Author: Scott

Email sent to members on Monday 15th June 2026. Zoom link removed for security.

Dear UCU members,

First, please remember today’s members’ meeting at 1 p.m. The Zoom details are as follows:

Second as part of our campaign to defend jobs and working conditions at the University of Nottingham, we will be sending regular emails, authored by different UCU members, examining key elements of management’s restructuring plans. Today we provide encouragement to those of us, who bravely take action even if others around them don’t. Feel free to share this post with non-UCU members in your area.

We know that the MAB is biting. There is significantly more participation across the university than at any other moment in the past. And yet, some areas are still less presented. It becomes so hard to keep going when one feels isolated. Today’s post, a song by the Bengali Poet and Noble Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, called ‘Ekla Cholo Re’, is dedicated to those courageous UCU members who participate in the MAB, even if others around them don’t.

‘Ekla Cholo Re’ literally translates as ‘Walk alone’. It was composed in 1905 during an uprising in colonised Bengal, when the British tried to divide the Bengali-speaking province to dilute the strength of the anti-colonial movement in the province. Generations of protest movements have taken inspiration from it, and it has been translated into almost every Indian language, as it captures so well the ethical/moral/political determination to walk on alone, even if not many join your call.

Email sent to members on Tuesday 9th June 2026. Zoom link removed.

Dear members,

Next Monday 15th June at 1pm we will hold a branch meeting for all members on Zoom (link below). The agenda for the meeting is to discuss the progress of our dispute, and to vote on the attached motion submitted by a member. 

The widespread and sustained commitment to the Marking and Assessment Boycott we are seeing reported is hugely significant and a certain cause of considerable disruption. Whilst the university has elected to plan for the use of contingency regulations to attempt to mitigate the MAB, it is important for members to remember this is not a simple throwing of a switch, but a complex and time-consuming process that gets more complex and more time consuming the greater the participation in the MAB. In other words, your action continues to be impactful. Keep going everyone, as this is how we win! 

In anticipation of our branch meeting next week and conscious of the impact of our united action through the MAB and strikes, your branch committee have this week written to the Vice Chancellor to once again emphasise that we are ready to negotiate. If management agree to talk and offer anything meaningful, the committee will of course bring this to members’ meeting next week for your consideration. If they do not make an offer, there will be an update of what we have proposed and what steps we can take to up the pressure on management to get serious and start talking. 

In solidarity,