Resettling scores: internationals in the UCU strike

Teachers take part in the first national pay strike in 21 years, as they march through central London. Lewis Whyld/Press Association. All rights reserved.In an excellent reflection on
the University and College Union (UCU) strike over changes to their USS pension
scheme last week, Brendan McGeever illuminates the thread that
connects some of the current strikers to the Millbank demonstrators of 2010:
it’s basically the same people, and one could quite easily tell that this is
the case by looking at the faces of many of those marching at the UCU demo in
central London last week. 

As we enter the second week of
our strike, I think it is important to highlight another fact: the fact that
many of us now fighting through the UCU and Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) ranks also carry histories of struggle elsewhere — histories that may
clash with or complement struggles in this country.

I have been thinking over this
in my intense ongoing discussions with international colleagues here and those
back in Greece: discussions on the potential effectiveness of the strike, on
the use of the picket line as a tactic, on the not-quite radical nature of the
demands, on where each of us stands — or should stand — based on their line of
work, on their capacity and their needs.

We have been amazed at the
success of the picket line as a method, we have been wondering about the
intense mix of solidarity (“I’ll strike even if the dispute does not affect
me as much”) of sheer individualisation (“the strike does not concern
me”) and straight-up, baffling contempt even for one’s self-interest (“I
won’t strike, even if this will really screw me over”). We have been gazing
with interest at the mainstream news, to see if they would go down the same
route as they did in Greece during the peak of the anti-austerity struggles:
shredding fair demands to bits, vying to position each social group in struggle
against everyone else — in a race to the bottomless pit of apathy and
individualisation.

And a lot of us have also been
reflecting on our individual position in this collective struggle, reflecting
on our place in the politics of the university as a whole.

It has been fairly common for
some radical academics to treat their place of employment as a space that is
apolitical-by-default: shielded from the “real” world, a somewhat neutral site
where they can carry out their admittedly privileged labour and then take their
whatever social or political struggles outside. To keep, in other words, the
“radical” separate from the “academic”.

I am also thinking here of
David Graeber’s old “scholar in New Haven, activist in New York” split-mindset,
common among so many, which he had to confront at the moment when Yale decided
they had had too much of his radical ways, whether on campus or not. For those
of us with a reference to another social context — in my case, the political
struggles in Greece — the divide has been much easier: we were quite literally
saved by the geography of it all, which did the hard work of neatly dividing
professional and political affinities on either side of national borders.

Until this strike came along…

Amazingly enough, it has been
ten years from December’s 2008 uprising in Greece, and it feels surreal to be
thinking and writing about a struggle of such a different nature a decade on.
But at the same time, it feels like a seamless transition: December was about
taking back control of our lives amidst the ever-destabilising force of late capitalism,
shredding continuities in space and in time apart, disciplining us into
compartmentalised individuals.

“No more
discipline, life’s magical” — the
slogan from these days has been singing in my head as I see colleagues laugh in
the face of the absurd claims by the all-round absurdness that is university
management. Ten years on, the UCU strike is pretty much exactly the same
essential demand — making it all the more impressive as it strikes (excuse the
pun) at such a different place and time. 

Up until days before the
December uprising, we would have thought it utterly impossible for those who
took action to do so. We would have thought it inconceivable for that
fascinatingly mixed amalgam to meet outside, in the streets. And what is
fantastically breathtaking is that we would have never been able to see what
was coming, not even the night before. 

And now, today? Up until days
before this strike, wouldn’t we still have thought it impossible to find
connecting dots between ever-precarious, ever-individualised, ever-self driven
and self-absorbed academics only fighting against the REF clock, only fighting
off sleep in order to finish that one more article, that batch of marking?

Is this a revolt? No, of
course it is not. But it is a welcome and refreshing reminder of something we
had been too comfortable to forget, that social tension brews everywhere and it
can burst into a struggle wherever the conditions are ripe, with zero notice.
We never thought the university would be this kind of breeding ground… …until
this strike came along.