Day 5

First day of sunshine for our 2019 strike, and what a beautiful day it was! The ground may have been frozen (replacing muddy ground) but our thoughts were to the warming up of the Earth, as this strike day coincided with a climate strike in town.

We danced and moved around to keep warm all morning, keeping with the tradition of joyful pickets!

Leaflet "solidarity with the global climate strike: today, in thousands of cities around the world, young people are walking out of schools and colleges to demand urgent action on the climate and ecological emergency. UCU stands with the climate strikes, and acknowledges that the universities' pension scheme (USS) is part of the problem. Over £1.1 billion of USS funds (our money!) is invested in fossil fuels, airports and airlines. Lancaster University also has investments in fossil fuels, and LU is not doing enough to reduce its own carbon emissions. It's time to stop funding the climate crisis!

We handed out new leaflets to inform people of the various climate issues entangled with both our pension fund and Lancaster University (which are both heavily invested in fossil fuels).

We were visited by Caroline Jackson, Green Party candidate for the Lancaster and Fleetwood constituency, who noted the world seemed to be ‘full of protests’ and congratulated students who had joined us on picket lined – adding that they might well have to stand for injustice their entire adult life!

Emily and Caroline Jackson addressing the picket about climate change

We also received the visit, and an address, of Eugene Doherty, president of the Trades Council, and member of the National Education Union. Eugene cheekily congratulated us on breaking the law (which states that pickets can only be formed of six members maximum which we largely surpass every strike day!). He also noted that this was the happiest picket he’d ever visited – something that seems to be shared across the country. We do feel anger, but we also celebrate moments where we can create spaces to form new relationships with each other and students and imagine new ways of being in the University.

Finally we received the visit of Marie Monaghan, UCU regional support officer. Thank you to all three for visiting and supporting our efforts!

group photo of all the picketers at end of day in the sunshine

At 11am some of us joined students at Market Square for the climate strike.

Nils and Emily in town standing in front of a 'climate action now' banner — picture © Emily Heath

We wrote and shared more poetry, including this very moving Sonnet by Emma perfectly capturing the themes of pickets and our feelings:

A sonnet for our universities:
Fed up, burnt out, we walked out
activated, a mass teach out -
to resist racism, bullying, commercialisation.
Sacrificed our wage for a fair pension -
the right to pay equality; against the squeeze of deflation. For a trapped generation,
ending the scrooge of casualisation;
we want education, not exploitation.

We love our job, not our employer -
their policies make us sick.
Our picket is a classroom, don't cross it.
Learn to protest musically in a foreign language.
Reject this world of university wankings.
Stand in solidarity - here we go again. — poem and picture © Emma

In the afternoon, we gathered for a teach out on ‘resistance to financing the climate crisis’, highlighting the need for intergenerational investment and divestment from fossil fuels of our pension and Lancaster University. Emily Heath reminded us of a petition urging Lancaster University to declare and respond to the climate emergency. Please sign this by 8th December.

Finally, at national level, UCU wrote this excellent recap of the week

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