Unity! for teachers

Unity!

BUILDING AMOVEMENT

By GAWAIN LITTLE

IN SPITE OFattempts by thegovernment to sayotherwise, lastmonth's nationalstrike by the NUT

was a huge display of strength. Not onlywas there a fantastic response fromteachers across the country but weclearly won over a huge proportion ofparents and the public.

Partly because we won the argumentsin the media. In interview afterinterview, the NUT come out positivelyin the face of government intransigence.But also because we picked the rightground. For possibly the first time inthis longrunning dispute, we successfullymade the link between the quality ofeducation and pay, pensions andconditions.

The Stand Up for Education campaign,launched in the run up to the strike, wasan important factor. Obviously, thecampaign was separate from ourindustrial action as, due to Britain’srestrictive anti-trade union legislation,we cannot take action over questionslike a child’s right to be taught by aqualified teacher. But we know that thethreat this government poses tochildren’s education motivates manymore teachers, parents and others than

do concerns over pay and pensions.The power of these issues to bring

people together is easy to understandwithin the framework of mobilisationtheory. Central to encouragingcollective action is an attributableinjustice and an organisation tochallenge that injustice with areasonable prospect of having an impact.This is clearly all there.

The importance of this campaigning isnot just its mobilising power but theway in which it addresses the core ofthe government’s programme in a waythat a campaign around a single issue,such as pay or pensions, does not.

The dominant trend in education –referred to as the Global EducationReform Movement or GERM – istowards a deregulated, privatised, for-profit, state funded education system.Schools operating as businesses,accountable to no one but theirshareholders, would hire whoever theywant, regardless of experience orqualification, to provide a commercialservice paid for by the state. The onlyregulator would be the market andconsumer choice. The sole purpose toattract consumers is so as to draw inincome, cut costs in order to maximiseprofits and to meet the narrow needs ofthe labour market by providing ‘humancapital’ for the economy.

continued on page 3

BY HANk ROBERTS

WHAT IS THE biggest assetMichael Gove has? It is thatthe teachers are divided into

a multiplicity of unions. No sooner hadunity in action been achieved, as it lastwas when all the main teacher unions

ATL, NASUWT and NUT took strike action together overpensions on 30 November 2011, than it broke down. Thatwidest unity has still not been regained.

Why? Because the unions are separate organisationally andnot only that, they are in competition. They can and do maketactical alliances and tactical alliances are good but inevitablythey break down. Separate organisations have to have at leastsome separate policies and separate lines to justify their ownexistence. If they had the same policies and line what wouldthere be to stop them from uniting?

What has held us back? Self interest of those perceivingsomething to lose, wrongly in my view, historical baggage andclan loyalty. Loyalty to your organisation has much tocommend it, but if you shouldn't form merged unions or newunited unions because of it we'd still have many more unionsthan the present 54 TUC affiliates.

Historical baggage is to not change when circumstanceschange. The NAS broke away from the NUT because theyopposed equal pay for women and believed that boys shouldbe taught by men and girls by women. Nigel de Gruchy’sestimable history of the NASUWT was subtitled it A history ofa battling minority. But a minority is something you don't wantto be as a union. It is true that nearing 100 years since theyformed the NAS in 1921 (it later merged with the UWT) theyhave approached the NUT in numbers. At that rate, to unifythe profession, all in the NASUWT as is their present aim, itwould take another 100 years.

No, there is a better way. The Finnish example. It is clear tome that they have the best education system in the worldbecause they have the strongest union.

At the NUT sponsored conference on Unity, Ritva Semifrom the Finnish teachers union OAJ, told the conference ofthe formation of their union in a series of mergers and whichnow organises 95% of Finnish teachers. 'We haven't had tostrike since 1984,' she said, 'the employers know how strongwe are. The OAJ is always there when education is beingdeveloped or education legislation being discussed.'

Opinion polls show that a majority of union members,including of NASUWT, are in favour of unity.

We need to form a new union which would, like the Finnishunion represent the overwhelming majority and have realstrength. Nothing would be a worse nightmare for Gove. Let'sgive it to him. The ATL has indicated that it is prepared toconsider and discuss a new response to the new and mostdangerous situation we face. Here is hoping we can and willget our collective house in better order to face andsuccessfully overcome the trials and tribulations ahead. Ineducation, let's learn from the Finns.

