This thought-provoking letter and additional documents got me to thinking which is nearly always a bad thing. Firstly, I wondered why the second most important executive at the University such as Registrar Dr Graves would write directly to the Information Commissioner? Was it to add a certain authoritativeness to the University's case?
The accursed spot
Secondly, what was a 'blog spot'? My mind was pregnant with potentialities and in the eye of this mind, I pictured the aged hands of one-time dot-commers; where once lay unblemished skin stretched taught over long spindle-fingers, now in their forced retirement the rear-hand epidermis portrayed corruption, being highly barky and casually cankerous. Was it now so remarkably mottled with a myriad of brown nicotine-like stains, that innocent passers-by would put it down to prolonged exposure to low resolution reruns of Star Trek TNG on Virgin, overuse of unseasoned willow dowsing sticks and post-euphoric forms of victimless self abuse? But maybe the person who in professional terms is immediately subordinate to the Vice Chancellor was onto something? Did the facts and evidence confirm his claims?
A bell-end?
A 'wider campaign' must involve more than one person or it wouldn't be wide. It also has to not be narrow. His words '
former student and employee...' clanged around an empty cranial cavity like the harsh sound emitted by a misanthropic bell-end. It's bugger-luck that studying and teaching at Salford for a combined ten years has inevitably brought me into contact with more than one person. I blame the way universities are structured for this. As an eager undergraduate student, I found the possibility of regular zero-on-one kind of seminars had the potential to be remarkably convenient for a member of the teaching staff, but might ultimately lack educational value for a fledgling alleged vexatious requester. What's more, later, as a lecturer, it seemed however much I tried to avoid lecturing and teaching students they would always show up in the lecture theatres and seminar rooms demanding knowledge transference. There wasn't much I could do as I was contractually obliged to interact with them on a customer-service provider basis for which I was handsomely remunerated with money and a shared desk in an office on loan from someone on maternity leave.
Obsessed
Was there a deeper significance which on the eleventh reading I'd missed? Could it be that the very act of fulfilling my contractual duties almost fatalistically led to my involvement in this alleged '
wider obsessive campaign'? The evidence seemed to point that way. After all, my contract did say I was allowed to join a trade union. So I did. And being an active advocate of trade unions and having immersed myself within an academic trade union as a union rep at Salford, I found that despite my best endeavours, I kept coming into contact with sensient beings referred to in anthropological circles as 'colleagues', who could stand upright, sported opposable thumbs, could formulate rudimentary sounds into intelligible words, and produce within the dome-shaped thing located on the their necker-bones, abstract concepts. They also produced complaints. I'm laying my cards on the table here. I hadn't banked on this. At the outset, prior to joining the UCU, I did consider the alternative: combining by myself into an organisation with a membership ceiling of one. It wasn't long before I surmised that the utility of such an organisation would be severely hampered when it came to collective bargaining, and my language would regress.
The Sod's Law of trade unionism
I was worried that my continuing membership of the UCU might work against me in any future appeal. I was also angry with the trade union movement as a whole, particularly the
Tolpuddle Martyrs. It's Sod's Law that trade unions campaign for and against things. The last thing I wanted when I joined the UCU, was to be a member of a trade union that actively fought for jobs and better working conditions. As an hourly paid part-timer on a yearly renewable contract, I was more than happy with not knowing if I was going to have a job come the new academic year. In my own mind, my membership wasn't premised on joining in acts of solidarity with other members with a common aim, but for the potential of singular actions of forlorn solitude. Any doubts I had were assuaged when I realised I would as a member, be entitled to take an active role in plying a bank account not of my own with my monthly subscriptions. All this and heaven too! Yet did I, by default, and through no fault of my own, become an unwitting campaigner for and against things? Could Dr Graves words be construed by a reasonable person and the IC to mean that my trade union activities were considered to be part of this 'obsessive campaign'.
Mea cuppa?
My union opposed the Project Headroom job cuts. By default and because of something called
'trade union democracy', so did I. Members of my union (also know as 'university staff') also helped organise and participated in demonstrations against job cuts. So did I. I was assured at the time that even if a senior manager read the out 1714 Riot Act from a hastily erected balcony on the first floor of the Ol' Fire Station, it was unlikely to carry much weight in a criminal court and wouldn't be acted upon by a draggle of pissed-up yet eager sabre-rattling yeomanry on horseback. Besides, we'd been assured that the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteed our right to freedom of speech and assembly. Moreover, as academics, we were allowed to drink tea, and speak out without fear of losing our jobs or privileges, weren't we? That's what it said in the University's Royal Charter.* Various UCU members of staff spoke at protests, wrote to the press locally, regionally and nationally, and spoke and wrote to councillors and MPs about the job cuts and other matters. I wondered if their names lay under the blacked-out sections on these heavily censored documents? What would the UCU have to say about this?
Invoking clarity
The impression I got from reading his letter to the IC was that Graves seemed to frown heavily on my involvement in such things. Would it not have been better if it simply stipulated in my contract precisely what I was allowed to do within my trade union and specify in what manner I could engage with liberal democratic process with a pen? It's no good the European Court of Human Rights handing down judgements that state that academics have the
'freedom to express their opinion about the institution or system in which they work' and can
'distribute knowledge and truth without restriction...' (3). Domestic UK contract law trumps the European Court of Human Rights every time when it comes to matters of Human Rights. It made me seriously consider voting UKIP at the next general election.
