Dear Vice Chancellor,

I will be writing to you again shortly with a more comprehensive statement of our current position regarding the ULU Review, in particular your recognition of a cross-campus referendum that is currently ongoing. In the meantime, I do hope that sitting at my desk writing this letter to you will not be regarded as engaging in a protest – because of course that would be in breach of my bail conditions.

I am writing today in response to an article recently placed on the University website, entitled ‘ULU – some facts’. The statement is stunningly unprofessional in its tone, and it heartens us to know that the University is feeling the heat. It essentially accuses the Save Your Union campaign of peddling “nonsense”, so I am going to rebut it point by point and in public.

In short, the press release is a pathetic and transparently desperate attempt to sway a debate that the University is losing, and was always bound to lose.

1. You state that ULU is not the representative union for the University’s 120,000 students, and cite our election turnout

This is dangerous and wrong on three levels.

A) Firstly, regardless of elections, ULU is the representative union for the University’s students – of whom there are 120,000 – and you formally recognise us as such. It is true to say that College student unions also represent their students, and that we have a federal relationship with them – but the federal relationship is because it is a representative one. ULU is the only union that represents your students as a whole.

This attitude towards ULU can also be inferred as saying something about how seriously you are taking your responsibilities under the 1994 Education Act. Unions are unions, regardless of turnout – just as governments are governments, regardless of turnout. If I may say so, the number of people voting in your election was infinitely smaller than either ours or the government’s, given that neither you, nor any of your senior managers, nor any of the College heads to whom you are accountable, were meaningfully elected by anyone.

B) The University knows full well – because we have said it publicly and privately to you – that we also regard ULU’s election turnout as in need of improvement. We have on numerous occasions intimated our intention to move towards an integrated voting system, which would give officers of ULU a not dissimilar election turnout to that of some MPs. You also knew full well that it was our intention to expand ULU and push for pan-London representation.

Saying that the decision to abolish ULU is justified by low turnout is like saying you want to burn down a house because you don’t like the colour of a wall.

C) The reason why ULU’s election turnout is attributable to many things. One of the key things that has made it difficult for ULU to gain high turnouts is that until relatively recently, we elected our officers via a delegate model – not by a mass election. Cross campus ballots became necessary when the University made them compulsory. At the same time, the University cut all funding to ULU’s campaigns and representation side, removing staff, more than halving the sabbaticals, and destroying our ability to effectively run mass elections just as we were being asked to do them.

These funding cuts were part of an agenda to undermine ULU dating many years back, of which the current ULU Review is merely the final part.

2. You claim that students were adequately consulted in the Review that resulted in moves to abolish us

This is a mixture between wishful thinking and outright dishonesty. The Review consulted student unions, basically all of whom responded that ULU’s representative capacity was not as good as it could be, despite recent improvements. The Review sought to shoe-horn this evidence down a pre-decided path: the separation of operational from political (this was clearly the direction of travel that I gleamed from yourself and the Chief Operating Officer during my very first meeting with you in November 2012, long before the panel’s deliberations), and the eradication of ULU as an entity.

At no stage did student unions or individual students say that they wanted ULU to cease to exist on the terms that the Review described; they asked that its representation side be improved. In its response to the consultation, ULU addressed this point head on: we asked for more funding for representation side activity to catch up with the situation, on the basis of massively boosting turnout in elections and gradually expanding our membership to cover other institutions.

So it is quite true to say that student unions and a very small number of individual students were asked for input, and that on some points their input was important, the overall trajectory of the ULU Review was never within their control.

This is rather the point: we want to settle the question of ‘what students want’ by asking them directly. You want to settle it by gathering evidence, ignoring what you don’t like, and interpreting what little you can find in such a creative manner that it defies reason in order to do whatever senior managers and College heads – all of whom what their own agendas – happen to think is a good idea at the time.

No student was involved in the move towards closing ULU: no student is a member of the Review Group, the University Board or the Collegiate Council.

3. You claim that elected officers do not run the ULU building

This is painfully ill-informed. ULU sabbaticals have weekly meetings with senior managers at ULU, and regularly instruct staff on a large variety of operational matters and event organising activities. The trustee board – the lead operational body of the union – is chaired by the President, and has a large majority of elected student members.

