Divisional Secretaries’ Briefing
2008
“Educate, Agitate, Organise!”
Bill’s President’s Address to Div Secs at the closing session of the 3 day briefing.
I never know how to address a room full of people like this. The word "colleagues" just seems to me to be inadequate to properly describe our relationship with each other. Brothers and sisters? Well perhaps... but I prefer a more evocative term for our comradeship... which I recently found defined as "...close friendship, born out of solidarity based on mutual needs and aspirations." That's good enough for me.
So... comrades,
Firstly - reasons to be cheerful.
Number 1. Adonis, the unelected, over-promoted, self-important self-professed leading exponent of education "diversity and choice" has gone! He's gone to be Rail Minister - which gives a whole new meaning to the old BR adverstising slogan, "let the train take the strain". But he'll be back - he started as a Lib Dem, he's currently New Labour, he's already been assured (along with James Purnell and Hazel Blears) that Cameron would find them places in a Tory Government
Number 2. Francis Fukuyama, the "End of History" man, has declared this morning that we are not facing a crisis of capitalism, just a crisis of Reganism - and Regan is dead. So that's OK then.
Number 3. Richard Fuld, the ex-CEO of Lehman Bros, says that it is untrue that he personally took $489 million out of the firm. It was only about $280 million he says, plus of course a $60 million "compensation" package. Fortunately, despite now being a jobseeker, Fuld's mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, his $14million ocean front estate on Jupiter Island, Florida, his ski chalet in Idaho and his Manhattan apartment, are all safe - as he has managed to pay his mortgages off. Good luck with the job hunting, Richard.
Number 4. You are part owner of a couple of banks! At least until the previous owners want them back. And as the recession deepens, I think it fair to ask – if the private sector can’t even run its banks, who would trust them to run our schools? As Bertold Brecht wrote, “What is the crime of robbing a bank compared to that of owning one?”
I know how valuable this Briefing is, and I’m very sorry
I’ve missed quite a bit of it. In part my absence was due to my speaking for
the Union at a “Public Services NOT Private Profit” rally in
It’s not my right to thank you for all the work you do as Divisional Secretaries. You certainly don’t do it for me! You do it for all teachers, for the children, for the education service, for our communities.
But nonetheless, you need proper recognition for being at
the cutting edge of our
I am going to say some things today which, if taken up, would mean even more work for you, and I do so in the full knowledge that you are working flat out now. I know that because I was, and will be again I think a local officer myself – so they are not said flippantly. The only way we can reduce your workload is not by reducing the demands… they are set by the conditions we face. The only way we can reduce the workload of local officers is by prioritising that work, changing the way we do it - such as the collectivising of casework - and by drawing in more members to share the work, to become real activists at local level, and particularly by strengthening our School Reps and their work in schools – by turning our commitment to the organising agenda into a reality in which many more members see Union work as their work, and extending our activist base.
I’ve said it before and no doubt will again. We are living
in pivotal times – and our great
The struggle for education has historically and politically been inseparable from the struggle of working people for dignity, for the ability to exercise greater control over their lives, against poverty and exploitation, and for the extension of democracy. That identity is as true today as it has ever been. All – and I mean all - our policy, strategy, campaigning and organisation have to be seen within that context.
Working people are I believe about to come under the most generalised attack from those who are responsible for bringing about the financial crisis, and the economic recession that is emerging from it. Yesterday the London stock exchange was down by 7%. This morning at ten minutes after opening it had fallen by a further 10%. It would be going beyond my role here - and certainly take me well over time and outside of Union policy - if I began to discuss the causes of capitalism's current crises, and recurrent crises. But let us not be in any doubt. Those responsible for the crisis will not want to pay for it. They will want us - working people - to pay for it. They will want nationalisation - but only of the losses and risks, while they will continue to assert their right to private profit. And they'll want their banks back when the crisis is over... until the next one. The Government has found over £500 billion of our money to bail them out, in what I think will be a vain attempt to avert recession, and possibly depression and slump. That sum is only just less than the total of last year's Government spending on education, health, pensions, social services, road, prisons, the military - £589bn. Where was this new £500billion when the Government told us gravely that there was not a bottomless pit for public spending... was it in a drawer marked "Only to be opened in case of emergency... when the bankers are in trouble" - written in the spidery hand of the Dowager Lady Thatcher? Was it full of used fivers, or perhaps dollars... with a note - "To Maggie, for services rendered... love, as ever, Ronnie. PS - Use it carefully"? But this huge amount of our money is unlikely to do the trick. We will be made to pay in other ways - with rising unemployment, with industrial closures, with pension crises, with housing repossessions, with cuts in public services - and with pleading and threatening if that doesn't work that we have to tighten our belts, because we are "all in it together", it's "our crisis". Well, it is not "our crisis" - it is not of "our" making - and we need to resist the likely consequent generalised attack on us by being part of a generalised resistance right across the trade union movement and beyond into the very heart of our communities.
