisemitic - racist against Jews. We are being warned that our union, if it comes to a court case, would be likely to be found by a judge to be institutionally racist. That is the legal Opinion of two high profile and senior QCs.

Please download the Opinion by clicking here. Print it out and read it. Show it to other union members. Take it seriously. It would be a mistake to assume that it can be written off as political propaganda.

Congress delegates in particular have a duty to read this advice and to understand what is at stake before they vote next Wednesday.

The Stop the Boycott campaign has published its own legal advice. This legal advice, which is a professional opinion of what the law is, says (please don't rely on this summary, read the Opinion):

1 "...It would be unlawful for the union to pass" the motion SFC10 Composite on "Palestine and the occupation" at Congress.

The motion purports to be less than a boycott motion but is in fact a boycott motion.

The motion discriminates against Israelis on the basis of nationality and it discriminates against Jews in a number of indirect ways.

2 The motion is "ultra vires" because it is a breach of the union's own fundamental and foundational commitment to equality.

The motion is therefore unlawful partly because it violates, in a profound way and not in a purely formal or technical way, UCU's own law and its own core values. This problem cannot be addressed by fiddling with the wording of the union's Aims and Objects. It could only be addressed by changing the commitment to equality which is at the heart of the UCU.

3 The motion would be a breach of the Race Relations Act because it would impose on Israeli academics (and potentially Jewish academics) the duty to explain their politics as a pre-condition to having normal academic contact.

Point 7 of the motion resolves that "colleagues be asked to ... discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating...." Evidently if the "wrong" answers are given then this will have adverse consequences for the academics who are at the sharp end of such "discussions".

4 Debating a motion of this kind is a further breach of the Race Relations Act because such a debate creates an environment which normalizes antisemitic rhetoric and which would create a hostile environment to Jewish and Israeli members and non-members of the union. The Opinion stresses that (para 1.5):

"the Union and its membership are fully entitled to exercise their rights to freedom of expression to debate the political issues surrounding the Israel/Palestine question. Nothing in this Joint Opinion is intended to suggest that these rights have been curtailed by the union Rules or general law. However, the rights to freedom of expression... are not limitless and necessary and proportionate restrictions may be imposed to protect the rights of others than the speaker. Aspects of the Motion which are in substance a call to the membership to impose some form of sanction on Israeli academics and/or institutions exceed acceptable limits."

The Opinion was commissioned and paid for by the 'Stop the Boycott' campaign which is a campaign of the 'official' institutions of the Jewish community in Britain. It is legitimate for the Jewish community in Britain to organize politically against antisemitism. It is legitimate for the Jewish community in Britain to insist on its legal rights. It is legitimate for the Jewish community in Britain to try to oppose what it believes to be antisemitism by both political and legal means.

The Opinion was written by Michael J Beloff QC and Pushpinder Saini QC. They stake their professional reputations on it. They are not glove-puppets. Beloff is an academic and was President of Trinity College, Oxford for ten years. Both are specialists in discrimination and employment law.

There may well be situations in which it is right for a trade union to challenge or to violate laws which are designed illegitimately to weaken trade unions. This is not one of those situations. Anti-discrimination legislation has been hard-won by trade unionists and antiracists: it is our law. We rely on anti-discrimination law when we face employers who discriminate - either directly or indirectly, either consciously or unconsciously. It is right that we ourselves are bound by anti-discrimination law.

Proposals to exclude Israeli academics - and only Israeli academics - from the global academic community are, in effect if not in intent, antisemitic:

* They discriminate against a significant proportion of the world's Jewish academics for no valid reason.

* Under any adequate impact assessment, the proposal would be seen to impact Jewish members of the UCU disproportionately, as well as Jewish academics who are not members of the union.

* The proposal would make it impossible for union members to work in the field of Jewish Studies, Middle East Studies, or in the academic study of antisemitism, since it would cut them off from significant global centres of their field of expertise. Jewish academics would be disproportionately hit in this way.

* With the antisemitic proposal comes antisemitic rhetoric and antisemitic harassment

Engage has always argued that the proposals to boycott Israelis are antisemitic. In the opinion of the two barristers, that is not only our analysis, but it is also what the law says.

The boycott campaign, which, on a good day can muster a majority at UCU Congress and on the National Executive Committee, is putting our union at risk by relentlessly pursuing its antisemitic proposal. The union is at risk because:

* antisemitism is toxic and divisive; it violates basic trade union values. It endangers the other work which the union should be doing.

* antisemitism violates the law and so it puts the funds of the union at risk

Even if we believed that the boycott campaign was not antisemitic and if we believed that it was a good thing, the union would still be under a duty to take seriously the fact that senior QCs are telling us that it would violate the law and put the union at risk.

A small coterie of UCU activists are obsessively and relentlessly pushing a proposal which is antisemitic and which the law would judge to be antisemitic. They are putting our union and our unity at risk. It is time for the union decisively and permanently to end this damaging and relentless proposal to exclude Israelis. If we are concerned to help our Palestinian colleagues, as we should be, this boycott campaign is only counter-productive. There are many things we can do to help the peace movements in Palestine and in Israel, none of which involve a racist campaign against Israelis and Jews in universities in Britain.