NUT conference to discuss "escalating timetable of strikes"

Submitted by Gemma_S on 26 March, 2016 - 11:40 Author: Gemma Short

This afternoon (Saturday 26 March) the National Union of Teachers conference will discuss a priority motion on the Government's white paper and its new attacks on schools.

In a shift from previous years conference is expected to vote for a timetable of strikes. The main motion calls for a timetable of strikes, and a popular amendment by the Local Associations for National Action Campaign (LANAC) sets out that there should be an "escalating timetable of strikes based on the model of the junior doctors' dispute".

Since 2011 the union has been dogged by a lack of strategy, with the leadership responding to a membership that they demobilised and demoralised by being "rabbits in headlights" and not organising members and arguing for a fight.

The surge in confidence of members helped by the election of Jeremy Corbyn, and of the junior doctors' dispute, has pushed even the NUT leadership to say that the days of the protest strike are dead, and that action needs to be more than one day.

It is absolutely vital that the lessons of the 2011 pensions dispute are learned. Over 2000 London teachers turned up after school on Wednesday 23 March to march through central London against the White Paper. This energy must not be squandered with members left dazed and demoralised by the lack of a clean plan, and clear demands.

Crucial in rebuilding our union will be involving members in our action rather than leaving everything to the central union structures. The first part of the priority motion sets out a political campaign against the White Paper. Such a political campaign is essential. Strikes will not win this dispute alone.

Such a political campaign however will not get off the ground by the central union producing green tshirts and sending out press releases. It will be made or lost by its ability to build a campaign on a local level with an independent life.

NUT associations and divisions should set up city-wide, or borough-wide campaign groups, with other teacher unions, support staff unions, parents and students. Activists fighting the academisation and cuts at John Roan School in Greenwhich have set a good model on how to do this.

Such local campaigns should build a local life, have public meetings, a mobilising committee, leaflet parents and students at the school gates, lobby ministers, run street stalls, stage protests and generally make a nuisance of themselves. One of the most impressive things about the junior doctors' dispute is that doctors have got together at a local level, without the direct instruction of the BMA, to organise vibrant activities that get their voice in the press and out to the public. This has been instrumental of convincing the general public of their cause, making their demands very clear and in popularising the idea that the dispute is about saving the NHS.

Delegates should carefully consider the LANAC amendment in the name of Nellist and Illingworth and be the people acting at a local level.

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