Jon, I agree when you say that in the AUT there's a small unrepresentative body of folk who are pro-boycott (although those who are anti-boycott are so for a wide variety of reasons). But how can you be so sure about the membership of NATFHE?

I find John's well meaning description of the merger between the the AUT and NATFHE Penglossian, and his take on the likelihood for a renewed boycott campaign in the combined union to be a case of wishful thinking. The Committee that the AUT Council has elected on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is deadlocked between two high profile advocates of the boycott campaign and two strong opponents. The most likely result of this situation is that the Committee will be neutralized as an effective instrument for formulating and promoting policy. Given the abysmal lack of leadership and integrity on the boycott that the AUT Executive has demonstrated in the past, there is no reason to think that it will resist a renewed campaign any more vigorously now than it did on previous occasions, particulalry in the absence of a clear policy recomendation from the newly elected Committee. NATFHE has a well established record of wide spread and acute hostility to Israel (as a country), and its current leadership has made its views on the relevant issues very clear. When this constituency is added to the pro-boycott element within the AUT, the prospects for a balanced or enlightened policy are far from encouraging. A larger higher education union is certainly desirable for purposes of collective bargaining and effective industrial democracy. Unfortunately this particular enlargment poses a very serious threat to our concerns, and we should recognize very clearly what we are up against.

I've just had the breakdown of the investigative committee election through. Alastair Hunter topped the poll and I came second. And people should remember that the national executive of the AUT opposes the boycott by a big majority and that the representatives from the NEC on the committee are very likely also to oppose the boycott. They haven't gone about it very well, and they have been negligent in many ways. We will certainly need to keep up the pressure. But there will be a clear policy recommendation from the committee, and it will be to base the AUT's and the UCU's policy on a consistent basis, and to oppose an academic boycott of Israel. Of course, if that doesn't happen, we'll need to take all sorts of action to resolve the matter with the membership. We'll fight this one all the way. And we'll fight it in the new union, in 2007, and beyond.

The estimation of the balance of forces in the new union is tricky, of course, and I don't underestimate what we are up against. Both a lot, and not much, hangs on this. A lot, because it's crucial, not least for the credibility of the union, that the boycotters are defeated. Not much, because whatever our different estimations, we'll need to be vigilant and persistent in opposing the boycotters over the next few years. 2005 should have taught us all that lesson.

What I don't understand is how, after voting in a way that didn't represent their branch, Blackwell and Hawwah were permitted to stand for election to the investigative committee. Has there been a formal complaint lodged by BAUT about B's & H's unrepresentative votes in Special Council? I'd have thought that that sort of thing would..well, if not get them barred from membership, then at least get them barred from standing for investigative council spots. If there's no penalty for ethical breaches like theirs in the by-laws, there certainly ought to be.

The real test for John Pike and others in ENGAGE, and for Universities in Israel is whether they are prepared to campaign for an end to colonisation and the occupation, withdrawal to the 1967 borders, from East Jerusalem, and from removing the Wall as a minimum. Without that as a bottom line their efforts are a smokescreen for something else if not a morbid celebration in frustrating the efforts of Palestinian people's just cause. Thankfully the tide in the trade union movement is turning in the opposite direction. For that I am delighted.

"Alastair Hunter topped the poll and I came second."

???

Excuse me Jon, AUT must have sent you a different version of the breakdown than the one I'm looking at, in which Alastair got 35 first-preference votes, I got 31, you got 26 and
Kamel Hawwash came 4th with 19, before any votes were transferred.

I look forward to seeing a correction on the Engage site. And while you're at it, please spell my colleague Kamel's name correctly - he's Palestinian you know, not Turkish.

Dear John,

Alister topped the poll at 36 with 1 transfer vote,Sue came second at 33 with 2 transfer votes,and you came third with 31 with 5 transfer votes (no surprises fropm where these came from given the slate)- so there is no need to gloat or lie about your performance and its significance.

As I understand it, Alastair Hunter topped the poll, with Sue Blackwell second, Jon Pike third and Kamel Hawash fourth. I dont understand why Jon Pike misleads us in this way. It is also not entirely clear that the pro-academic boycott supporters constitute a minority within AUT. They were sufficient to move and pass the boycott motion to Council before a hurried rallying of the 'opposition' led to a special Council meeting and a reversal of the vote. There is evidence to suggest that the pro-academic boycott support in the AUT is far larger than Jon Pike and others who are not supportive of it would like to think. But you dont win battles by underestimating your opponents. Within NATFE there is a much larger body of support for action against the Israeli occupation and Israeil government policies, which will undoubtedly swell the numbers in support of the boycott in the new merged union. Dont be under any illusion, the academic boycott movement is here to stay and is joining up, as we speak, with other like-minded groups and organisations worldwide.

