UCU Boycott
So the proposed boycott of Israeli academics is off, about time too. Three events seem to have come together.
o UCU has decided after taking legal advice that implementing a boycott of Israeli academics would be counter to anti-discrimination legislation in Britain and the EU
o The head honcho of the SWP, Alexander Theodore Callinicos has decreed that the SWP is no longer actively supporting the proposed boycott.
o Two organisations, Engage and UCU Ballot were pressurising for a national ballot of all UCU members, which was gaining steam, and would have led to the issues being put eventually to the full membership of the union.
These events have been debated on Engage and Harry’s Place, look out for David Hirsh’s contributions in response to some meaningless misrepresentation of proceedings by an online SWP intellectual and UCU member, who shall remain nameless.
No doubt there will be plenty of sour grapes from the pro-boycotters and mumblings of ” Zionist power” or “control the media”, etc.
I think it might have been better that this issue had gone to a full ballot of all members and been comprehensively defeated.
But either way the racist and discriminatory nature of the boycott campaign to attack Israeli academics and deny them access to UK campuses is clear for all to see now.
Well done Engage and their supporters!!!
ModernityBlog 
“I think it might have been better that this issue had gone to a full ballot of all members and been comprehensively defeated.”
That was my first response too. Now I have reconsidered it, for a multitude of reasons. In any case the Elders will have been blamed, besides…
Cheers.
snoopythegoon
05/10/2007 at 12:28
I still think it would have been better to have the debate and then a ballot: this outcome will allow the anti-Israel fanatics and the ‘soft’ ant-semites the excuse to bleat on about “Zionist conspiracies”, etc. etc. The rank and file would have chucked out the boycott and the anti-ballot internationalists would have decisively the debate (as we always do).
Btw: thanks for the link to the Harry’s Place comments, where friend John Game once more makes a complete twat of himself and is publicly humiliated by Hersh, your own good self, and…not least: himself.
charliethechulo
05/10/2007 at 23:10
agreed.
I would have preferred the ballot, but we cannot control such situations and you could make a strong case that anti-discrimination legislation would clearly show that this proposed boycott is racist.
I don’t think that JohnG or SWPers consider themselves in any way racist for three reasons:
1) they are incredibly ignorant on the different facets of antisemitism, its changing nature and depth
2) ignorance leads to indifference
3) groups think/double think which work something like this “we, the SWP, are socialists,
socialists are antiracist, therefore we can not be racists, even if we attack “Zionists”
a strange thought process, but that’s how they seem to view things?
modernityblog
06/10/2007 at 00:38