UCU's Factions
The UCU structures, as I’ve set out here, are confusing enough. But things get more confusing than that when you try to determine why the union's Higher Education Committee (HEC), occasionally produces policy that feels more like an ugly compromise than it does like anything coherent or clearly thought out.
When you start investigating why we are called out to action, or why a specific form of action is or isn’t taking place, inevitably you end up finding out about the UCU’s ‘factions’. Of course, unfortunately, ‘finding out’ is an overstatement; what you’ll most likely come across is references to UCU Left or UCU Commons or something formerly known as ‘IBL’ or the ‘independents’ without a clear explanation of what those groupings are after and what they roughly believe.
I will immediately disclaim this by saying I’m in one of them - UCU Commons - and so can’t even remotely pretend that this is a neutral overview; but I think it is a fair one, in that I really just want to set out why there are such systemic disagreements between different groupings on the HEC and how that translates into UCU policy.
I'll also disclaim that I'm going to use the word 'faction' to describe all these groupings for ease - but in practice, they operate at different, nebulous points somewhere between 'collaboration' (aka a loose alliance) and 'block voting' (aka a true faction).
UCU Left
UCU Left (UCUL) is, to me, the most clearly identifiable of the factions. It's active, organised, has its own blog and mailing list, and runs an election slate for national elections. On the above spectrum, it is the most organised of the factions, in that I believe it also explicitly adopts 'faction positions' at HEC level, and votes accordingly.
What does UCU Left stand for?
This is impressionistic, but my feeling over the last few years of action is that their priorities and preferences lie roughly here:
Branch-led democracy. Rather than wanting to consult the parts of the membership that do not/cannot make it to branch meetings, UCUL believes in activist-led decision making via branches as a deliberative structure.
'No Capitulation' - which is a rough shorthand for UCUL being committed to serious industrial action pretty much always. As an example, they block voted for indefinite action across semester 2 of the 22/23 academic year in both November and January/February.
Belief that at current membership density (at about 25% of eligible staff, with a smaller proportion of that regularly committed to lasting industrial action) big gains are possible and that the best way to grow the membership is to take action.
In terms of their relationship to the General Secretary, there are big clashes: the General Secretary has long advocated for not taking big industrial action until the membership density of UCU is bigger, which would mean pausing action - and UCUL fundamentally disagrees with this in both principle (pausing mid dispute!) and in terms of efficacy (what's the plan for growing the membership?). Further clashes arise when disputes reach potential resolution points, with the General Secretary seemingly taking small improvements as what is possible at current UCU density, and UCUL feeling strongly that settling for small fry is letting the employers win. It's hard to see how a compromise between those positions is possible - hence UCU's fraught functioning.
UCU Commons
Commons has been a faction since 2020 and has, since its inception, been closely associated with the General Secretary because some founders of Commons were also involved in her 2019 election campaign. The reality of the faction is that it has no formal ties to Jo Grady, who is not in Commons and never has been, but takes flak from other parts of the UCU as if it works in tandem with her.
This doesn't work as a criticism primarily because, leaving aside the lack of 'insider info', Commons is on the looser end of factionalism. It has a mailing list and runs a slate, but there are no explicit 'faction lines', nor is there any expectation of block voting on HEC. It might look like there is, though - because despite broad disagreement on lots of detail within the community, most Commoners hold the following views:
Hard industrial action has a time and place and we don't currently have the membership density to push for, eg, indefinite action across a semester. A core component of what Commons wants UCU to do is to dedicate resources to organising and building membership density. Once that density improves - sure, we go all in! But until then, we have to recognise the limits of what we can reasonably achieve in terms of our power.
For any UCU action to work, we have to know how the entire membership feels - and not only take decisions based on the views of activists who make it to branch meetings. We're not opposed to surveying the members, as long as it's done well (with appropriate information and time to consider responses).
Unequivocal support for trans rights. (This latter one does not really affect industrial action, but it's very important to us.)
