The UCU Left is a national organisation of University and College Union activists. It is committed to ensuring that the new union has a democratic structure through which members can determine policy, and elected officers and professional officials can be held accountable. It seeks to defend educational equality, and to oppose the consequences of neo-liberal marketisation. It is opposed to all forms of racism, sexism, oppression and imperialism.
SEC Election - Ordinary Member Seats

Marian Hersh (Glasgow University)

Election Address

In standing for SEC as part of UCU Left, I am making a serious commitment to all members in Scotland to:

  • Work very hard on your behalf.


  • Engage with and listen to you and make sure that your voice is heard in UCU.


  • Maintain and further develop the specifically Scottish features of HE.


  • Use my knowledge, experience, energy and enthusiasm to work to significantly improve your pay and conditions, for an improved and better funded HE system and for a union which actively engages in other struggles and puts equality issues at the centre of its activities.

I am standing for a union that will:

  • Fight to maintain the distinctive and positive features of the Scottish education system. We have a number of great traditions in Scottish HE that we must fight to maintain and improve on. They include a tradition of greater access and inclusiveness to working class and minority group students and a broader based approach to education. Both historically and recently we have an impressive research record and a very strong link between teaching and research. We have managed to resist the imposition of top-up fees and to some extent to resist the imposition of fees in general.


  • Maintain and strengthen the voice of Scottish members and a strong focus of UCU activity in Scotland, actively engages with all of them and increases the proportion of UCU events taking place in Scotland.


  • Put equal opportunity issues at the centre of its work, both as they are vitally important in themselves and because fighting for the rights of women and minority groups benefits all workers.


  • Be actively involved in campaigns against war, for the rights of refugees and actively engaged in solidarity
    with workers’ and other struggles both nationally and internationally.


  • Start building now for concerted (industrial) action when the current agreement ends and commits to continuing this action until a ballot of the membership votes for it to end.


  • Campaign for a doubling of government funding to higher education to be financed by getting rid of trident and getting out of Iraq.


  • Upgrade the hourly paid campaign and the campaign to bring all short term contract staff onto permanent contracts.


  • Engage with the wider community, including students, to defend and improve higher education.


  • Carry through hard-hitting campaigns against department closures, subject losses and the various euphemistically named exercises to reduce staff numbers.


  • Campaign to abolish institutional discrimination and the culture of blame.


  • Step up campaigns against bullying and harassment and stress.


  • Recognise that, like the rest of society the union itself is affected by prejudice and challenges this without ascribing blame so that all minority group members can participate fully and be properly represented.

Biographical information including service to the union
I am a Senior Lecturer in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Glasgow University, and have a long history of activism.

UCU involvement at national and branch level:

  • National Women’s Committee 1998-2002, 2003-5

  • Convenor of Women’s Committee and Co-Editor of Equalise 2000-2002

  • Non-voting women’s representative on NEC 2000-2

  • Women’s representative on Glasgow Committee

  • AUT & Proud

  • Council delegate most years since 1998

  • Transitional Equality Committee


STUC and TUC involvement:

  • TUC Women’s Conference 2000

  • STUC Women’s Conference 1988, 1999

  • TUC LGB(T) Conference 1998, 2005

  • STUC GLBT Workers’ Forum

  • STUC Action Research Project on involving women and LGBT members in union activities

Activities outside UCU include the following: One of founders of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp; Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees; Stop the War; SSP; Amnesty International; JAM-74 (anti motorway); Inclusion Scotland (Disability); Organising translation of STUC anti-racist leaflets into community languages; SCND; GoBike!; Vegan Society


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