Last week, the University and College Union finished the business of its 2018 Congress, which had ended early in a dispute over whether to consider motions critical of the general secretary, Sally Hunt.��One, from Exeter University UCU, called on congress to demand that she go; a��second, from King’s College London UCU, moved to “censure” the general��secretary, though with no demand that she resign.��

Congress delegates withdrew the Exeter motion and passed the King’s College motion. Far��from the fight between factions��that had been predicted, congress dealt��efficiently and respectfully with the two contentious motions and��moved on to deal with the rest of the policymaking business.��

There was no sense, however, that the tensions��that led to the motions��being brought have been completely resolved, only that it will take��more than two motions to settle matters.��These tensions came to a head at the end of this year’s strike over the USS pension scheme. It is too early to tell what the outcome of��the strike is for USS, but we can begin to delineate some contours of��the outcome for UCU,��after��a summer of debate between and within��the union’s five or so factions.��

The argument about whether UCU should��have put the employers’ offer to a ballot of members became the old��argument about the role of the full-time officials, of the elected��national leadership and of the rank and file activists at branch��level. It’s an argument often framed in terms of “democracy” versus “bureaucratisation”.��

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Members and branch officers have a long-held��worry about being led to the top of the hill and marched back down��again, which resurfaced during the USS dispute. This time we managed��14 days of all-out strike, unique in our union’s history, and��may have secured defined benefit pensions for the foreseeable��future.

The debate��during the summer centred on the role of the general��secretary in the decision to put the employers’ offer to members in a��consultative ballot and effectively end the dispute.��The strike has been acknowledged as successful, in winning concessions from the��employers and in the effect it had on the membership, which has��emerged from the dispute with a sense of its own strength and with a��sense that much more is up for grabs: the self-organised autonomous��groups��that came together on picket lines and elsewhere to discuss the dispute very quickly moved beyond bread and butter issues and on��to questions��about governance, marketisation and the purpose of higher��education.��

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They also turned their gaze inwards to look at how our��union is run. What has been missed is the role of the national��leadership in the strike.��As the Daily Mail and The Times breathlessly reported, UCU national��officials planned the dispute. A valid complaint about our previous��pay disputes was that we did not have a strategy beyond a few days of��action and that we backed down early. Given the stakes – the loss of��any meaningful pension – the gamble of a 14-day strike was��justified, but it was nonetheless a gamble. It paid off. The strike��increased in size��during the 14 days, as more university staff��joined it.��

The national strategy worked: the employers were rebuffed��once and the concessions they made to end the strikes are leading to��the collapse of their claims about the scheme’s valuation.

The outcome of the dispute within UCU has been the formation of new��factions debating what our union should look like, but no one group��has been able to set the terms of the debate. The old dogmas of the��union’s left and right are no guide on this ground: the right were��wrong to think that members would not have the stomach for a long��strike; the left were wrong to think that the leadership would never��propose it. In the words of one official, we are in the unprecedented��position of having “brave branches and a brave centre”.����

If the centre trusts the branches, we might see more strikes on the scale of the USS��dispute. If branches demand action from the centre, they risk getting��what they want.

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The outcome of the ballot on industrial action over pay, announced on��Monday, offers no support to any dogma. The turnout was higher than��for any previous ballot on pay, but it did not reach the required 50 per cent in��the vast majority of branches, even though there was a large majority��of votes in favour of action.��

There is greater militancy and willingness to strike, especially in branches��that struck over USS,��but not enough to reach the threshold set in the anti-union��legislation. The implications of the ballot for debates inside the��union should start to become clear after the special conferences to be��held in Manchester on 7 November, but for now nobody knows anything.

Michael Carley is a member of UCU’s national executive committee and president of the University of Bath branch of UCU. He writes here in a��personal capacity.