NUT Conference, Cardiff April 10-14 2009
Key to abbreviations and Left-sectarianism:
CDFU- Campaign for a Democratic and Fighting Union: a not-very left left group including Acting General Secretary Christine Blower, sees itself as the new establishment power in the union.
STA- Socialist Teachers' Alliance: Slightly better left group, bitter that it is not yet the new establishment power in the union but trying hard! Includes the SWP and is politically, though not electorally, dominated if not quite hegemonised by it.
CT- Classroom Teacher: Socialist Party front, posing as the new left opposition in the union but not entirely justifying that claim yet.
A couple of lively fringe meetings were arguably the highlight of a fairly dull conference which passed a lot of worthy, leftish policy without many real debates breaking out.
After a turgid opening speech by new President Martin Reed, Conference briefly came into life at lunchtime on Saturday. A media stunt outside the hall by the SWP, involving 'No Useless Tests' t-shirts and chanting, was followed by the unanimous endorsement of an executive priority motion proposing a boycott of SATS. Hazel Danson (exec. and CDFU) moved the motion with a powerful speech, thus unofficially launching her campaign for Deputy General Secretary. Saturday also saw Kevin Nolan, sacked Visteon worker, address Conference and receive a rapturous reception; the fact that he was able to do so is a genuine victory for the left in the union.
On the other hand, the dangers of the left bureaucracy starting to think of itself as the establishment were arguably visible in Sunday’s debate on ‘No Cover and a Qualified Teacher in every Classroom’. In effect this was a row between the STA and CDFU on the one hand and CT on the other about the use of cover supervisors- low paid, unqualified, poorly trained staff employed full-time in many schools to cover classes.
The STA’s motion restated the NUT’s opposition to the use of unqualified staff to teach classes, as a general rule, while then proposing to set limits on the use of cover supervisors (three days in a secondary school and one in a primary) and that they should be ‘trained appropriately’ (which doesn’t appear to mean trained as a teacher). An Executive amendment made it clear that these limits should be fought for only where the position of no cover supervisors could not be won. In reality that is the case in most areas. The CT believed that this clearly surrendered the basic principle of qualified teachers teaching classes. The STA had a fairly convincing argument against this which was that cover supervisors clearly now exist in many schools, and that where they are employed, the limits are the best thing to lead a fight on, rather than trying to convince teachers to walk out on strike against their low paid cover supervisors mates (as the badly drafted CT amendment appeared to suggest). The AWL line was to support the STA position.
Annoyingly, in the debate the STA made some pretty reactionary arguments. Stefan Simms (SWP) made an astonishing intervention which left both SPers and many apolitical primary teachers spitting feathers. He claimed most (secondary) teachers have the attitude ‘we don’t care who takes the classes, as long as it’s not us’ (!) Some might argue that even if that were the case, it might be the union’s job to persuade them of our idea that kids actually deserve proper teaching. Several supply teachers intervened with passionate, and doubtless justified, speeches of the ‘they’re taking our jobs’ type. The motion was overwhelming passed, and the CT amendment defeated.
Monday was the most interesting day for lefties, with debates on the economic crisis, salaries, ant-racism and international issues. Once again the power of the left was evident on the economic crisis issue, first of all from the fact that the executive itself proposed the initial motion (Kevin Courtney seconding with a strong fighting speech) and then by the ease with which the STA amendment (support for the People’s Charter, etc) was passed. The only real moment of interest for me came in hearing Linda Taafe, seated behind me, attempt to break the world record for F-words when the SWP were slating ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ (“they were defending their fucking jobs for fucks sake!” etc)
AWL intervened twice in the salaries debate, including a powerful speech by Becky Williams which drew sympathetic remarks from the Chair and lots of subsequent media coverage [see below]. Conference overwhelmingly passed the motion, which restated the NUT’s position of fighting for a 10% pay rise. Monday also saw a spontaneous standing ovation for a marvellous, Balls-bashing speech on the hideous bureaucratisation of Early Years education from Jane Walton of Wakefield.
The AWL also made the only serious criticism of existing anti-fascist strategy when Patrick Murphy attacked the idea that saying ‘Don’t Vote BNP’ was an adequate slogan. In moving an Executive amendment he contrasted the success of anti-Academy campaigners in Barrow, who had four councillors elected and ousted the council leader, with the failure to stop the BNP winning a seat in Halifax where they were the only party to oppose an academy.
