by Ceren Sagir
at Harrogate Convention Centre

LECTURERS today urged Theresa May to withdraw her invitation to US President Donald Trump.

At the UCU annual conference, the union said it was opposed to any state visit in Britain and that it supports any broad-based protest called against his visit.

Mr Trump is expected to return to Britain on June 4 to meet the Prime Minister. Over a million people took to the street in protest during his first visit as US president last year.

Since then, Mr Trump has partially shut down the US government to force through funding for his racist “border wall.”

The union warned that the billionaire president is “a racist and misogynist” who has “given confidence” to the far right from those who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, where anti-racist Heather Heyer was murdered, to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — the failed MEP candidate known as “Tommy Robinson” — in Britain.

Some far right supporters are trying to organise on campuses as well as trying to “rehabilitate racist ideological justifications such as ‘scientific racism’,” the union warned.

UCU national executive member Margot Hill, from Croydon College, told delegates at the conference that, although the union had an existing policy, the rise of the far right as evident in the European Parliament elections was concerning.

“In Britain we have had some success with Gerard Batten, Carl Benjamin and Yaxley-Lennon failing to get seats,” Ms Hill said. “They have been milkshaked out of the picture, but Nigel Farage knows how to play the game.

“We have to unite with as many people as possible and make no-go areas, especially in London, making it impossible [for them] to organise.”

She added that they have had enough of racists, fascists and their initiatives on campuses.