Our Union publications, “Bringing Down The Barriers” and “A Good Local School For Every Child and Community” are not just policy statements – they are campaigning and organisational tools around which we need to build strong, vibrant coalitions at local and national levels. And when I say “we need to”, I mean we NEED to… and it’s in this that we need to inspire and mobilise members.
A few days ago we celebrated World Teachers’ Day. Throughout the world, or at least across the uni-polar globalised “free market” that has dominated that world for the past few decades, we teachers are facing the same onslaught on the principles and practice of free, state education for all children and their communities. The process of fragmentation, deregulation and commodification of education – a process which is well documented, and of which we have been warning for many years – is accelerating.
Let me remind you again of the words of Education International in 2005
“In the wake of
other major public services which have been subject to extensive privatisation
and deregulation, public education is increasingly being targeted by predatory
and powerful entrepreneurial interests.
The latter are
aiming at nothing less than its dismantling by subjecting it to international
competition."
Can we wait for
others in the world of mainstream politics to respond to our arguments, and all
the research that shows that the best educational opportunities for all
children are delivered by integrated, publicly controlled and accountable state
comprehensive education systems?
With a General
Election just a year away, let’s quickly review what they say.
Here’s Gordon Brown,
at the Labour Conference last month.
“Ed Balls and I will
never excuse, explain away or tolerate low standards in education. So we will
keep up the pace of reform: more academies, trust and specialist schools,
And because all parents should see their children taught in schools which
achieve good results at GCSE, our pledge today is that any parents whose local
state school falls below the expected standard will have the right to see that
school transformed under wholly new leadership, or closed and new school places
provided.”
Of course, he made other pledges too. He promised a phased
extension of nursery places to two year olds – though he was careful not to
promise free, publicly provided nursery education. Importantly, he reaffirmed
his ambition to eliminate child poverty by 2020 and promised a legislative
framework to achieve it… but notably avoided his previous pledge to halve child
poverty by 2010, saying, “The economic
times are tough of course that makes things harder - but we are in this for the
long haul”
I took
part in the “End Child Poverty” rally just the other day. It was held under the
slogan “Keep The Promise”. Strangely, Labour
politicians who need to keep their promise took part in the day’s activities
too. Perhaps they should just get on and do it, if they are serious about
preventing the blight poverty generates on educational achievement, and on all
other aspects of children’s lives.
We are
very pleased and proud that the Government has set up the “Steve Sinnott
Fellowship” to allow teachers from schools in the most disadvantaged areas to
take time out to work together on educational programmes for working class
children from the toughest backgrounds. We need to remind the Government
though, as Steve certainly would have done, that tackling the symptoms of
poverty is simply not enough. They need to tackle the causes – a class divided,
have and have-not, dog-eat-dog society.
But
let’s at least see them tackle the symptoms. To halve child poverty by 2010,
the End Child Poverty campaign identifies a need for just £3 billion to be
spent on Child Tax credits and other benefits in the 2009 budget, for a
commitment to building 20,000 extra socially rented homes each year, and then
to go on to 2020 with a programme of increasing the minimum wage, and ensuring
job security.
One of
the children on the march carried a hand painted sign. “Why 2020 Mr Brown, why not now?” We ought to carry that banner
too. In the light of the speed that the Government has been able to make
hundreds of billions of pounds available to bail out the financiers who have
created the current economic collapse as a result of their own greed and
affinity for deregulated market economics, we have to question why the Government’s
ambition is limited to waiting more than another decade to “eradicate” child
poverty – and not currently even being on target for that, with 200,000 more
children over the last two years contributing to the total of 3.9 million
living in poverty according to Government statistics.
With the
deepening recession, with unemployment even on the massaged figures climbing
towards 2 million, we need to throw our full weight into the anti-poverty
campaign. It is a central part of our fight for education.
There
are those, though probably not very many in this room, who suggest that we may
be better off with the Tories.
On the
July lobby of Parliament, I went with my Division to lobby Derbyshire MPs. Amongst them we saw Patrick McLoughlin,
Tory MP and Whip. Incidentally in his office, he has a framed portrait of
Margaret Thatcher – with a leather whip tastefully displayed beneath it. Maybe we’ll leave
that there!