The width of a squared circle
But that wasn't all. Graves' words regarding student demonstrations also made me critically reevaluate what I'd been teaching international students for two and a half years. After all, many of them protested in my defence and organised a petition among their fellow students and staff after I'd been suspended in May 2009? Was I guilty of slipping it in through the back door?
Consider the evidence: I'd actively exposed them to a working knowledge of the Chartist movement and the wider campaigns for democracy between 1838-48. I'd plied them with a deep knowledge of the campaign against the tax on knowledge also known as the War of the Unstamped Press. Some may have become heady on the Womens' movement for emancipation and enfranchisement. How often did I and these young seekers of knowledge engage with the popular anti-fascist movements against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, the US Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the anti-colonial movements in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian Sub-Continent, the social movements that recently exploded across Latin America, and imporantly the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Had my lectures on the Solidarity movement in Poland, the Hungarian and Czechslovakian Uprisings, the revolutionary movement in Iran which overthrew the US backed Shah, the Palestinian movement for liberation, the anti-Iraq War movements and the social movements that swept the former Stalinist states in Eastern Europe, been a bridge too far?
More importantly, did the evidence submitted by the University to the IC include photocopies of front pages from the Chartists' Northern Star and an A4 sized sample of the Peoples' Charter? Had my lecture notes been included? I held my breath as I searched the bundles of documents once more for a copy of my module outline. I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't there.
Off with his buttock
The Registrar appears to make a compelling case. Words such as
'amusing',
'pernicious', '
unrelenting', '
very long', '
sully' and '
ridiculed' certainly had a 'wow factor'. Other phrases such as
'ring leader' and
'stalking members of the University staff both in person and electronically...' were powerfully evocative. I wondered, did such words help inform the Information Commissioner's decision? I also wondered how one would go about stalking a staff member electronically. Would having a pacemaker fitted and talking to former colleagues admit one into this celebrity world of cyber-stalking? Or was it a bit more involved. I pondered the possibility of donning camouflage and a pair of undersized 3-D pince nez whilst filming my alleged 'victims' on a full scale 4G stereo camera obscura. Despite its obvious appeal, I decided to put such fantasies to one side and buried myself in the boxes of documents. The words
'hate website' seemed to jump off the page and assault my by-now post-liberal sensibilities. I was desperate to lay my hands on the drawings of me in stalker-c
ontrapcion. I wanted for myself, to finger the pristine photocopies of the evidence of such activities and the complaints Graves must have provided to the IC and the local fuzz. 'S
talking' electronic or otherwise is after all quite illegal as is running a
'hate website'. They weren't there either.
But Graves was right. I'd campaigned. I'd put pen to paper and signed it. I'd written to Ian Stewart who is an
'influencer'. He was my MP. Call me a fool, but I wanted him to lend weight to our campaign to save those 150 jobs. I didn't know it would be used against me as evidence. Maybe I should have written the letter to Mr Stewart anonymously? Could writing anonymous things be dangerous and end in a civil action? Yes, I'd signed that letter. Yes, I'd talked through a megaphone. Yes, I'd made posters advertising demonstrations. It was part and parcel of being an active trade unionist fighting to save the jobs of my colleagues. I thought because I worked in an institution that espoused enlightenment values that this would be fine and dandy. I wondered if Dr Graves had ever been on a protest against or for something?
Was evidence of a my being involved in a campaign to preserve jobs deserving of the opprobrium heaped upon my g
ood name by Dr Graves? Moreover was it the oaken stocks situated conveniently outside the Crescent pub for me? The thought of having
Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights blasted from my left buttock with cabbages on a Friday evening during rush hour made me wince? It was a powerful image.
 |
| Can a megaphone lead almost inexorably to this? |
The cost of it all...
As I lay on the living room floor naked and exhausted, covered from head to foot in wode of the deepest hue, I surveyed the wreckage. Huge numbers of documents and correspondence from the University to the IC lay around me like so many unexploded cluster bombs after a precision raid by US Air Forces on a southern Afghan wedding party. I pondered the immensity of the undertaking. It must have taken an army of Infobots months of Bunyonesque perseverance to produce such a volume of refined and convincing arguments? Was the expenditure of
£75,000(4) on staff costs alone on this case worth it? The result of such an investment and the
fully evidenced allegations of criminal behaviour against me made by Dr Graves to the IC undoubtedly helped inform the decision of the IC finding in University's favour. As a consequence, I had to prepare and conduct my case for the Employment Tribunal without one shred of the information I'd requested. Would the disclosure of this information have helped my claim at the ET? Who knows? It may have helped inform the deliberations of the ET and it's possible that the Tribunal panel may have come to a different decision? As a litigant in person, I believe I was entitled to the benefit of the doubt over this matter.
But something niggled me. It was this £75,000. I wondered how did they arrive at this figure and can I see the breakdowns? I wanted to know precisely how many people worked on it, how long they worked on it and if they used Quink-soaked styli or Bic pens? How much did Dr Graves' letter cost? Did he ask lawyers to give it the once over? More importantly, did he write it with a quill and was it sent by carrier pigeon on a 0.6 contract? How much were the legal fees in this matter? It's public money after all and don't we have a right to know?
As I stared out into the brilliant sunlight just beyond reach, I contemplated the University's original reasons for refusing my first two requests - that the costs of complying with the requests would exceed the £450 statutory limit...