David S. writes "the academic boycott movement is here to stay..."

You mean a boycott of Saudi Arabia perhaps?

Or Russia?

Or mayhap Morocco?

How about a boycott of the UK?

Regards,

Inna

Given Sue Blackwell is reading this, does she care to explain why she voted against her own branch decision on the boycott.

Whatever happened to democracy within the trade union movement?

OK, let's look at the facts. Let's see if I'm 'misleading' or telling 'lies' or 'gloating'. Let's see if the boycotters are able to understand an STV results sheet.

At the first round, the scores of those who were finally elected were: Hunter 35, Pike 26, Hawwash 19, Blackwell 31. (The order here comes from the order on the ballot paper and the results paper.) So it's true that Blackwell got more first preferences than me. But no-one got over the quota, no-one was elected at this point, so preferences were redistributed. That's how STV works. The quota was 36 (boycotters, this is on the top right-hand side of the first sheet.) Hunter got over the quota at the third stage, I got over the quota at the seventh stage, with the elimination of Noble, and Blackwell got over the quota at the ninth stage with the elimination of Povey. Hawwash was the last to be elected.

There is an E1 by Hunter's name, an E2 by my name, an E3 by Blackwell and an E4 by Hawwash. This stands for 'Elected' and gives the order in which people were elected. (It's on the left hand side of the first sheet. Run through to the seventh and ninth stage and you will see what is happening)

So, no correction: what I said above was completely accurate. Hunter topped the poll, and was elected first, I was elected second. E1, E2. Have a look, again. David Seddon, Sue Blackwell and George Shire should try to get a basic understanding of STV before they comment. But it doesn't matter much. Nothing much hangs on who came second. It only shows that, in this secret ballot, where council members were not required to represent their members, there was, in all probability, a small majority of votes against the boycott. Or at least, that's the clearest, most plausible account.

I'm sorry I got Kamel's name wrong, above. It's a bit irritating when people do that, just as George Shire and Shalom Lappin do, about me, above. I try to get over it, though, and so do my friends.

I'm not much interested in responding to Shire's comments. He's an apologist for Mugabe, and also ignored his branch's votes when it came to the Special council. (I was there on both occasions at the OU branch meeting and at the Special Council)

Chaim, I'm afraid there's not much we can do about it within the AUT beyond trying to shame these people about their unrepresentativeness. And you will note that Sue Blackwell's response above does not touch on the representativeness objection that I make in my main piece. She simply ignores the fact that she voted for the specific boycotts, when BAUT voted against them, just as Rose did, just as Shire did, when OUAUT voted against them and for a resolution I proposed, and for a mandation motion, and against a proportional mandation motion. At the time, one of the boycotters, Andrew Trigg, said that they would respect the decision of the branch. But Rose and Shire simply did not do that. Thankfully, neither of them is on the OU council delegation for next year.

Instead of addressing this, the boycotters raise an allegation against me, which I refute, above.

Mikey implies that I broke some kind of mandate. I did not. Mandating is not the normal practice in most AUT branches and most Local Associations do not allow for it in their rules. We have never done it in Birmingham as long as I can remember - the most we have imposed on our delegates is to say that they should not vote against motions which have come from Birmingham AUT (but they could abstain). Personally I don't think it is fair to force someone to vote for something which they strongly object to. Mandating by definition is something you do to your delegates when you don't trust them. It is far better to allow them to listen to the debate and be swayed by the arguments. Birmingham AUT sent a mixed delegation to Special Council, with people who both supported and opposed the boycott, and they all voted according to their consciences. That is much healthier IMHO than some of the stitch-ups that have taken place in certain branches.

Yes Sue Blackwell, you're right. You shouldn't be expected to vote in a way that you strongly object to. Therefore you should have stood down as a delegate representing your local association when your boycott was rejected by your own colleagues. You had no business going to the Special Council to argue for a policy that your own local association had rejected. Your local association should have sent someone else.

Oh yes, now I remember rightly, they did send someone else. And you took his speech and left him hovering on the sidelines while you argued for a boycott that BAUT, the association you were pretending to represent, had explicitly rejected.

Following on from Sue Blackwell's point - What is the point in having a debate about anything at a branch meeting since any decision can simply be ignored and indeed be voted by the representative in the complete opposite way?

