The following is a short bulletin from a Red Storm Collective member who was involved in the Newcastle University Student-Staff Solidarity Campaign during the 2025 UCU strike:
The UCU recently accepted a deal from the Executive Board (UEB) of the University of Newcastle. This ended the four-month long strike and accompanying student solidarity campaign. The strike saw a national demonstration, open meetings and the biggest picket lines Newcastle University had ever seen.
The strike began in February with the UEB having announced a round of cuts targeting 300 jobs this year and 150 next year. This first day of the strike saw the biggest picket ever on Newcastle’s campus, as well as a march to monument led by Red Storm comrades. From here the union took escalating strike action and the student solidarity campaign kicked off with an open meeting of over one hundred students who met to discuss the strike.
From here, the campaign became a marathon, with management attempting to wait out the union over the months of the strike. In the meantime, many unions came to the picket in solidarity with academic staff and students were a constant presence at the picket. The union made a great effort to present a united front and this paid off. The union accepted a deal to end the strike in May, winning no more redundancies this year or next. The committee also faced the possibility of rebellion over the deal, which allowed management lots of ways to break the agreement.
The strike was a long and hard effort on the part of the union and the student campaign. The committee believe the student campaign was vital to their victory, in showing the university united against the executives. The students faced a lack of division of labour on their side however, causing the length of the campaign to lead to exhaustion of the organisers. This is evidenced by the lack of engagement from the wider student body. There was not time enough to make an effort to connect students and staff and therefore the campaign suffered.
Issues with opportunist elements of the left also presented problems. The allegedly Revolutionary allegedly Communist Party (RCP) were frequently in attendance with their papers, seeking recruits among students despite their insistence that they were not. The legacy of the SWP was also palpable in the campaign with many members of the union, lacking the imagination to strike out from the bounds of what would be a ‘normal’ round of industrial action. The staff campaign was vigorous but dry and stodgy, which contributed to a lack of support for the students outside of the committee and the unusually engaged School of English. In short, the strike was won and won well, however, there was not the space or innovation within the established unions as they currently exist and nobody really knew how to handle the extra-union organising of the students, probably the students most of all.