Goldsmiths UCU motion in defence of the MA in Black British History

Motion in support of MA Black British History

This motion was passed at our branch meeting on 27/08/2025. Full text below:

Motion in support of MA Black British History

This branch notes that:

a) Offer holders on the MA Black British History received an email on Tuesday 22 July informing them of the suspension of the programme. They were invited to defer their place to 2026/27 entry, switch to MA History or another programme within the college, or withdraw their application. They were encouraged to contact the programme convenor, Kesewa John if they had questions about the programme.

b) The college continues to exacerbate, rather than learn from and implement changes to prevent, unequal outcomes of college processes, which is an institutional failure highlighted by the equalities impact assessment of the transformation programme.

The Programme Convenor was neither informed of the impending suspension of the programme in September prior to the decision being communicated to offer holders, nor included in the decision-making process. They became aware of the suspension only upon receiving a forwarded complaint from an offer holder posted on social media.

The college has failed to provide an adequate account for this failure. Explanations have ranged from admissions for 2025 were in fact suspended in September 2024 based on admission trends then, to application numbers were too low to make the course viable in summer 2025.

This failure is merely the latest attack on a young but high-profile programme. Thousands of people signed a petition in support of the programme when it was threatened with closure in summer 2024 when the convenor was selected for redundancy as part of the Transformation Programme.

This programme’s content, and associated staff and students meet extraordinarily well Goldsmiths’ commitment to curriculum decolonisation, and the institution’s own race justice strategy, and post-GARA commitments. Yet its staff have been repeatedly exposed to and targeted for redundancy processes. Given it has only one compulsory module, which can be taken by students on MRes History, running the programme with no minimum requirement requires less resource than recruiting and cancelling at the last minute.

The college has failed to engage with a meaningful review of the programme with the programme convenor. It has steadfastly refused to accept that this is a programme which launched just before the pandemic, and is housed in a department whose academic staff numbers have been reduced from over 20 to approximately 7 in two rounds of redundancies in less than 5 years. These external factors have not reduced the public interest in the course.

The physical and mental health of tutors on this course has historically been severely impacted by the disproportionate allocation of resources to some subject areas and programmes. Namely under-resourcing, opaque workload allocation, and the overburdening of minoritised staff. This is a serious health and safety issue compounded by ineffective action on equalities issues already identified.

The ongoing failure of College to take positive and meaningful steps on equality and diversity issues that featured heavily in the ACAS-mediated negotiations of August 2024, and the threats the Transformation Programme posed to the future of vital and developing areas of pedagogy and research – including postgraduate pathways such as MA Black British History, MA Black British Literature, and MA Queer History – were seen as being very serious and necessitated the inclusion in the 2024 Dispute Resolution Agreement of a commitment on the part of College ‘To work with GUCU on delivering mutually-agreed equality and diversity issues’.

The dispute resolution agreement committed Goldsmiths “To work with GUCU on delivering mutually-agreed equality and diversity issues”. However, in reality, elected GUCU officers and members of POD have met only once to progress this commitment, and it has not been possible to agree Terms of Reference to undertake this work.

The lack of engagement from the employer around the aforementioned equalities commitment, particularly in the context of the decision not to run MA Black British History without consultation with relevant staff and GUCU, constitutes a breach of the previous dispute resolution agreement. This has been communicated to the College by the UCU regional official.

This branch believes that:

College’s treatment of the staff, students and scholars, and subject area of MA Black British History outlined above is symptomatic of the current chaotic and incompetent management at Goldsmiths and encapsulates its ongoing failure on equalities, and specifically on race justice. A failure which is embodied by the selection and redundancy of the previous chair of Goldsmiths’ Race Justice Board.

College’s breach of the previous dispute resolution agreement is unacceptable and must not be permitted to stand.

It is unacceptable for programmes to be closed without meaningful dialogue with convenors and tutors. At the last minute or generally.

The manner in which the convenor discovered the suspension of admission is outrageous. That no explanation could be offered for weeks, no meeting with the convenor possible until September and applicants have been given misleading information is indefensible.

