Peter Ryley writes to Sally Hunt

This is the text of an email from Peter Ryley of the University of Hull to Sally Hunt, joint general secretary of UCU. I post it with his permission:

Dear Sally Hunt

I was surprised to see an item on your web site urging support for the Stop the War Coalition demonstration in Manchester this coming Saturday and even more disappointed to see that the UCU has affiliated to the Coalition. As someone on the left who opposed the war, I personally find the Coalition to be an extremely dubious organisation consisting mainly of an alliance between the SWP and Islamist organisations, who are hardly friends of academic freedom. I would wearily resign myself to the fact that this is another consequence of the indefatigable energy of SWP activists within our Union, in contrast to those of us on the liberal left, if it were not for something else.

I followed some of the links posted on the UCU web site and was appalled. They led to several items on the killing of Iraqi academics. These were highly partial and suggested that academics were being murdered because of their opposition to the occupation, implying that this was an Iraqi government policy, possibly connived at by the American occupation forces. This is manifestly wholly or partially untrue.

There are many other, more reputable sources. For instance, the American Association for the Advancement of Science comments on its web site, "it is unclear who is doing the killing. Some scientists believe that the majority of the killing is being carried out by the Badr Brigade, the military wing of an Iraqi Shia rebel group that has been in exile in Iran. It is affiliated with a group known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq which worked first to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and is now focused on pushing for the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq."

Whilst Reuters has reported the following:

"Dr Isam Kadhem al-Rawi, head of the Association of University Lecturers and a professor in earth sciences at Baghdad University, said the campaign against Iraq's leading intellectuals was being orchestrated by parties inside and outside the country.

["]He said the motivation was the perceived allegiance of an individual to one particular religious or secular party - the idea being that killing those who supposedly push a particular agenda stops the spread of those ideas."

There are two serious failings by the UCU webmaster here. Firstly, for an academic union to post unchallenged items that would fail any objective test of academic rigour gives me concern. At the very least, authoritative sources question the interpretation of the articles on the web site and it would appear that the murders are not reducible to a single cause.

Secondly, leading members of the Stop the War Coalition have given vocal support to the Iraqi "resistance", acting as apologists and justifying their right to resist the American-led occupation. That means that the UCU is affiliated to an organisation that has implied support for a movement that is involved in the systematic murder of academics, a curious position for an academic union to take.

Of course, there are no links to the reports of the brutal killings by the Taliban of teachers who have opened their schools to girls in Afghanistan.

There is an endless debate on the proper role of Trade Unions in respect of major political controversies and I certainly would not support an isolationist quiescence. In this case, there is a clear interest for an education union in that teachers and academics are currently being systematically murdered. However, the gravity of a situation that leaves educators in fear of their lives means that we have to be scrupulous in the positions we take and most certainly in the information we give our members. I am deeply concerned that this has not been the case in this instance.

Yours Sincerely

Peter Ryley