HANk ROBERTS IS ATL IMMEdIATE PAST PRESIdENT ANd wRITES HERE

IN A PERSONAL CAPACITY

Unity is strength

PROFESSIONAL UNITY Let’s get on with it!Monday 21 April at 5.45pm, Brighton Centre Syndicate 4. Howard Stevenson Professor of Education, University ofNottingham and Hank Roberts Immediate Past PresidentATL, Organising Secretary UNIFYCo

mmunist Party

www.com

munist-party.org.uk

BY ANITA HALPIN

A gENERATIONAgO Jacquesdelors told TUCdelegates that the‘European project’would guarantee

jobs and workers rights and safeguard thepost-war ‘welfare state’ settlement.

It was a con trick. The MaastrichtTreaty jammed open the door to bigbusiness to capture public services andutilities in a privatisation scramble that hasleft millions of Europeans with mountingenergy bills, failing public services andsoaraway fares.

The free fire zone for big business andthe banks has given us an unemploymentcrisis, youth unemployment tops 60 percent while millions of women are drivenout of the jobs market or suffer forcedpart time working.

Places like Spain, Portugal, Ireland andgreece suffer huge spending cuts to payfor ‘bail-outs’ by the ‘Troika’ of the IMF,the European Union and the EuropeanCentral Bank.

The European Court of Justice – in theviking, Laval, Ruffert and Luxemburg ECJcases – reverses decades of hard wonemployment and union rights.

As European TUC general secretaryBernadette Ségol says, EU policies “areattacking industrial relations system, areputting pressure on wages, are weakeningpublic services and weakening socialprotection...the core aspects of the socialmodel”.

Elections to the European parliamentmean little. In the ‘real politik’ of the EU itis the Council of Ministers and theshadowy world of corporate lobbyistswhere real decisions are taken.

But these elections have a politicalimportance. It is vitally important thatanger at Condem government policiesand disappointment at Labour's

complicity in privatisation does not endup in a blind alley of apathy or electoralsupport for racism and chauvinism.

Real opposition to a big business-dominated anti-democratic EU cannotcome from UkIP which supportsprivatisation and attacks on workersrights alongside a raft of policies whichworking people decisively reject.

Rather than allow the UkIP nationalistsand the dwindling but still toxic BNPfascists to monopolise anti-EU sentimentfrom the right, Labour and the tradeunions should be educating and mobilisingit from the left.

where communist parties and tradeunion confederations do this with gusto,as in Portugal and increasingly in Spainand Italy, so the right-wing parties makeless headway. where social-democratic,left and trade union bodies swallow themyth that a ‘social Europe’ is possiblethrough reforming the EU, then the farright have a field day. 

with this lesson in mind, communistswill be joining other socialists andworkers – not least those in the RMT –to fight the EU elections as part of a left-wing, internationalist and anti-EU alliance,No2EU - Yes to workers’ Rights.  

But this universal sentiment means littleunless we reject EU treaties that curtaildemocracy and demand privatisation andsay no to EU policies that privatise ourtransport and postal services.

The proposed EU-US TradeAgreement threatens the existence ofour NHS.

A vote for No2EU is a yes to apublicly-owned, socialised health careservice free at the point of use and aresounding no to racism and fascism.

http://tinyurl.com/qdm2yhb

ANITA HALPIN IS THE COMMUNIST PARTY

TRAdE UNION ORgANISER

No2EUVote

yes toworkersrights

Unity! for teachers

Robert Wilkinson writes on the EU/USA treatyIT IS NOT SURPRISING that the motion on the EU/USTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership did not receiveenough priority votes to make it through to the Agenda fordebate at the NUT Annual Conference. It is nevertheless asadly missed opportunity to highlight the seriousness of thethreat to public services.

The National Executive’s attempt to bring the issue beforethe membership is commendable but its importance is notsufficiently appreciated beyond a disquieting apprehension of itsimpact upon the privatisation of the health services.

It is significant that the UCU has issued a warning of how theTTIP is likely to impact upon the provision of Higher Education,threatening wholesale privatisation of educational services andeven institutions. It is naïve in the extreme not to recognisethat all education provision faces a similar onslaught from for-profit enterprises waiting for the opportunity to securelucrative inroads into schools and colleges.

The weakness of the motion from the National Executive layin its assumption that the institutions of the European Unioncould somehow be convinced to exempt public educationalprovision from the requirements of ‘open competition’ fromprivate sector service providers. What many fail to accept isthat it is the EU itself that is the instrument by which publicservices are being opened up to these international profit-seeking enterprises.