The failure to understand the reality behind the numbers (two new applicants does not equal two students on the course’s only mandatory module), suggests that decisions to close programmes are being taken without any attempt to understand how they work in practice.

This case is another example of managerial power-grabbing.

The manner of suspension of MA Black British History enables redundancies in the near future. Elected GUCU officers have a mandate from the branch to resist compulsory redundancies; if no agreement is reached, the branch will be in a position to move into dispute with support from the regional office and the national union.

This branch resolves to:

Call on College to resolve the breach of the 2024 dispute resolution agreement and avoid further escalation by:

Guarantee the MA Black British History will be run in 2026/27 immediately.

Exempting this programme from numerical student targets for a period of five years.

Committing to working meaningfully with the convenor of the MA to secure the future of this subject area at Goldsmiths, and acknowledging and supporting the ecosystem developed for Black history and historians at Goldsmiths.

Committing to resourcing the growth of this subject area in conjunction with similar work and initiatives across Goldsmiths.

Ensuring that workloads are assigned which reflect the demands of rebuilding and running a high profile programme.

Ensuring that DRT is attributed to scholars with high admin demands; it is unacceptable for staff to serve for five years without any DRT ever taken.

Making available to UCU a list of all programmes where a decision has been made for them not to run in the coming academic year. This list is of great significance to us when understood in terms of the current cost-saving measures underway, and the employer’s continued refusal to commit to no compulsory redundancies for the next academic year.

Meeting as a matter of urgency with GUCU representatives to discuss how College will demonstrate its commitment to the terms of the dispute resolution agreement.

Goldsmiths University and College Union

© 2025

Marxism festival 2025

Marxism 2025 is a festival of socialist ideas taking place from Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 July in Shoreditch, London. It brings together meetings, speakers, debates, live music, a culture tent, film screenings, and more.

 Check out the timetable for yourself and other info here: 

https://socialistworker.co.uk/marxismfestival/

Highlights for socialist historians include:

Andrew Feinstein on the long struggle for justice from South Africa to Palestine 

Raquel Varela on the Portuguese Communist Party and the 1974 Revolution (book launch) 

Mark Krantz on the fight against Mosley and the British Union of Fascists 

Ilan Pappe on is Zionism finished? 

Martin Empson on the German Peasant's War 500 years on (book launch)

Kehinde Andrews in conversation on the legacy of Malcolm X (book launch)

Geoff Brown on A People's History of the Anti Nazi League (book launch) 

Judy Cox and Charlie Kimber on the British general strike of 1926 

Huw Williams on 50 years since the defeat of the US in Vietnam  

Plus over 100 other meetings inc on Frantz Fanon; slavery, reparations and empire; resisting imperialist feminism; art and culture after the Russian Revolution, The Battle of Algiers film; the development of women's oppression - worth checking out the timetable for yourself!

London Socialist Historians Group summer term seminars

 

London Socialist Historians Seminars

Summer Term 2025. Exploring People’s Histories

With a late Easter we have a limited summer term programme and both seminars are on Zoom. As ever seminars are free to attend but booking at the link to the Institute of Historical Research website is essential

Monday May 19^th 5.30pm Laura Hadland, 'Beer Festival Evolution, a history: shaping the British beer landscape'

Book: Beer Festival Evolution, a history: shaping the British beer landscape | Institute of Historical Research

Monday June 2^nd 5.30pm Tony Collins, 'Rethinking the roots of British Communism'

Book: Rethinking the roots of British Communism | Institute of Historical Research

The two seminar subjects appear unlinked, but quite the reverse.

While the Communist Party founded 105 years ago in 1920 had a strong temperance element to it, a founding member was Raymond Postgate. Some decades later, in 1951 Postgate was the founding Editor of the Good Food Guide designed promote decent eating out experiences for a general audience.