He told
us that he thought the teaching profession had been shabbily treated by the
Labour Government, and that teachers and schools would be very well looked
after under a Tory Government – whereupon one of our delegation piped up, “I’m
sorry Patrick, you are clearly confused – we are hear from the National Union
of Teachers – not the Alzheimer Society”
Of course
we all remember VERY clearly the record of the Tory Party. And we have only to hear
what Michael Gove has to say to see that they want to
be in the driving seat of even more fragmentation, competition and private
control of education – through a massive expansion of Academies, and every
school to become increasingly “independent”.
“We will tear down the
bureaucratic barriers which prevent new schools being built, and remove the
administrative obstacles which currently prevent charities, churches, voluntary
groups and others (who are these others? Let's not be coy, we're talking about private
sector companies) from
providing the new schools parents want and children need.
From
As The Observer
put it, “Mr. Gove set out plans to create a network of 5,000 state-funded
"academies" which would be independent of "suffocating
bureaucracy". The plans are modeled on the system in
Gove is accredited with comparing the provision of schools with that of
hairdressers. The Government does not give or deny permission to anyone wanting
to establish a hairdressing business, he points out. The success or failure is
determined by the customers. What’s so different about schools?
He is a strange man, Michael Gove. An avid defender of moral standards, he
launched an attack on such “lad mags” as NUTS and ZOO
in a speech to the
"Titles such as NUTS and ZOO paint a
picture of women as permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available. The
images they use and project reinforce a very narrow conception of beauty and a
shallow approach towards women. They celebrate thrill-seeking and instant
gratification without ever allowing any thought of responsibility towards
others, or commitment, to intrude. We should ask those who make profits out of revelling in, or encouraging, selfish irresponsibility among young men
what they think they're doing...."
Such very noble sentiments are slightly tarnished by Gove’s parliamentary declaration that the NUTS TV production company, Red Fig, gave his constituency office £2,000 to assist with his election – obviously not quite enough to win his undying support!
The same Michael
Gove, as a student President at
So how about the Lib Dems? One thing about perpetual opposition is that it allows a certain degree of “free thinking” – how about this from one of their websites, expounding the virtues of breaking up the state system of education, under their policy of “free schools”, congratulating the Tories on sharing Lib Dem policies, and taking things to their logical conclusion...
“By declaring that the Conservatives will not allow firms to
make a profit from the free school system, however, Cameron is failing to fully
utilise the opportunities free schools could offer, and which can only be
accessed by allowing profit-making into the system…. We don’t really need
another explanation of how private firms have incentives to perform best, but
needless to say they have the biggest incentive to move into areas where
schools are failing, rather than where the best pupils can be found. Islamic
schools will be set up where there are Muslim students, Christian schools where
there are Christian pupils, etc. Allowing parents to set up schools in their
own areas is an admirable aim, and one that we should encourage - but it is an
idea that only middle- and upper-class parents will have the time and social
capital to put into practise. If free schools are about improving inner-city
failing schools then we need to allow firms to set up schools, because they are
the most likely to do so.”
So where does all this
leave us?
Following our strike in April, David Cameron said, "I think the Government is going to have to be extremely tough about this, and we would support them in this, to make sure we don't have a wave of public sector strikes - and a Government people feel they can push one way and push it another way and get what they want." I don't think I'm reading to much into this by interpreting it as a statement of intent to ban public sector strike action. How else could a Government, unprepared to be "pushed one way and another", "make sure that we don't have a wave of public sector strikes."? They would justify it on the basis that we work with vulnerable children who have to be protected from our selfish interest. They would point to our "independent pay review body". They would probably offer binding arbitration. But I think it is likely that our "right to strike", which we all know is not protected in law, would go the way of our right to collective bargaining.
The General Election will leave us again with a choice of the “least bad”.
So against the neoliberal, anti-Union privatising
consensus that characterises the Parliamentary parties, we need to build a new
radical campaigning consensus of our own within the teaching profession, across
the unions, and reaching into our communities. Which is easy to say and a lot harder
to do.
As the recession deepens – and it will deepen - the attacks on education,
public services, social provision, job security and pay will intensify. The
fascist Right particularly in the form of the BNP will seek to capitalise on the situation, and we need to oppose them in
every way we can. Recession is a breeding ground for fascism among those who
rightly feel abandoned by the powers that be. We need not to just expose the fascist nature
of BNP, but we have to deal with the issues that they distort to gain
support from fundamentally decent, abandoned, frightened people looking for a
voice, looking for easy answers and "strong" politicians. If we are going to see
fascism "never again", we have to help build a broad democratic campaigning consensus
based on the needs of working people.
We are well placed to help build that new consensus. Despite the best efforts of those who attack
teachers and the education system, schools still lie at the heart of our
communities – with strong support from those communities.
