Introducing Matt Barnard!

Dear subscribers,

Today, you’ll be hearing from Matt Barnard (he/him) who is running for one of the North West regional seats on the NEC. Matt is a lecturer in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, and this is his first time running for NEC. Keep reading to find out more about why Matt thinks now is an important time to stand for election.

You’ll find more information about all UCU Commons candidates on our website. We have also written an explainer of the role of NEC and the elected officers, how the voting system works, and why it is vitally important to vote in these elections. Please keep reading and sharing it!

The UCU officer hustings were held last week, and the recording is now available to watch online. We strongly recommend giving it a watch.

If you are still yet to receive your ballot papers, order a replacement set here.

In solidarity,

UCU Commons

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Matt Barnard elections mailout:

I am standing for election to the Higher Education Committee in the North West as part of the UCU Commons’ slate. I’m a relatively new member and am new to union activism. In this post, I just want to expand on my electoral address to talk about my history with UCU and the thinking that led me to seek election.

I joined UCU as an hourly paid lecturer with six hours a week term-time teaching because a strike had been called on my biggest teaching day. I wanted to take part. This was not a sophisticated ideological stand but a simple conviction that you should be in the union, support the union, tick every box they tell you to, and always go on strike when the union calls for it. Over a decade later, this simple faith has stayed with me, I’ve fully participated in every industrial action that has been called since and will continue to do so. What has been tempered, however, is my trust that following this simple faith will actually achieve change. I participated in the 2023 marking and assessment boycott (MAB) without any conviction it would achieve anything, and when my friends and family asked me what the point was all I could say was that it was the principle of the matter. I still stand by those principles, but I can also recognise that political principles are supposed to be templates of political action and political action should always be judged on the change it makes to the world, not its philosophical consistency. I will strike every time my fellow members vote for it, but I am sick of being asked to do so without a strategy or even a clear, reasonable expectation that the action could be productive.

I know many who believe that strike and other forms of industrial action are an intrinsic good, that they have virtues beyond victory. They believe that any sort of action raises class consciousness by encouraging solidarity on the picket line, unveiling the essential conflict between worker and employer. I’m not going to vilify these beliefs. I can see how they could be a natural development of my own simple faith in trades unionism. I just think the facts refute those ideas, demonstrating the opposite. Strike without strategy has reduced our density and engagement of ordinary members at all levels. This is perfectly understandable because going on strike without hope of victory does nothing but test our resolve and reduce our employer’s wage bill. This sort of view has recently been called ‘pessimistic’ by the UCU Left candidate for Vice-President. I call pessimistic the assumption that unions are so weak and our employers so strong that they will always get the better of our union around the negotiating table unless we permanently down tools, impoverishing our insecurely employed comrades, and wait for it to stoke some great awakening. The HEC’s recent call for strike action with full knowledge that it would lead to the withdrawal of proposed Terms of Reference for real, material improvements to working conditions is a case in point: a disappointing act of cynicism and fatalism by the majority factions of the committee that has serious consequences.

I, like my doe-eyed former self, will strike whenever I am told, but I am an optimist, a socialist, and will act on simple faith and principle, even when I secretly know there is no point. People with more moderate views than I will not, and we need the strength and support of those people to face down the greatest crisis our sector has ever seen. I joined UCU Commons because I agree with their values and because they are a welcome voice for productive and strategic action and negotiation. I am standing for election on the HEC to do my part in advancing these goals and values, to work towards building the union and protecting and supporting our most vulnerable members.

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