It makes a mockery of local branch debates and furthermore makes a mockery of democratic decisions.

Sue Blackwell should be ashamed of herself.

David Seddon, why do you put the word 'opposition' in quote marks?

I am pleased to hear that there is, in Natfhe a large "body of support for action against the Israeli occupation and Israeli government policies".

So now we can get on with doing something to help the Palestinian and Israeli peace movements to end the occupation and to change Israeli government policies.

The proposal to exclude Israeli Jews from the global academic community has been solidly rejected. It has divided those who oppose the occupation and it has fatally compromised the Palestine Solidarity Campaign by associating it with an antisemitic policy.

Sue Blackwell and Kamel Hawwash have done immense damage to the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements. Now it is time to move on, and find a role for UK academics that can do some good.

The new union will not commit suicide by adopting a policy of blacklisting Jewish Israelis. The new union will campaign for democratic freedom in Palestine and Israel, against antisemitism, and against anti-Arab racism.

Blackwell's concept of democratic accountability is intriguing. She suggests that representatives of an AUT branch should be free to discard the policy positions that the branch adopts by majority vote, and so to vote in national forums according to their personal views, even when these are in conflict with the decisions of the branch. On this approach, they represent their own political agendas rather than the policy decisions discussed and adopted by the branches that send them to these forums. That this is an eccentric concept of representative democracy should be clear to all. One wonders if she and her cohorts might find it easier to recognize it as such if it were practised by branch representative opposed of the boycott, or by advocates of other attitudes that they oppose. This sort of cynicism provides ample comment on who we are dealing with here.

Ms. Blackwell, legalistic compliance with technicalities does not always add up to, or demonstrate, ethical behaviour.

Rachel, that's funny: Steven Rose did exactly the same to me at the Special Council. He took my speaking rights. The OUAUT had a right to a single speech on the resolution that I wrote. Rose took it to speak against OUAUT policy, on behalf of the OUAUT. He spoke against a resolution he opposed at the OU, but which was carried, and despite the fact that we carried both this resolution, and a mandating resolution, and defeated a resolution calling for a proportional mandate.

All this starts to show up why I argue that the AUT council is out of line with the membership, and that some members of council act in a contemptuous way towards that membership.

Remember, in the run up to Special Council not a single branch of the AUT passed a resolution in support of the specific boycotts of Haifa and Bar-Ilan.

Just for the record:

1) It's obvious, from their silence on the matter, that the boycotters have now worked out the relationship between 'E2' beside my name on the results, and my claim that I came second.

2) It's obvious that they - Sue Blackwell, George Shire, and David Seddon, owe me an apology for suggesting that my claim was 'misleading' or a 'lie.'

3) It's obvious that I shouldn't hold my breath.

4) It's obvious that readers of Engage can make their own minds up on this little matter, and perhaps draw more general conclusions, if they wish.

"The real test for John Pike and others in ENGAGE, and for Universities in Israel is whether they are prepared to campaign for an end to colonisation and the occupation, withdrawal to the 1967 borders, from East Jerusalem, and from removing the Wall as a minimum. Without that as a bottom line their efforts are a smokescreen for something else if not a morbid celebration in frustrating the efforts of Palestinian people's just cause".

George i think you should be a bit more careful with your language - "Without that as a bottom line their efforts are a smokescreen for something else". - If you don't know why then i suggest that you read Steve Cohen's book which you can find on Engage !

Dear John,

I was and am very proud to have been involved in the liberation struggle of Zimbabwe and will continue to defend my role in than war. I make no apologies to you or anyone for being organically linked to the liberation movements in Southern Africa and to the many solidarity movements around the world that supported that struggle - and that includes the Palestinian people and their cause.

The question I ask you is this - which 'frontline' do you belong to and whose side are you on when it comes to defending the academic freedom of Palestinians whose daily lives have been made unbearable by the State of Israel's technologies - which include academics who remain silent about the fate of their fellow human beings? How many Israeli academics/instituions can you name or count that are prepared to speak out against the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank?

Robert Mugabe has the majority support of the third world regional institutions such as the AU, SADC, COMESA, ECOWAS, the ACP,the G77,China, and Russia. Presumably the gospel according to Saint John Pike presuposes that all these people who constitute the majority of the world are apologists of a mad man. I do not.

