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Higher education is under continuing pressure to change, to operate on reduced resources and to justify itself. The stresses on academic staff are well documented and are set to keep growing.

It seems obvious that the Association of University Teachers and the lecturers' union would wish to make common cause to act on behalf of all their members across the sector.

Instead we hear of membership wars and a wish by one association to continue old demarcation practices (THES, November 11). David Triesman's pronouncements on the unripeness of time (THES, November 18) reinforce my fear that the AUT and Natfhe are more concerned with barricading their own enclaves than the interests of HE as a whole. Surely it is not beyond the wit of our leaders to come up with a more effective confederation.

MIKE RODGERS Natfhe Coordinating Committee secretary Sheffield Hallam University.