Congress was attended this year by David Wilson, branch Chair, and Jonathan Causton, an ordinary member and relatively new recruit to the branch committee. This year we were in Harrogate, though one blacked-out conference hall looks much like another! As ever it was a very full three days of discussions and motions on a range of issues divided up according to which UCU committee they fell under – Education, Equality, Strategy and Finance, Recruitment Organising and Campaigning. Day two is split into separate meetings for Higher and Further Education sectors. Motions cover everything from the minutia of UCU rules to condemnation of international military actions.
The motion that Loughborough UCU submitted, on growing inequality and the urgent need for tax reform, was heard on the last day and received overwhelming support. This makes it UCU policy to both lobby government and educate the membership on the importance of this issue, and to lobby sector employer bodies such as Universities UK to join us in pressing for this as a solution to the funding crisis, rather than simply demanding higher fees. Tax reform sounds like about as dry a subject as you could hope to find, but it is not over-stating things to say it is an existential issue not just for education, but all public services and indeed society as we know it. To explain why, in under a minute we recommend this video of Gary Stevenson. For a longer discussion on the topic you might try recent appearances from leading wealth tax economist Gabriel Zucman on Bold Politics or Gary’s Economics.
Special guest speakers at Congress were Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and Asad Rehman, Chief Executive of Friends of The Earth. Both spoke eloquently about the links between workers’ rights, global inequality, and sustainability – all desperately urgent topics to address if we want future generations to inherit a world worth living in, and all reliant on a flourishing education system.