This motion was passed at a GUCU Branch meeting on 26/04/2024
This branch notes that:
- Black Lives Matter UK has organised over the last seven years with a developed
anti-racist politics that holds internationalism and abolitionism at its heart. - The Metropolitan Police Service alongside many other police forces across
Britain has been identified as “institutionally racist” by their own Black officers
who have started a boycott over recruitment but also by numerous official and
commissioned reports. - The UK has given over £400 million to the Rwandan government to receive
deported refugees. Even though Rwanda is directly involved in the ongoing
genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo. - Far-right policies have become mainstream and are carried out by the
Conservative government who share platforms with the fascist Italian Prime
Minister.
This branch believes:
- The violence of these far-right policies must be stopped through principled
anti-racist organising which is internationalist in scope. - Sunak’s Rwanda policy is an attack on everyone’s human rights – linking this
struggle with Britain’s complicity with atrocities in the region is critical. - From the discredited Sewell report denying the existence of institutional racism
to malicious and confected media stories about “woke-ism“, there is a concerted
effort to suppress support for radical anti-racist organisations such as Black Lives
Matter UK - It is important to resist the far-right mainstream by supporting a festival that
brings together Black, people of colonised descent and allies together to end
racist structural violence in our communities.
This branch resolves:
- To support Black Lives Matter festival of anti-colonial and abolitionist resistance
on Saturday 13th July 2024 by promoting it to our members, in our region and
across our equalities structures. - Make a solidarity donation of £500 to assist in making this festival a sustainable
event which can happen yearly. - Send at least one delegate from our branch to the festival to report back
- Support regional and national motions to ask for national union affiliation to Black Lives Matter UK.