The Single European Act (signed in 1986 by MargaretThatcher) enshrined the intention to eliminate all obstacles tothe ‘free movement’ of capital, labour, goods and services. Anessential element of the Act was the European ServicesDirective that included the elimination of ‘public monopolies’ inthe provision of services and the removal of any ‘obstacles tothe free flow of labour’ that were created by ‘exclusive nationalsystems of occupational qualification’. The significance of thisfor the removal of the requirement of Qualified Teacher Statusfrom Free Schools and Academies is only one example of howthis Directive is being implemented.

The European Services Directive (or the BolkesteinDirective) has gradually infected all aspects of public serviceprovision in the member states. Our concern for educationand the NHS should not blind us to the impact of thisDirective on the privatisation of public services such as energy,railways and postal services. Everything is to be opened up tointernational competition.

The international significance of the Services Directive is in itscreation of a ‘brain drain’ from Eastern Europe and increasinglyfrom the ‘less developed’ countries. EU Commission PresidentBarroso has declared that he wants to ‘lure talent’ fromoutside the EU and to ‘capitalise on the lucrative internationaleducation market’ by offering top students instant EUcitizenship. A South African MP condemned these plans as ‘aform of discreet colonialism….This is not just a brain drain buta destruction of the intellectual capital of the South’.

We ignore this at our peril.

ROBERT wILkINSON IS IS wOkINgHAM NUT dIvISION SECRETARY

The edurevolutCuba’salternati neoliberaby Théodo Macdona The singulasuccesses o Cuban edusystem are a deep,comprehen MacDonald authority o rights, a sh of contempimperialismPublished operation NUT£14.95 (£ 265pp Illu ISBN 978-907464-02

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Unity! for teachers

BY ROBERT gRIFFITHS

EDUCATIONALADvANCE inBritain is cruciallydependent on aclear sighted allianceof education

professionals, parents – theoverwhelming majority of whom areworking class – progressive sections ofthe middle class and the labourmovement.

Reassembling this alliance, which in thepost-war period widened the scope ofstate education drove the advance to acomprehensive education system – nowunder assault by the ConDemgovernment – is a key political task forthe education unions.

The successes and failings of recentcampaigns have depended on winningunity, not only between teacher unionsbut between teachers and parents.

However, it is difficult to see howprogress can be made in education, orother areas, without a clear resolution ofBritain's crisis of working class politicalrepresentation. This crisis – despite thechangeinf Labour’s leader – is deeper.

While Labour has rejected some of theworst Tory-LibDem policies such as theBedroom Tax, it continues to sidefundamentally with the ruling classoffensive against public services, thewelfare state, working class livingstandards and trade union rights. Toryeducation policies that fragment theschools system and open it up to marketforces were pioneered under Labour –as ministers constantly remind us.

We still need to defeat the Tory-

LibDem coalition at the General Electionand replace it with the only realisticalternative – a Labour government – butworkers, families and the labourmovement will still not have their mostbasic interests adequately represented inparliament or government withoutprofound changes.

That is why the Communist Party isrenewing its appeal to the labourmovement to discuss how to take thenecessary steps to secure suchrepresentation.

Labour's special spring conferenceweakened even further the collectivebasis of trade union involvement in theparty while big-business funded lobbygroups now provide staffing and policy‘advice’ deep in the party machine.

Not surprisingly Labour’s response toausterity policies has been feeble andcowardly. Instead of challenging theausterity and privatisation drive, theyplead for it to proceed more slowly.They support the freeze on public sectorwages. They support the Tory cap onwelfare spending. They even agree thatupwards of £80bn can be found torenew Britain’s nuclear weapons system,while £375bn has been lavished on theCity of London's banks and markets inthe form of ‘quantitative easing’.

Labour needs policies that wouldinspire and energise millions of electors.Comprehensive child care; a massivecouncil house building programme andrent, fare and selective price controlswould bring relief to hard-pressed lowpaid workers, the millions subsisting onstate benefits and pensions and the‘precarious middle’. How could suchmeasures be financed? Abolishing

useless nuclear weapons and reducingmilitary spending, closing tax lop holes ina progressive taxation system to ensurethe rich and big business pay their fairshare along with a levy on City financialtransactions would raise billions.

A Labour pledge to take rail, gas,electricity and water back into publicownership would be a vote-winner.

A Labour victory on such a programmewould hugely boost people's morale andopen up the opportunity to exertpressure on a Labour governmentthrough action by the trade unions andother campaigning movements.