Laura Hadland’s book on the history of Beer Festivals reflects a similar movement in beer. A desire to promote good beer over mass produced alternatives

contact LSHG Organiser Dr Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

Obituary - Marika Sherwood (1937-2025)

Marika Sherwood 1937-2025. Historian determined to make sure that Black Lives do Matter in British History

Marika Sherwood who has sadly died at 87 on 16^th February 2025 was a co-founder of the Black and Asian Studies Association.

She was for many years a key researcher into the history of the slave trade, slavery and on a wider front Black History.

She spoke on a number of occasions to the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research. Her final contribution was on October 4^th 2021:

''George Orwell told us that ‘the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their own history’. What has been obliterated from ‘our’ history here in the UK and in what used to be our colonies?''

She was involved in a (too) long running project under my control to look at gaps and issues in E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class and I worked with her closely on that. Hopefully her contribution on Thompson’s failure to look at the struggles of black people in Britain in the first decades of the nineteenth century will see the light of day.

In June 2020 she wrote to then Tory Minister Gavin Williamson on the subject of black history and black studies

''As I trust you now agree that Black Lives Matter, it is more important than ever to change the school curricula. How would you feel if you attended school from the age of 4 till 18, and you just did not exist in any section of the school curricula! ‘English’ courses should include novels and poetry by Black authors, from Africa, the Caribbean and Britain. As Art courses should include the work of Black artists, whether these are paintings, sculptures, drawing/carvings. History courses should include not only the presence of peoples of African origin/descent in the UK since they arrived as a regiment within the conquering Roman army, but also the history of Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans.

If you don’t exist in the school curricula, wouldn’t you join a gang to become ‘somebody’? And as probably someone in your family has been at least once subject to ‘stop & search’, and probably experienced some level of racial discrimination while searching for work and at work, how would you feel towards the ‘mother country’?

We also need Black Studies departments in our universities with funding for research, as the history of Africans (and Indians) here has generally been ignored. (Many of the published works are by non-academics like me.) And our Teacher Training colleges/institutions need to include this in their curricula, which probably means training their lecturers – as well as the existing school teachers. Equally important is the need to educate the police!

Please, Mr Williamson, include the above in your response to Black Lives Matter.

I must conclude by telling you that when with a colleague I founded the Black & Asian Studies Association in 1991, this necessary change in the curricula and teacher training was one of the issues we took up. Even met with one Secretary of State many years ago. But got nowhere.''

Marika Sherwood was an essential voice in modern British history and her work needs to be continued by others.

Keith Flett

Blood, Sweat and Tears - Photographs from the Great Miners Strike 1984-85

 

https://minersstrike.com/

Key images from one of Britain's most significant workers' struggles

The striking communities withstood unprecedented police brutality and travesties of justice in the courts. They endured poverty, hunger and media smears, and they held firm for a year.

The photographs in this book document that struggle. The men and women who captured these images decided from the start of the strike which side they were on.

They could have stood behind police lines and provided images that supported the government and mainstream media’s attempt to demonise the miners, their families and supporters as thugs, ‘bully boys’ or dinosaurs from a bygone age. The alternative was to stand with the miners on the picket lines and live with the strikers in their communities and record the reality of what was really going on.

The photographs in this book not only captured the reality of the strike but played an important role in encouraging the solidarity movement that sustained the action for a year.

The book brings together images, some of which have not been published in 40 years, and some which have never been published before. Despite the passage of time, these photographs remain relevant. They are not some gritty artifacts of a bygone era, to be remembered via an uncredited social media post or admired in a gallery.

They were taken by photographers who were absolutely committed to the miners, and their publication today is aimed at inspiring a new generation of activists to fight back and win.

Available in a limited edition (144 pages, 22×28 cms) from https://minersstrike.com/ or Bookmarks Bookshop in London 

Edited to add: 

London Socialist Historians Group seminar with Mike Simons: 

Monday 3rd March 17.30 hrs. Free on Zoom but please book for the link

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/blood-sweat-tears-forty-years-end-great-miners-strike-can-old-images-give-us-new-insights

To mark the anniversary of the end of the 1984-85 miners’ strike we are joined by Mike Simons, a journalist and film maker who covered the strike 40 years ago and has tried to keep the memory of what happened alive in the years since.