A further position that Commons believes in, but not unequivocally or uncritically, is that once on HEC, it's important to work with the HO. This, of course, is an easier ask for Commoners, who by and large hold similar views to the General Secretary on the shape of industrial action at current density levels.
That overlap is easily misrepresented as Commoners being little more than Jo Grady's elected patsies, however. The reality is that many of us have disagreed with approaches taken by the HO, and have not hesitated to make those views clear. The more accurate description of how we operate, to me, is therefore that when Commonsers clash with the General Secretary, we try to look for a coherent compromise position rather than stick to our guns. To some, that reads as pragmatism; to others, it reads as lacking principles - and so it is a clear dividing line between Commons and UCUL, in addition to the very different views on what the UCU can achieve.
IBL/Agenda/CUD-associated
It's impossible to explain what I'm talking about with these three names in a short introduction, so we'll skip to the end: a faction known formerly as the Independent Broad Left (IBL) has largely disbanded, but former members and others are now loosely organising as the Campaign for Union Democracy (CUD). The mainstays of this factional set of views is:
UCU should consistently involve the whole of the membership when taking key decisions; hearing from branches is less important than hearing from all members.
Industrial action won't work unless appropriately timed with correctly calibrated demands - determined in light of membership density, and so, the UCU'S leverage.
There is overlap here with Commons, and occasionally this grouping and Commoners on HEC hold very similar views and work together. A fundamental difference, beyond Commons' commitment to trans rights, is that Commoners tend to prioritise building the UCU so as to generate more leverage through it, whereas the former IBL-ers seem to focus on ensuring that any industrial action matches our existing leverage position. As a friend said: a helpful shorthand is that IBL-aligned members operate like tacticians, whereas Commons-aligned members operate like organisers.
This grouping is politically at the completely opposite end of the spectrum to UCUL, and compromise between UCUL and IBL-adjacent views looks (to me, at least) completely impossible.
The Independents - aka the Kingmakers
The final UCU 'faction' will be the first to tell you that it isn't, in fact, a 'faction' - but given that I'm using the term to describe people who work together at HEC level because they hold very similar views of what UCU can and should do, they are one for these purposes.
Mind, not every 'independent' HEC member is part of this independent grouping; some are genuine 'free agents', voting in line with only their own views or with their constituents' expressed wishes. I'm here describing a number of non-factional independents who, like Commons, do not do 'factional lines' (not a faction, remember!) or compulsory block voting - but who in practice coordinate and tend to vote together as a collective.
This 'independent' sub-grouping, which for convenience I'll call the Kingmakers, operates as the 'swing vote' on the current HEC, and their positions seem to fall somewhere between UCUL and Commons:
Hard-hitting industrial action at current density levels unless the members have made clear (through branches, as the proper source of input per the UCU rules) that they are not up for that type of action.
An explicit desire for UCU rules and policy to be followed; eg, I've seen members of this grouping express dislike of the General Secretary's surveys of the whole membership not because branch deliberation is seen as necessarily 'better', but because the rules make it clear that UCU democracy is meant to operate through branches.
They are in effect where current compromises between the other factions have to be found - and a lot of the policy we end up with out of HEC arises because this grouping tried to find a halfway house between what members seem to want, what UCUL wants, and what Commons can live with. The decision to go out for 20 days in semester 2 of 22/23, as an example, was an 'independent' proposal that garnered enough support from Commons and Left and other 'independents' to become policy.
The Next NEC
In April 2023, the NEC make-up changes with newly elected members taking up their NEC seats. These latest elections were a win for Commons and a loss for UCUL if we look at their slates, and overall balance of power in HEC shifts away from the Kingmakers and towards Commons and former IBL. That said, while Commons and ex-IBL HEC members tend to feel similarly about industrial action at current member density levels, they are not in a coalition in a more general sense - and depending on what HEC is deciding, or how UCU membership density looks, it feels likely that the Kingmakers will continue to play a big part in enabling compromises that Commoners can live with.