Without a radical change in the LabourParty's direction, the fragmentation ofthe labour movement's political unity willcontinue and even accelerate. Unite'sLen McClusky warned earlier this monththat Labour Party has reached acrossroads and will risk losing unionsupport unless it is speaks for workingpeople.

For as long as the labour movementrefuses or fails to reclaim the LabourParty, this will only call into greaterquestion that party's future as a vehiclefor progress and fundamental change.

The Communist Party warns in itsOpen Letter: ‘should the Labour Partycontinue on a right-wing course, itsfuture will be at risk and the trade unionmovement will have to re-establish amass party of labour, one capable ofwinning a General Election, enacting far-reaching reforms which challengecapitalist wealth and power and therebyhelp to open the road to socialism.’

ROB gRIFFITHS IS gENERAL SECRETARY OF

THE COMMUNIST PARTY

Labour at the crossroads

Building aneconomy forthe peopleAn alternativeeconomic andpolitical strategy for 21st CenturyBritainEdited by Jonathanwhite.Contributions from:Mark Baimbridge;Brian Burkitt; MaryDavis; John Foster;Marjorie Mayo;Jonathan Michie;Seumas Milne;Andrew Murray;Roger Seifert; PremSikka; JonathanWhite and PhilipWhyman£6.95 (+£1 p&p)ISBN 978-1-907464-08-9

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>>> This is not only a Britishenterprise. On 24 May, the NUT will behosting an international conference withacademics and activists from fivedifferent continents to discuss how todevelop resistance to GERM. It will beimportant to start to share internationalexperiences and build an understandingof GERM amongst our activist base.

And it’s been tried before in differentways. The key moves towardsmarketisation go back to Thatcher’s1988 Education Reform Act. In 1996, theDfE referred to schooling as being thecreation of human capital. Theacademies programme was created byNew Labour.

This is why a focus on the quality ofeducation, and its purpose in the 21stCentury, is such a powerful argument –because it is the core of the question. If

we are able to build our campaignsagainst pension cuts, pay deregulationand excessive workload in this context –with an understanding of what the endproduct of these processes looks like –we are much better equipped to win.

And this means expanding thecampaign on other fronts: the five keydemands in Stand Up for Education andother key issues, like accountability,which are used to force change andaround which we can begin to build widesupport both amongst teacher unionsand teachers, and amongst parents andpolicy-makers.

There is the potential for many ofthese ideas to be drawn together into anational education conference onEducation in the Next Parliament to beheld before the 2015 General Election.This could develop wider support for

our vision of education and pressurepolitical parties to adopt, or respond to,our proposals.

An important aspect of mobilisationtheory is the local leader who can givecohesion to a group and begin to build amovement. There is now a greatopportunity, building on our successes,to start to recruit these local leadersand sustain all our campaigning.

I hope local activists will continue tobuild the campaign with the same energyas they did in the run up to the strikeand that, nationally, the NUT willsupport them. Over the coming months,we need to develop a coherence anddeeper roots in local communities andwe can all play a part in this.

GAWAIN LITTLE IS A MEMBER OF THE

NUT NATIONAL ExECUTIvE.

Education forthe people

£2 fromwww.communist-party.org.uk

Unity! for teachers

BY BILL gREENSHIELdS

TEACHERTRADEunionists can

play a unique role inthe People’sAssembly, the fast

growing unified anti-austerity movement.Our aim is to go far beyond the usualcampaign politics of protest, building amovement deeply rooted incommunities and trade unionmemberships, drawing thousands of‘ordinary people’ into sustained activity –many of whom have not previouslyconsidered themselves ‘political’ – into amovement capable of defeating theausterity programme and reshapingBritish politics from the bottom up.

We teachers can play a huge role.Despite the damage inflicted on theeducation system, schools remain at theheart of their communities Teachers arewell respected, teacher unionmembership remains at the highest levelsand we are well represented on localtrades union councils.

Bring these factors together, and wehave a model for a People’s Assemblymovement capable of taking on thegovernment – and winning. Communitiesin action, with the trade unions at theheart and head of the movement.

Austerity policies have nothing to dowith ‘deficit reduction’, but are intendedto ‘rebalance the economy’ by imposing‘flexible working’, increasing workloadand driving down wages, workingconditions and social provision in orderto increase profits – and lay thefoundations for full scale privatisation.That’s what they mean by ‘economicrecovery’! The recent AssemblyConference unanimously endorsed thePeople’s Charter – alternative economic,social and political policies aimed at afundamental and irreversible shift ofwealth and power in favour of theoverwhelming majority of people, andaway from the tiny millionaire ruling classand those who serve them.

