Aidan Moran

I was brought up by an old school trade unionist who used to tell me bedtime stories about the National Union of Mineworkers (NMU) every night, so the basis of solidarity was drilled into me pretty hard.

However, even with that, when I heard about the upcoming strike being planned, I felt my heart drop. It has been an extremely frustrating past two academic years, with last year being constantly infuriated by Microsoft teams and the previous being dominated by strikes. That socialist upbringing seemed to fade away in the face of genuine bitterness towards the UCU for disrupting my final year at university and holding back the education that I’m going into a ridiculous amount of debt for.

Now of course it was only a few minutes before I remembered that this wasn’t the fault of the staff, and understood that the strike was the only way that our lecturers were able to oppose the miserable positions that they are in.

However, even if you’re not a socialist, supporting the strike is simply more practical than opposing it. There’s a few reasons for this:

Firstly – if we do not want our education to continue being hit by strikes, then we need this strike to be the last. Supporting the establishment will not stop any more action. These strikes aren’t being called because the staff aren’t intimidated enough by the establishment, they’re happening because there are currently very few other options open to them.

If they decide to strike it is because they have decided that the conditions being forced upon them are no longer tolerable. Students’ dismissal of these issues will not make them less tolerable, but what it will do is put the establishment in a stronger position to reject the conditions of the union. If the establishment is forced to back down and concede to their demands, then the union will not need to strike again. If we want a lasting period of academic study with no strikes, we need to put work into making sure that they succeed.

There is also the basic principle that the conditions that our lecturers are currently working under are, at present, unsustainable for them. They are overworked and underpaid. This is no doubt having a severe impact on their mental health. Personally, I would rather be taught by a lecturer who had the time and energy to spend teaching the subject they’re passionate about rather than one who rushes through lesson plans and seminars. If we want a better quality of education, we must fight to make sure these conditions improve by supporting whatever action they decide upon.

The third point is more rooted in the student movement, however I hope those not involved will take notice of it. As students, we have a huge amount of issues to deal with, from housing to mental illness. Opposing the strikes will not make the establishment any more of a friend to us, but if we openly show solidarity with our striking lecturers then we have a large group of well-educated, informed, active individuals who see us as sharing the same struggle. Any campaign we might want to do in the future would benefit massively from having people who know Queen’s University. The union has leverage at Queen’s. If we stand together with them, we both become stronger. If we dismiss them, then we are both in a much weaker position.

Now that doesn’t mean we just sit back. We need to make provisions so that students are less impacted by the strikes and this is something that I am hoping to discuss with the UCU in the next couple of days.

If they decide to strike it is because they have decided that the conditions being forced upon them are no longer tolerable.

If you haven’t watched Pride, then I would recommend watching it – but also apologise for the fact that I’m about to spoil it.

At the start of the film, many of the LGBTQ+ community were reluctant to support the miners in their strike against Thatcher because they had never received any solidarity from the NUM with their own issues. Mark Ashton (a Portrush local) makes the point that they need to be the ones to create that solidarity. By the end of the film, the NUM were the biggest supporters of the LGBTQ+ community within the Labour Party and were key in fighting and beating extremely homophobic laws.

If our lecturers haven’t reached out to us to give us solidarity, then we need to be the ones to take the first step. We need to support their strike.

Aidan Moran is the Queen’s University Belfast Students’ Union part-time environmental officer

If you care about your education then you need to support the UCU strike