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.