It’s great that Chris Blower spoke atthe conference, reinforcing NUT’sposition at the centre of the Assembly.ATL and NASUWT are also long-termsupporters of the People’s Charter, andwe all need to build on this.

TUC General Secretary FrancesO’Grady characterises the currentsituation as ‘class war’, a political step upfrom the ceaseless everyday strugglethat we think of as normal.

The ruling class and their governmentneed, as a result of their economic crisis,to inflict a decisive defeat on us torestore their profits at our expense. Inorder to prevent this we need to inflict adecisive defeat on them. There is noother way. The more we build ourmovement, the more successes we have,the more determined and ruthless theywill become. That’s the nature of classwar. So if we are going to fight – we haveto fight to win.

The stakes are very high. Thegovernment has its well-planned‘permanent austerity’ strategy behindeach individual attack. Our unions havetended to fight each such attack inisolation as if it were a traditional tradedispute. Now we urgently need to put aunified strategy together in which allunions and community organisations canparticipate to the full. As Bob Crow putit: ‘... uniting and igniting the people.Then, we’ll be unstoppable.” The June 21Assembly mass demonstration againstausterity and privatisation is animmediate priority – but we mustachieve the much more difficult task ofbuilding sustained, day-in, day-out anti-austerity activity at local level? Is thePeople’s Assembly up to the task? Theanswer to that depends on the scale ofparticipation and commitment – andthat depends on each and every one ofus. The teacher union conferences willbe a strong indicator of our readiness.

BILL gREENSHIELdS IS NUT PAST PRESIdENT,A MEMBER OF THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY

STEERINg gROUP ANd CHAIR OF THE

COMMUNIST PARTY

Our unions and thePeople’s Assembly

Morning StarDaily paper of the left £1 from your newsagent

Women versusthe Coalition

BY ANITA wRIgHT

THE COALITION governmentknows it will have to quicken thepace of its pillage of the welfare

state, education service and NHSbecause the clock is ticking. In 12 monthstime Parliament will be dissolved prior to

the general election. They need to finish their wreckingoperation in time, so that they can both irreparably damagethese structures and pass the profitable elements over to thegreedy corporate capitalist marauders.

We knew that women were going to be hit hard byCameron’s austerity policies, because the majority of women’sjobs are in health, care services, education and the publicsector, all of which have been brutally cut.

Bogus claims by George Osborne that we are in economicrecovery simply do not match the reality of most women’slives. Women’s unemployment has fallen by less that 4% since2011 and is still the highest it’s been for 25 years. Thousandsof women are seeking full time jobs, many are parked on zerohours contracts and the gender pay gap has started toincrease for the first time in five years.

Cuts to services and benefits have also impacteddisproportionally on women as they are the majority ofservice users and benefit claimants. With an additional £3billion in cuts planned over the next period women will facean even harder battle to make ends meet.

We already have the shame of seeing food banks emergingacross the country, but now Oxfam has said that some familiesare returning food because they can’t afford to cook it.

Some police forces are also reporting an increase in shop-lifting, not of luxury items but of basic food supplies. veraBaird, Crime Commissioner for Northumbria and NationalAssembly of Women vice-president drew attention to therising numbers of women, who had never previously offended,who were stealing food. Meat, poultry and fish in 2012 madeup 6% of items stolen in the Northumbria area, whereas in2013 this figure had risen to 11%.

We were told by Cameron and Clegg that these austeritypolicies were necessary because money is limited. yet we canafford an estimated £100 billion for new nuclear weapons andallow tax dodgers to walk off with £120 billion in lost, unpaid,evaded or avoided taxes.

They are making us pay for the financial crisis caused byinternational capitalism’s ongoing greed and will continueunless we stop them.

The Women’s Assembly Against Austerity conference inFebruary brought together over 250 women activists so thatwe could share our experiences, learn from and inspire eachother. It was not the intention to set up a separate women’sorganisation from the People’s Assembly Against Austeritybut to strengthen our resolve and confidence so that ourvoices get heard in our trades unions and local campaigns.

Women’s unique experience of fighting austerity must betaken into account and we should be fully involved in theformulation of any alternative progressive social and economicpolicies as we begin the process of developing an alternativevision of society free from oppression and exploitation.

ANITA wRIgHT IS SECRETARY OF THE

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF wOMEN

www.sisters.org.uk naw@sisters.org.uk H

http://education4thepeople.blogspot.co.uk