Delegates from the National Union of Teachers (NUT) section of the National Education Union (NEU) met in Brighton from 30 March to 3 April for our union’s national conference.
Workers’ Liberty school workers intervened alongside other activists organised around the Education Solidarity Network (ESN) to put forward arguments on testing and workload as well as to challenge the union leadership on its weak industrial strategy.
Conference passed policy to demand a 5% pay rise, alongside other public-sector unions, with a commitment to ballot all members for strike action in the 2018/19 school year if our demands are not met.
The initial motion on school pay was weak and evasive, calling for a ballot "if internal polling suggests that there would be sufficient support", a weaselly formulation that would allow the union executive to slip out of its responsibility to organise and agitate amongst union members for a decent campaign on pay.
A successful amendment from Coventry division linked in the issue of workload and made the commitment to a ballot clear and suggested internal polling as a means of identifying areas of weakness that would require more effort and union resources to build action on pay.
Action on pay is not a settled question however. The union executive has a habit of "forgetting" its responsibilities, for instance failing to carry out an indicative ballot on boycotting SATs last year, flouting conference policy.
It is unlikely the NEU will be able to so easily back out of action on pay, but the motion only commits the executive to put forward the strategy to the Joint Executive Council, a combined NUT and Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) which exists during the merger process of the two unions that is creating the NEU.
ATL conference on 9-11 April will set the ATL section of the union’s policy on pay. Joint General Secretary Kevin Courtney said "the union will prepare to consult members widely on the action we need to take in order to win these demands", which is hardly a forthright promise to resort to strike action if necessary.
School workers must be clear that avoiding action, taking single days here and there, or mothballing the whole process in consultation, will not win us a pay rise. Action on the model demonstrated by UCU members defending their pensions is the sort of strategy we must push for.
Our union has form on this issue, most obvious in the case of primary testing. For three years conference, led by the arguments of the so-called Socialist Teachers’ Alliance (STA) and the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), which holds a controlling stake in that faction, has voted for meaningless action on testing that has come to nothing.
This year STA activists mourned the failure to hold even a consultative ballot over boycotting SATs tests, a failure which their executive members bear responsibility for. STA activists went through the motions of giving tub-thumping speeches against the damaging system of primary testing whilst calling for a vote in favour of a motion that would only commit the union to carry out "an indicative survey" to "collect individual school information about where formal industrial action ballots might be successful" for action against the new reception baseline tests.
Believing, rightly, that this motion would rule out important parts of another motion committing the union to a boycott of high-stakes, summative primary testing, Workers’ Liberty and ESN activists argued against the motion, convincing around 40% of conference to vote against it. A Lewisham delegate reminded conference that, when we unfortunately find ourselves in the same position next year, having taken no meaningful action on the tests which are destroying children’s experiences of primary education, they should remember the organisations that brought them such a moribund strategy, the STA and the SWP.
Conference took an emergency motion on OFSTED’s statements that it would speak to young girls about why they wore the hijab in schools. An amendment condemned the proposed "Punish a Muslim day" on Tuesday 3 April and expressed solidarity with Muslims and communities affected.
Workers’ Liberty activists voted for the amendment and abstained on the main motion. We believe that OFSTED inspectors have no business asking young girls why they are wearing the clothes they are wearing. We disagree with the motion's assertion that primary-aged girls are exercising a free choice when it comes to wearing the hijab. NEU (NUT) President, Kiri Tunks, did not acknowledge our abstention and called the vote as being unanimously in favour.
The mood of conference was often one of cheering consensus, which is worrying. The series of speakers in favour of the emergency motion on the hijab was called "a good debate". Some motions, for instance one on union support for supply teachers, managed to overturn the executive’s position, however the picture was largely one of uncontentious motions being passed overwhelmingly with radical speeches in favour of not very radical action.
There was a moment of rank-and-file-led revolt at the end of conference when Sheffield delegates initiated a motion to suspend standing orders, gathering the necessary 200 delegate signatures overnight, in order to bring a motion on reconsidering the date of next year’s full NEU conference.
The President had announced, without any prior consultation, that next year’s conference would be four days, rather than five, and held during term time for several divisions, including Liverpool where conference is to be held. There was not enough time to hear Sheffield’s emergency motion, but conference voted to suspend standing orders, sending a clear message of dissatisfaction to the executive.
Outside of the conference hall Workers’ Liberty activists distributed our bulletin and a leaflet opposing union-funded trips in solidarity with the Cuban police state. In the past two years our union has spent £48,000 subsidising trips to Cuba, allowing the regime to claim it has the support of foreign trade unionists. The Cuban regime refuses to allow free and independent trade unions to organise and abolished the right to strike in 1960.
Activists handing out these leaflets at a Cuban Solidarity fringe meeting saw event organisers snatch our leaflets out of attendees’ hands to replace them with pro-Cuba materials. Much like the Cuban state these activists do not like to have their views challenged.
Janine Booth spoke at a Workers’ Liberty fringe meeting on Minnie Lansbury to a group of 20 education activists, telling the story of the Poplar rates rebellion and the struggles Minnie Lansbury faced as an NUT activist campaigning against her union’s refusal to demand votes for women. Attendees had a good discussion about the challenges of fighting to make Labour councils fight cuts today and the challenges of organising against trade union bureaucrats in our own union.
The Education Solidarity Network held two fringe meetings which were both attended by around 60 delegates. We heard from activists leading anti-academy struggles across the country and discussed the strategies we will fight for over testing and workload, where we intend to push our union in to serious action on the model set by UCU.
