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.
NEC Election - UK-Elected HE Seats

Malcolm Povey (University of Leeds)

Election Address

In defense of education
Few if any of us became educationalists and researchers to be business people. Yet we find our establishments increasingly dedicated to ‘processing’ students from paying the fee to qualification. Instead of questioning ideas and teaching students how to hold them up to scrutiny, we are increasingly expected to ‘deliver’ the high-level training and corporate-certified apprenticeships that employers say they want but refuse to pay for.

I look forward to campaigning with colleagues in the pre-92, post-92, and FE sectors for a united fight to defend education, academic freedom, collegiality, jobs, pay, and conditions of service against the ravages of a government that is more committed to Trident and unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than to the education of our children. The ‘modest’ £25billion (excluding running costs) claimed by Tony Blair for his latest project, the nuclear terror weapon Trident II, could give Britain the best education and health systems in the world.


My experience
I have been an active member of the AUT/UCU since the 1970s and am proud to have long campaigned for the unification of AUT and NATFHE. As Press Officer of Leeds University UCU, I played a prominent role in our 2003 and 2006 pay disputes. I am therefore very happy to accept the nomination to stand for a seat on the National Executive Committee of our new and more powerful union.

Latterly I edited the “University Worker” newssheet that campaigned within the AUT for a fighting union, taking up wider issues such as the government’s immigration policy, particularly as it was applied in Higher Education. We opposed the 2003 pay settlement that introduced the framework agreement we are all now struggling with and the 2006-pay deal. University Worker also fought for the support by AUT of Stop the War and UNITE against fascism.


A positive alternative
A strong and vibrant left in our union can help to reclaim the alternative vision of education as a social good, not a set of ‘business deliverables’. If elected I will fight to place education and research at the heart of tertiary education in Britain and will continue to fight to win the pay and conditions UCU members deserve.

In the past, both Tory and Labour governments have been able to divide staff on the basis that ‘there is no alternative’. The UCU needs to offer an alternative vision of education, opposed to the crass business-oriented ‘vision’ of education adopted by governments and employers over the last two decades. As a scientist I watch with dismay as the Labour Government’s business oriented approach to Higher Education destroys science departments. I am in favour of the UCU adopting a more proactive approach to the support of whistle blowers such as Aubrey Blumsohn.

As a member of Respect and the UCU Left, I am in favour of a UCU political fund democratically controlled by its members as a necessary condition for the effective defence of our jobs and conditions of work.


Biographical information including service to the union
Professor of Food Physics at Leeds University, my academic work is summarised at www.food.leeds.ac.uk/mp.htm.

A trade union member for over forty years, I have been a member of the International Socialists and subsequently Socialist Workers Party since 1974; as such I have campaigned throughout my working life for human liberation and a world free of war.

I joined AUT when it affiliated to the TUC in the late 70s, prior to that I was a member of ASTMS (Now AMICUS). I believe democracy from the bottom up is essential for healthy trade unionism.

I have been a member of Leeds University UCU committee for very many years and a longstanding conference delegate. I am currently Press Officer and newsletter editor and played a leading role in the 2003 and 2006 pay disputes.


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