Friday 12-06-2020 - 10:30

What is the Liberation Strategy Group?

We know that as an organisation we need to do better. Our Students’ Union, like so many institutions across the UK, has a problem with racism. Shying away from this or pretending it isn’t the case helps no one. We cannot tell our staff or our membership that we believe Black lives matter without committing to take tangible action to confront racism in our organisation.

Racism in the UK is systemic and embedded in people’s behaviours. No organisation, especially one dominated by white staff, is immune from racism and neither is the Union.  Staff of colour have consistently raised issues of racism and microaggression but are often reluctant to make formal grievances, and instead we end up losing them. There is insufficient accountability for these behaviours, and this often leaves BAME staff members feeling that we are not taking this matter seriously as an organisation.

Overall, there is a lack of true understanding of what microaggressions are and how these behaviours can manifest in an unconscious way. We apply different standards to different individuals, and this has a huge impact on people.

This year, we have re-formed a Liberation Strategy Group, with the overarching aim of driving forward change. As well as racism, we will also be taking a good hard look at disableism, queerphobia, transphobia, and misogyny within our organisation. For example, we know that we have not done all we can to make our spaces accessible. While there are areas like the ramp that we as an organisation do not control, we do control the interiors of our building. Our spaces are not that welcoming to people who have access needs. 

This work will involve efforts towards changing behaviours, as well as changes to policy and procedure, and dismantling the oppressive structures that exist in our organisation. It is our hope that this group will be able to create a culture in which we are all constantly challenging structures of oppression both internally and outside of the Union, and a structure in which labour is divided fairly and people from liberation groups are able to thrive.

Work on developing a Liberation Strategy for our organisation for the next five years is underway. It is our intention to be as open and transparent about this activity as possible, so that our staff can hold us to account, and our membership can as well. Some of the underpinning activities we are working on include a new values framework, an underpinning reporting process where staff wish to raise concerns, a review of how to make liberation a key part of the recruitment process and facilitation of improved communication between staff networks and the formal governance structure.

Since lockdown it has been challenging getting the group together, especially with staff on furlough. Work on the overarching strategy has not progressed as much as would have been liked in the year, and this is something we are conscious we need to prioritise.

What have we done?

Communication                                
We are improving the channels of communication between the governance structures and staff. HR & Unite the Union Representatives are now meeting regularly where issues from the staff team in general and the BAME staff network are discussed and actions agreed. The Unite reps are attending the People and Culture Committee (part of the Union formal governance structure) and they will be submitting a report to the committee on the current issues and concerns that our staff team have.  This is to ensure accountability and that staff concerns are being addressed.

Liberation group                              
The liberation group are meeting regularly now and discussing current issues and areas for concern.

Values                                           
We are working on a new values framework for the organisation in which it is expected that liberation will be included – although the format of this is yet unclear.

Reporting issues                              
On the back of the feedback from the liberation group and BAME staff network we are developing a policy to make raising issues and concerns easier and ensure that there is a greater degree of accountability for behaviour change.  The spirit of the policy is that we take concerns at face value and that it will underpin our overall values framework.

Policy & procedure                         
We have started a review of some of our P&P.  An area of concern is around recruitment.  The liberation group have been sent a proposal for how liberation could be better embedded with the overall recruitment framework.  As part of this process we will need to take a critical look at all our processes and how systemic disadvantage may be operating in all that we do.

Conversations                                   
We had an initial liberation conversation with good turnout from the staff team, this was a space we created to provide a basic introduction to liberation and how this impacts different areas of the organisation.  Following from this the liberation group have developed a more tailored set of questions that we will be asking the Senior Management Team to go away and discuss in their team meetings.  The aim of this is to identify actions that we can take to improve our approach to liberation across all areas of activity.

Black Lives Matter

The murder of George Floyd in the US has sparked a series of protests around the globe, and many organisations are now putting out statements that support the Black Lives Matter campaign. As a Union we want to be more than just a statement. We have discussed what we can do, and below are some other thoughts and suggestions that have been made.

As much as we would want to pledge financial support, as an organisation, to causes such as bailout funds, we are unable to due to the effect of COVID on our financial position as well as intricacies regarding charity fundraising laws. However, there are other ways we can provide tangible support to Black Lives Matter and we are committed to doing this.   

Personal objectives                        
We ask every staff member to commit to one personal objective in relation to liberation as part of the appraisal process.

Zero tolerance                                         
This will be taken to Trustees for discussion. When students are being racist, we should not ask for ‘hard evidence’ as the University does. We know this process is fundamentally flawed -- there is no ‘hard evidence’ to be found in many cases of racism, which manifest as microaggressions which white disciplinary panels fail to ‘interpret’ as racism -- and we should simply believe victims. 

We are discussing initial ideas around suspending students’ membership until they have engaged in certain things, such as making an apology and going through training and political education. Our approach will be inspired by a restorative justice framework. This will be presented for discussion at the next board meeting.

Diversity and Inclusion Ambassadors                               
The Diversity & Inclusion Ambassadors are a group of BAME students who work in collaboration with the University and Students' Union to close the attainment gap, the gap is most significant for Black students and therefore targeted work is important for this project. You can read their recent statement here. Over the past year ambassadors have been working to implement the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) allies platform, acting as a level below Report and Support. To act as a preventative mechanism and recognise everyday racism students face at university. 

As a Union we acknowledge that the same structures that operate within the university also operate within our workplace. We are working on plans to develop something similar to EDI allies scheme for Union staff, to be able to report the everyday individual racism (microagressions) and discrimination. We acknowledge that it will only be through recognising the issues that exist in our own workplace and putting mechanisms in place accordingly, will mean we can emanate the just and equitable experience we want for black students on campus, by starting with supporting our black staff. 

It’s important to note that when we highlight microaggressions, this does not mean that the impact or incident is ‘small’. However micro refers to it being at the individual, rather than the institutional level. They are deeply harmful and also do feed into institutional racism.

We will continue to lobby that the University meet our demands: https://manchesterstudentsunion.com/articles/black-lives-matter-tuesday-9th-june-update but at the same time, we need to be making tangible changes in our own organisation.

In addition to the commitments stated above, we also commit to updating our liberation report on our website monthly. This way, we can be held to account on our commitments, from both our staff and our members.

And what we’d like to do now is to support black students, for our channels and platforms to be open to you to talk about your work and to tell your stories. If you would like to work with us on that, please contact our marketing and communications department on our social media profiles, Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram.

If you’d like more information on the work we are doing please don’t hesitate to contact us here info.su@manchester.ac.uk