Last week, Gript Media reported dissent in the ranks of the Postgraduate Workers Union of Ireland (PWU) as the leadership of that Union steered it towards participation in anti-Israel protests over the current conflict in the middle east. Many ordinary members of that Union, we reported, were expressing serious concern that the Union had been in effect taken over by members of People before Profit, with the top positions almost entirely occupied by activists from that political party, or activists from other extreme left groups such as extinction rebellion.
Further, ordinary members of the Union expressed to Gript their concern that Postgraduate Students in Ireland – which include many Jewish and Israeli students – were effectively being silenced by their own leadership. They further complained that when they tried to raise their voices in dissent, the standard practice of the Union leadership – under President Conor Reddy, also a People before Profit candidate – was to simply ban further comment in the Union’s whatsapp chat page.
After we published our story last week, other members of the Union reached out to Gript Media to confirm our reporting.
One member reported that when he had raised a complaint with his local chapter, he was summarily removed from Union social groups. Another female member said that complaints had gone “entirely unresponded to” and that she felt the Union’s leadership was “actively hostile to any dialogue with its own members” on this issue. Another simply said “it’s full on communism in there”.
Gript has seen further screenshots of debate within the Union’s whatsapp group which confirms the thrust of these comments.
One student in particular complained that on another occasion, when one member expressed sympathy to those in Gaza and those in Israel, a Union officer replied with the single word “Palestine”, which that student took to be a rebuke of the idea that Israel should exist at all.
Another pointed out his opinion that the PWU should have no stance on the issue at all, and that it should be neutral, to which the same union officer replied that “a number of jews around the world” were supporting Palestine. “But the student never mentioned Jews”, the member told Gript. “The only person to bring “Jews” into it was the union official, as if to tell the rest of us who were Jewish that we needed to shut up and get in line”. The student says she feels deliberately bullied on account of her religion.
When another student in the Union’s whatsapp group pointed to an article which disputed that Israel was an “apartheid state”, the Union’s whatsapp group was promptly shut down, with only officer board members permitted to comment.
Despite this internal dissent, the Postgraduate Workers Union posted a tweet on October 18th calling for a global general strike in support of Palestine. The Union has several thousand members – the tweet received just 60 or so “likes”.
Gript contacted the PWU yesterday for comment on this story, asking them questions about their internal democracy and where the mandate for such activism on behalf of their members was derived from.
We will update this story if an answer is received.