Forty years ago Mike helped produce  Blood Sweat & Tears, a photo book about the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Ten years ago Ihe helped produce Still the Enemy Within, the award winning film about the 1984-85 strike. He had hoped to reprint Blood Sweat & Tears back in 2014. It didn’t happen. Ten years on, we finally have an expanded edition of what we produced in 1985. 

This book features many of the images used in the film Still the Enemy Within and showcases images that have never been seen in public before or that have not been published for 40 years. 

Organised by the London Socialist Historians Group

Contact Dr Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

Obituary - Tim Evans (1949-2024)

 The London Socialist Historians Group were sad to learn of the passing of revolutionary, poet, and artist Tim Evans who contributed to the LSHG Newsletter around the centenary of Llanelli 1911 in a piece on "A dim spectre of revolution hung over Britain":  The Great Unrest in a Welsh Town - and was involved in helping commemorate this strike locally - see here for more: 

https://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/2010/07/tim-evans-on-llanelli-1911.html

https://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/2011/05/llanelli-1911-by-tim-evans.html

Below is an obituary from Swansea SWP remembering Tim Evans: 

https://socialistworker.co.uk/obituaries/tim-evans-1949-2024/

The last few years have produced many disappointing, worrying and indeed sickening developments, such as Israel’s genocide.

In the 1960s and 70s it’s doubtful whether Tim Evans, who died over the holidays, imagined that the first quarter of the 21st century would turn out this way.

Nevertheless, Tim never gave up his optimism and his drive to fight for a better world or his desire to convince others to do the same.

The last few months have been particularly difficult for Tim because there was nothing his immense drive and passion could do to stop the advance of a human disease.

Like many of his generation, Tim was inspired by the counter-culture of the 1960s. He had an abundance of talent, including the ability to draw from a very early age.

For him, music, literature, poems and art were not just for enjoyment, but were tools to change the world.

Tim travelled quickly through individual action to discover Marxism, particularly the tradition of socialism from below and the Russian Revolution.

He was convinced that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was trying to bring together revolutionaries in the same way and that Lenin and the Bolsheviks did. He was inspired by his friend and comrade John Molyneux. 

Tim, in later life, really pushed his artistic contribution to the struggle. Teaming up with his partner Rhoda Thomas, he helped to create the Live Poets Society, a radical poetry group in Swansea that gave a voice to the oppressed.

At the same time, he and Rhoda injected life into the campaign to remember the Llanelli rail workers battle of 1911.

He wrote articles for the International Socialism journal on Wales, and specifically on syndicalism.

As well as all this, Tim was committed to working with as many people as possible against racism and war and for solidarity for those fighting this rotten system. 

Tim spoke and recited at many events, protests, meeting and demos—he was known as the speaker who didn’t need a megaphone.

Eloquent and inspiring, he has touched the lives of many and will continue to do so for years to come. Our love and solidarity to Rhoda and his son Iestyn.

Tim’s funeral will take place on Monday 27 January, 1pm at Llanelli Crematorium Penprys Rd, Dafen, Llanelli SA14 8BX

LSHG seminar - Monday 20 January - Tony Collins, Rethinking the Roots of British Communism

LSHG Seminar Monday 20th January 2025 In Person, Room 301 Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1. 5.30pm. In person. Please book at this link as space is limited: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/raising-red-flag-rethinking-roots-british-communism

Tony Collins will talk about his new book which re-examines the rich and complex roots of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Using a range of original sources, he will investigate how the young CPGB was shaped by the experiences of the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist Labour Party and the Workers’ Socialist Federation during the years of war, intense class struggle, and the rise of Labourism before 1920. Rather than being an imposition from Moscow, he will argue that the CPGB was an organic development of the British left, something that was both its strength and its weakness.’

The seminar is organised by the Socialist History Seminar at the IHR and the London Socialist Historians Group. Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social