A few of procedural things to notice:

1) this represents three or four resolutions that were composited together.  They were composited together because their content was substantially the same.  Their content was substantially the same, because they were written by the same people: Tom Hickey, (Brighton, Grand Parade and NEC) and Phil Marfleet (UEL Docklands).  This meant that the NEC could pass a Hickey motion and then Tom Hickey at Brighton (Grand Parade) could pass substantially the same motion, to tidy up the NEC one, add in his second thoughts (or perhaps those of the SWP CC). NEC members have the advantage here, because they know the contents of the NEC agenda, which is kept secret from ordinary members. With a clever bit of timing, setting the branch meeting after the NEC but before the cut off date, NEC members can get two or three bites of the cherry, before other branches get a look in at the amendment stage.  

2) both Brighton (Grand Parade), Brighton (Eastbourne) and UEL (Docklands) have this in common: they are 'fractional' branches at  relatively small post-92 institutions.  Fractional branches of this form are a bit of a democratic anomaly, to be polite.  They are a legacy of the Natfhe structures.  The argument for them is that institutions have split sites.  And indeed, Brighton University is split site.  There's one at Grand Parade, one a couple of miles up the road at Moulsecomb, one a mile or two further at Falmer, and one over in Eastbourne.  OK, it's split site.  But on this logic the Open University oughht to have at least fourteen branches.  People at the OU work at sites hundreds of miles apart, and with no site at all.  However, we don't and its a legacy of the old AUT that institutions have one branch, even if they are split site.  Why?  Well, if you have one branch for a single institution you can be more confident that the opinion of the branch properly represents the diversity of members at that institution.  If not there's a greater chance for unrepresentative cliques based in one department to dominate.  Its also the case that Brighton UCU now has four times the opportunities to send motions and amendments to congress, despite being a fraction of the size of the OU Branch - another anomaly.

3) So there are resolutions from the NEC, where a small minority of the members are university academics, and where SWP enforcers slip on unopposed, and from these fractional branches.  No resolutions on the boycott from Manchester, or the OU, or Edinburgh, or Glasgow, or Oxbridge, or any Russell group branch, or any unitary university branch at all.  And those of us active in 2005 know exactly why: the boycotters then were unable to get endorsement of their policy to boycott Haifa and Bar Ilan from a single branch.  And they still have that difficulty, though they are increasingly finding ways of working around it, through fractional branches and a shamefully unrepresentative NEC.

I make these points, because academics in the UK are now represented by a union that's effectively controlled by the SWP.  Of course, that's bad for the union, and bad for academia.  We may adopt a policy that is grossly - really grotesquely - unrepresentative of British academics.  But it's also interesting to someone who occasionally wears a nerdy political theorist hat: there is something here to explain.  I think it's worth looking in some details at how that situation is maintained, how the rules are employed to maintain that control. I'm not alleging any breaking of the rules.  Veterans of the labour movement will recognise some of the ploys the SWP use to entrench their position - for example, desparately avoiding giving the mass membership of the union a vote.  But there are one or two interesting new twists that are specific to the UCU.

Th serious outcome is that, increasingly, sensible academics will 1) maintain their membership of the union in order to protect themselves in the workplace but 2) ignore, or treat with derision, decisions made by the Congress of that union. We're pretty far down that road already.

Keep watching as things unfold.

Oh, and for hostile readers, this isn't called 'red-baiting'.  It's called whistle blowing.

Jon,
You forget option 3. People will just leave the Union.

option 3, "leave the union"

Yer, that'll really be effective in changing the culture in the union.

Yer, like staying in has changed it..............How many times is thin in a row now?

Perhaps the time has come for moderate members to set up a breakaway union (remember the breakaway union from the NUM in the 1980's). David is there any point to writing an opinion article in UC ,the UCU magazine?

The Bund of Jewish University and Uollege Workers.

The antiracist union of University and College Workers.

This would be laughable (note that I didn't say funny) if it weren't so sad - and I'm not referring to the comments.

These idiots appear determined to ignore the law of the land, the needs of the membership and the threat to the union's funds. Given behaviour like this, it's no wonder that their direct ideological ancestors, the German Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, colluded with the Nazis to destroy the German Social Democrats as "social fascists". If I wasn't safely retired and out of the fray, I think I would have been tempted to follow Shalom Lappin out of the union.

I wonder what they'll do for an encore once they've financially bankrupted the union as well as their attempt to morally bankrupt it?

Really, guys, how long can you keep fighting these morons without a change of rules to make the NEC more democratically accountable and Congresses more representative?

Can anyone tell us, does the newly elected national exec look better from an anti-boycott perspective?  And when does it come into office?  I know Jon Pike will be on it.  Could he perhaps answer this?

I think I must be missing something here. As I understood it, UCU had previously established that a boycott would be illegal, and formal attempts to promote a boycott would be too.

Setting aside item 4 (I don't recall anyone outside UCU's own leadership making legal attempts to prevent the debate) if that's right, then wouldn't items 7 and 9 be illegal? The coy wording does not hide the fact that they are an unmistakable invitation to boycott Israel.

David:

I agree that leaving the union isn't going to help. What is probably is for opponents of the boycott to band together and seek legal advice as to what their options are when the union's executives chose to ignore legal advice given them and expose the union to being brought before a human rights tribunal or civil actions.

I'd be surprised if the union's bylaws didn't speak to removal of such executives as the resurrection of the boycott proposal smacks of abuse of powers.

How can this NOT affect collective bargaining and general advocacy of academic interests in college and universities.  If the UCU is increasingly known for boycotting Jews and only Jews, its officers playing the two-faced shuffle, and being a university union in name only (rather than a front for politically correct bigots), then how do people entrenched in the university as faculty and administrators and students take them seriously when its time to deal with assessment, accreditation, workload, paying the university bills without cutting the faculty raises and of course, creating an effective and free working/teaching environment?  

As Brian says, these idiots are bankrupting the union financially and morally, but they are also trashing it operationally.  Universities have a mandate to educate.  In the battle between a psuedo academic union, misbehaving as element of the UCU  wants, and administration, who do you think will come out on top in both the eyes of the law and the public?

Good Luck to Jon!

Ashamed,

(Sorry, about the delay - I've been busy) The new exec is a little, but not much  better. It's closely balanced. However, those who represent University academics within the union are fairly solidly against the boycott. There's a lot to do to get an executive that is properly representative. First, make sure that you  and everyone you know, votes for Stephen Desmond.  Second, don't get pushed out.  Third: organise in your branch, and stay in contact with Engage.  The more ordinary members get involved, the better - especially ashamed, angry, bemused and (lets face it) bored members.  They don't represent us, the majority of memnbers: they should be living on borrowed time.

The boycotters should not be allowed to get away with the deceitful claim that the motion to be proposed at the 2008 UCU Congress is anything other than a call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.  Much of its wording is identical to that of the notorious motion approved at the UCU Congress in 2007.  The 2007 motion alleged "complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation", claimed that "criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic" and "encourage[d] members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions".  The 2008 motion alleges "apparent complicity of most of the Israeli academy [in the occupation]", "affirms that criticism of Israel or Israeli policy are not, as such, anti-semitic", and asks "colleagues ... to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions".

The 2007 motion appeared on the agenda of the UCU Congress with the title "Boycott of Israeli academic institutions".  How can the passage of 12 months turn the same words into something quite different?

Thanks Jon for both info and advice.

Unbelievable... If only we had a few real academics here in Israel they might have helped us making the government more humane towards the Palestinians... And then this boycott would not have happened in the first place...