Lastly on Monday came the debate on ‘Stop the Spread of War’. The discussion was almost entirely hegemonised by the SWP, and it might not surprise readers to learn that the main way NUT members were encouraged to ‘Stop the Spread of War’ (apart from rebuking ‘Home Secretary’ David Miliband for causing Russia’s imperialist invasion of Georgia) was by boycotting Israeli goods. Attempting to fudge the issue, the amendment in question called for a boycott of goods ‘produced in the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories’ although quite how the average Waitrose punter is supposed to tell the difference wasn’t made clear.
What was fairly clear from the tone of the SWP movers of the amendment was that until they had learned there was a card in against them they did not even intend to raise the boycott issue, hoping it would simply pass through. To his credit, Kevin Courtney of the STA did address the issue directly at the Palestine fringe meeting on Monday lunchtime, admitting that the economic effectiveness of the boycott might be questionable but claiming that it was a way of channelling people’s anger and getting them to ‘do something’.
AWL tackled this attitude in our intervention against the amendment, pointing out that a) people’s energy should be channelled into building grassroots links with Israeli and Palestinian workers, including anti-war Israeli groups, and b) the boycott does nothing to challenge the borderline (or not-so-borderline) anti-Semitism of many of those who dominated the Gaza protests in January, instead playing into it. The most depressing moment in the debate came when a Lambeth teacher claimed it was right for protesters to boo Marks and Spencer because ‘they give part of their profits to the IDF’ and the SWP loudly applauded! Our intervention was actually fairly well-received, but the boycott was still passed overwhelmingly. An Executive amendment did, however, successfully remove the long sections blaming everyone other then Russia for the invasion of Georgia in the summer.
Tuesday saw a fairly efficient session of unfinished business, although the debate on faith schools (where the STA/SWP proposed not opposing more Muslim schools because it would be unfair to when there are so many Christian schools) was guillotined. Conference passed an inoffensive-looking motion on ending child poverty, which might prove important as the executive is now mandated to run a billboard campaign focusing on reducing class sizes (an issue otherwise ignored in the debates).
In a faintly amusing final twist, Classroom Teacher’s motion on workload was passed in the last five minutes, rendering unnecessary their outraged bulletin complaining that it had been manoeuvred off the agenda.
UAF fringe
Sunday also saw a packed UAF fringe meeting discuss the death of anti-fascist teacher Blair Peach at the hands of the police 30 years ago this month. The meeting heard several moving speeches from those who were at the demonstration, including personal friends of Blair Peach. Their interventions were not only interesting but were very well linked to the recent events around the death of Ian Tomlinson and the policing of the G20 protests more generally. Weyman Bennett concluded the meeting with some very effective personal reflections on how important it had been for him to see openly anti-racist teachers at his school when he was a teenager. He also delivered the standard UAF line about the importance of ‘Don’t Vote Nazi’ type campaigning in the run up to the forthcoming European elections. There was no dissent on this in the meeting, but to be fair most contributions from the floor were (rightly) about Blair Peach. Weyman was taken ill shortly after the meeting; we wish him a speedy recovery so we can argue with him many more times in the future.
Cover Supervisors- the real issue
Neither side in the cover debate really dealt with the issue that cover supervisors are not being organised. The CT amendment casually wanted us to ‘work with Unison and the GMB’ to make sure this happened- but without any criticism of the fact that these unions aren’t currently organising these workers properly. When I approached the CTer who was seconding the motion before the debate, and asked him directly to include such criticism in his speech, he chuckled sympathetically but said ‘it’s better than them joining NASUWT or ATL’ (who recruit these staff but do even less for them than Unison/GMB). Well yes, but that doesn’t preclude us from pointing out the ridiculousness of the fact that four unions are supposed to be organising these unions and none of them really are!
Even worse was the STA, whose motion claimed ‘Unison and the GMB… represent many cover supervisors’ really? I’d like to know the figures on what percentage of these workers are unionised at all. If it’s more than 10% I’d be impressed. On the Friday night one of the platform speakers at the STA meeting ‘Unions in Struggle’ was a GMB full timer whose journey through Cloud Cuckooland began with her assertion of an unbroken thread between the GMB of Will Thorne and the union of today, and ended with the absurd suggestion that the GMB is conducting a massive nationwide drive to organise cover supervisors. The idea that the NUT might threaten to organise these workers, and then actually do it if the other unions don’t get their act together (much like the RMT dealt with Unite over London Underground cleaners) has obviously not occurred to either side in the STA/CT spat as yet.