These are hard times for public-sector workers. Across Europe, the neoliberal consensus around the need for “austerity” policies is being used to drive forward job cuts, pay freezes, attacks on pensions and privatisation in all its forms.

Higher and further education are no different. Our pension schemes are under constant pressure, our institutions have been pitched into an anarchic battle for survival with one another by marketisation policies and by the entry of aggressive new private providers backed by finance capital. 

Universities and colleges are responding with a new regime of constant restructuring, job cuts, rising workloads and attempts to impose performance measures on research and teaching in search of greater productivity and more bang for their buck. 

Yet, amid the familiar gloom, there was one small bit of significant news recently. Staff in higher education successfully broke the government’s public-sector pay freeze.  

On May 1, the University and College Union (UCU) announced that 84 per cent of its HE members had voted on a 52 per cent turnout to accept a pay offer of 2 per cent for 2014-15.  

Why is this significant? The amount of money itself is not great and it certainly doesn’t begin to reverse substantially the effective 15 per cent pay cut over the last four years.  

But it is the first breach in the government’s policy of limiting public-sector pay increases to 1 per cent, so it has significance beyond the union’s immediate membership.

However, to understand fully the importance of what has just happened, we need to set it in the union’s own context. In 2012, UCU had balloted HE members on industrial action over the then pay claim.  

We lost the ballot for strike action, while winning on action short of a strike.  With that sanction alone, we could not pursue the claim, as we would not have had the ultimate weapon for responding to draconian sanctions from the employers. 

Over the following year, much effort was put into developing a strategy combining both forms of industrial action and into explaining to members the need for a mandate on each. We also demonstrated that universities could easily afford to offer a decent pay increase.  

As a result, a consultative ballot in summer 2013 revealed that a majority of members were ready to take action and the following formal ballot delivered clear majorities for both forms of action. Pay was the immediate issue but at stake was also the wider national collective bargaining credibility of the union. 

It was always clear that the dispute would be a long one.  

Despite a work-to-contract by UCU members and two one-day strikes jointly with Unison and Unite, the employers refused to move from a 1 per cent offer for 2013-14, and in fact imposed that increase in December 2013.  

They calculated that the dispute would then crumble, but UCU kept it very much alive, rolling over the claim to 2014-15, with a series of two-hour strikes in January and February as well as a further one-day strike jointly with Unison and Unite.  These two-hour stoppages so infuriated the employers that around 30 universities deducted a day’s pay for members taking part, a decision that the union is resisting through various means, including the courts. 

UCU had ultimate leverage in its threat to boycott marking. However, with many employers prepared to lock staff out, this was a scenario we could only use if members were fully committed to it and were all engaged in it at the same time. We therefore delayed that action until April 26, the start of the summer term, while explaining carefully to members what it meant and how the employers were likely to respond.  

Faced with the prospect of disrupted examination boards, the employers came forward with the 2 per cent offer for 2014-15 at the 11th hour. Significantly, there was no inclusion of their previous declared aim of offsetting annual increments against the cost-of-living rise.

There are some who are seeking to portray the end of this dispute as a sell-out and a betrayal.  In this fantasy narrative the imaginary battalions are wheeled out — voting in their thousands to accept the deal because their swelling revolutionary ardour was disastrously dashed by the machinations or ineptitude of the leadership. Such arrant nonsense teaches us nothing of value. 

There are in fact many lessons to be learned by UCU from this dispute. We have to have an honest discussion about the efficacy of different forms of action and be prepared to combine forms imaginatively and creatively to achieve different ends.  

But also we have to be honest about the real levels of militancy and the levels of organisation within our branches. There is a worrying disconnect between the rhetoric coming from some activists and the membership. 

Real leadership depends on combining a clear sense of the line of march with a genuine and honest understanding of where the membership are and what they are prepared to do. Only then can we really move people forwards. Only then can we win trust and build trade union consciousness. 

Yet there is an optimistic lesson to be learned too. The real task facing the trade union movement at the moment is to demonstrate its industrial and political relevance to its members, and to use this to rebuild trade union consciousness.  

This is absolutely necessary and a vital precondition to any more radical mobilisation. By taking strategic action, based on an analysis of where the members are and how far they are prepared to go, UCU has taken a substantial step towards re-establishing some of its national collective bargaining power. Every level of our union needs to learn that lesson, apply it and use it to organise, recruit and educate. 

Raising the level of industrial struggle is a critical part of our fight-back and it must be a central part of the left’s work.

Martin Levy is a member of the National Executive Committee of UCU, but writes in a personal capacity.