4. You claim that the services centre might have student input, and cite the Planning Group

Great that you’re considering having students “involved” in running the student centre. But how about actually letting us have control of it? What is the guarantee that the students on the planning group (none of whom were elected, none of whom are democratically accountable, and none of whom have a binding say in what it does) won’t simply be ignored? How will they be appointed? Presumably on the basis of hand-picking?

Surveys are not votes; committee members are not democratic structures.

5. You attack our protests as “ineffective” and dispute our pan-London legitimacy

It is nice to have advice on how to campaign – but it’s puzzling that this “helpful advice” is coming from a University that has no interest in the success of our campaigns on saving the union or winning workers rights. Every management that has ever been presented with a successful campaign has attacked it not on the basis of the arguments –because you cannot win these – but on the dishonest grounds that its tactics are “alienating” or “ineffective”. If they were ineffective, you wouldn’t care about them. Your count of 70 protesters is also amusing: it’s obviously not true (I personally head-counted between 200 and 300), but more importantly, if you actually thought it was that small or insignificant, why would you feel the need to press release an incorrect statistic?

Your statement that NUS is leading on pan-London representation is flat-out not true, and is based on a wilful misunderstanding of the situation. ULU and NUS have both been working on pan-London models, which are gradually moving together – this has been based largely on the initiative and internal pressure of ULU and NUS’s membership in London.  The idea that the ULU Review is a positive outcome for pan-London representation is laughable: no, ULU doesn’t claim to be the pan-London union, but it is very clear that we are playing a crucial role in making one exist. This Review is pulling that rug from under the feet of London students.

6. You attack ULU’s work on supporting workers rights campaigns and call us hypocrites

ULU is now a living wage employer. It was the political intention of ULU to be a living wage employer for many, many years before the University became one in 2011 (and we were heavily involved in the campaign to make universities pay LLW) – but unlike the University, we are not a gigantic and wealthy organisation, largely because of the cuts to funding that have been inflicted on us over the years by University reviews.

ULU is now at the forefront of supporting the 3 Cosas campaign, and we are proud of that: it is fighting for basic rights for staff – sick pay, pensions and holiday pay. The University by contrast is attacking this campaign and refusing to give its staff basic rights. Any management takeover of ULU will leave our staff in your hands, and I think we are right to trust the goodwill and democratic control of students over the charity of the University.

7. You claim that clubs and societies will not be affected

This is contrary to all hard evidence. The Review referred heavily to duplication (largely because it misunderstood what we offer in terms of student activities) and clearly implied that only ‘elite’ clubs would remain.

Conversations with senior University staff since then have made it clear to us that the University would probably move eventually towards a cost neutral outlay on the building: this would require large cuts to expenditure, and clubs and societies are one of the single largest outlays of spend.

The bottom line remains: without democratic student control, we would be leaving activities in the hands of the University’s good will. We have no reason to believe that this is a reliable mechanism, and even if we did, we would have no guarantee of its consistency over years.

8. You claim that job losses will not be incurred

If clubs and societies are cut, jobs are lost – see above.

If representation and campaigns are cut, jobs are lost.

If services are reorganised, outsourced or cut in areas, jobs are lost.

Once again, without democratic student control, we would be leaving activities in the hands of the University’s good will. We have no reason to believe that this is a reliable mechanism, and even if we did, we would have no guarantee of its consistency over years.

9. You claim that we don’t engage in the International Programmes and were unaware of them

This is unbelievable. ULU has a standing member of the Academic Committee programmes, and has done so for a number of years. We attend their graduation ceremonies at the Barbican. Past ULU Presidents have gone on to take jobs directly for the University in order to promote student representation within the Programmes.

10. You claim that the University was not complicit in my arrest

I will not comment directly on my arrest, as I am on police bail. Further investigation may bring things to light in this regard.

But the general record in regards to policing is clear: The University has consistently called in the police on demonstrations, has consistently collaborated with the police, and has stated on record that it is happy to pass video footage to the police. London Student also has testimony from the borough commander that you invited him in.

11.  You claim that the University is not curtailing protest

Then why have we been issued with a letter asking us not to even step foot onto Senate House and protest there? Why are our students being arrested for chalking?

The University is losing arguments in defending indefensible positions, and it basically has only one tool in its armoury: repression. We see through that.

Yours Sincerely,

Michael Chessum

ULU President