Enjoy your new found fame while it lasts. The struggle for the liberation and freedom of the people of Palestine continues with or without your support. I for one am prepared to stand up to be counted as someone who responded to their call for support of the boycott and their plight by any means necesary through the organisations that I belong to. I will continue to support the call for a boycott as long as Palestinians - such as the Centre for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights, the Palestininan Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, etc - and a growing number of many citizens of Israel who continue to do so. On the other hand you and your fellow travellers are noticeably vocal in your opposition to these efforts which are designed to bring an early resolution to the plight of Palestinians.

There is more to the AUT than the boycott debate. Some of us note that you have never been interested that much in the other day to day issues and concerns that preoccupy the AUT on a day to day basis. This explains why many of your vocal supporters in the Open University LA lost their seats at the last AGM. I would not claim majority support for your point of view in that association now and gives me hope.

Best wishes,

George Shire

George Shire: "Enjoy your new found fame while it lasts. The struggle for the liberation and freedom of the people of Palestine continues with or without your support. I for one am prepared to stand up to be counted as someone who responded to their call for support of the boycott and their plight by any means necesary through the organisations that I belong to. I will continue to support the call for a boycott as long as Palestinians - such as the Centre for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights, the Palestininan Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, etc - and a growing number of many citizens of Israel who continue to do so. On the other hand you and your fellow travellers are noticeably vocal in your opposition to these efforts which are designed to bring an early resolution to the plight of Palestinians."

George Orwell: "Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity."

Dear David,
A more productive starting point might be for you and your friends in ENGAGE to support the following modest positions:

1. Ending Israel's occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the wall;

2.Recognise the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;

3. Respect promote and protect the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in the United Nations Resolution 194;

4. Support Aharo Shabtai, Israeli poet and lecturer at Tel Aviv University for his courageous stand and boycott of the International Poetry Festival in Jerusalem, and;

5. Call on all academics world wide and in particular those in Israel and in ENGAGE to condemn the barbarism at the Qalandia checkpoint.

That is where real solidarity begins. Trading insults with me serves no purpose and in the end dehumanises us all.

Best wishes,

George Shire

George, I find that I would have a far easier time taking your advice about the inefficacy of "trading insults" if it were accompanied by the expected and deserved apology for having directly accused Jon Pike (note spelling) of lying about the outcome of the vote when it turns out he was merely demonstrating a better understanding than yours about the balloting procedure.

Goeorge: Can you please explain what you mean by "you and your fellow travellers" ? Fellow travellers of what ?

Guess that's a 'no' on the apology then, isn't it, George. What an inauspicious beginning you've made of it.

To David Seddon: How does he know about the "much larger body of support" within Natfhe for a boycott? By the time I retired and left Natfhe (see previous comments on Engage by me for my reasons for so leaving), there had been no vote of the membership of Natfhe on the boycott - only votes by the Executive - which as we know from AUT's experience, is by no means the same, necessarily, as a similiar level of support among the membership at large. They vote for particular candidates for a whole raft of reasons and may not support that candidate's views on any academic boycott of anyone; indeed, they may not even know of the candidate's views on such matters.

Inna, absolutely right, and of course space prohibits a complete list being presented: where is China or, for that matter for those opposed to the invasion of Iraq, of the US?

[accidentally sent an incomplete comment - should have finished with "George Shire believe that there shouldn't be a Jewish state?"

Sorry for that

If I managed to send only a partial comment, because I hit the wrong button, please take a moment to tell me, so that I write it again, and stop looking in vain for my comment!

Thanks for your time

Okay, what I was trying to say was it was interesting to examine George Shire's use of words. In the posting above, with the numbered points, his first point is to suggest that we support his modest proposal that we join him to support "Ending Israel's occupation and colonization of all Palestinian lands and dismantling the wall". What does he mean by "all Palestinian lands"? Is he suggesting that Israel leaves the West Bank and retires behind the Green Line (the 1948 cease fire line)? Or does he mean retire to the 1947 UN Partition Plan borders? And does he mean that there should be no negotiation over access to the various holy sites in, inter alia, Jerusalem? This says nothing about the actual interpretation of the word "territories" in Resolution 242 (there is no "the" in 242 before the word "territories"), and whether there should be negotiation over the final borders of Israel and Palestine.

Further, while there shouldn't be a wall and much of it is in the wrong place, given that its existence has helped to reduced the level of attacks inside Green Line Israel, I'd suggest that more is needed from the Palestinian side before the wall starts to come down - or are they, in Abba Eban's words, going to not miss another opportunity to miss an opportunity.

All this is to suggest that, without going into the other numbered points in that posting, a great deal of clarification is needed before there can be any question of agreeing to a not-so modest proposal: not least, giving the apparent tenor of the other points, whether George Shire believes there should even be a Jewish state.

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