We have to turn every school into a fortress from which to pursue the
fight, the historic fight that I referred to before, for state education, public
services, dignity and the extension of democracy – and against poverty,
exploitation and class disadvantage. And that needs the active engagement of
our members.
Can we succeed? I think so – though we are not currently in the position we
had wanted to be in. Our campaigning strategy on pay has illustrated great strengths
in the
On our own, or with just one or two other unions, the NUT can mount very
successful protest action. But I believe that we have to aim at securing three
things in order to pursue our policies successfully – in order not just to
protest but to win. Those three things are unity, organisation
and solidarity. Unity and organisation
of our own union, unity and organisation across the
public sector, and solidarity with our communities.
The pay campaign has brought a whole new generation of teachers into Union
involvement and activity. This coupled with the development of our young
teachers structures provide us with new ground on which to build the
The
But secondly the pay campaign strategy – its route to success – was built
around the development of an escalating campaign, including strike action,
across the whole public sector at a time of government vulnerability. Of
course, the pay campaign has never been a campaign OF strike action, but a
campaign INCLUDING strike action. On a number of occasions some members have criticised the ‘gap’ between the April strike and our
current strike ballot. Of course, there should have been no gap in the campaign
at all. Using the great campaign materials produced centrally and locally local
lobbying, school meetings, media campaigns, leafleting, street stalls, public
meetings, local work with other unions, petitioning and many other activities
have been undertaken as part of the continuing campaign. In fact, involving
members in this way is likely to prove the best possible way of maximising a good outcome in the ballot.
We were always aware that any one section of workers divided organisationally, as teachers are, is inherently much
weaker than they could and should be. That’s a fundamental of trade unionism. Thus our total commitment to professional unity – and our ambition
to bring our sister teacher unions on board, not least through pressure from
their members, and the impetus of a public sector wide struggle. But
teacher unity has eluded us – at least for the time being – as the leaders of
the other Unions remain wedded to their pernicious “Social Partnership” with
Government. Some see this as too big a problem to tackle, and want to wait
until we are “less divided” to pursue the fight for a single teachers’ union.
But, in my view, the opposite is the case. The fight for unity is all the more
important and urgent when disunity is at its strongest and most damaging.
Thus the unity of all the public sector unions was and is even more
important to us – and, though the rejection of below inflation pay remains
strong across those unions, with unanimous votes at TUC etc, the commitment of many
of those unions to a campaign with industrial action at its heart, is for the
time being at least and for whatever reason simply not there – either in their
leaderships or in their member response to ballots etc.
Does this mean that we should not pursue our pay campaign? Not in the
slightest – in fact it means that we have to step it up. Clearly, the first
most central urgent task is to make sure that members vote in the ballot and to
get a resounding YES vote.
And alongside that task we have another - the third condition of a
successful campaign – and one which might well lead to a renewed public sector
unity as the campaign continues – building strong solidarity in our local
communities..
We have to embed our pay and workload campaign in our campaigning for a
good local school for every child and community – for state comprehensive
education. The message is not a difficult one. If we want “good local schools”
teachers must be properly paid, and not loaded down by unacceptable workload
and oversized classes. Alongside other nationally and locally delivered
services, we can be sure that education will be made to bear the brunt of the
current economic crisis. We have to be instrumental in organising
our communities to resist – alongside other unions, through trades
councils etc, and alongside community organisations,
parent groups etc. Through such local organisation
and campaigning, together with our strong national position, we can rebuild the
commitment from others to a national campaign – both for public services and
for public sector pay. Such campaigning cannot be done by just local officers –
again, we need to get our School Reps and members involved.
Let’s be in no doubt. If schools are “independently run” and privatised, through Academies or “free schools” or any
other such spin – teachers’ national pay and conditions will, as surely as
night follows day, be undermined and cease to exist. As will
facilities time, with devastating effect on our organisation.
National pay and conditions and effective union organisation
are simply incompatible with fragmentation and privatisation
– and our enemies know that well.
The theme of this Div Secs briefing – educate,
agitate, organise could therefore not be more
appropriate… now we have to make sure that it happens. Unity really IS strength
– but it doesn’t come easily or automatically. Solidarity really IS the key,
but it needs careful building
We have to respond then, by putting real flesh on the bones of our agreed organising agenda. We need to examine all our resources and
deploy them to build our strength at Regional, Divisional, Association and
school level. We need to meet the
training and organisational needs of local officers and
school reps as never before – and to fight for the time for those local
officers and school reps to do your jobs effectively.
It’s a huge task. Are we up to it? Having had the privilege of visiting
many Associations, Divisions and school groups, I find people who are
absolutely committed, concerned about their workload, but proud, as I am, to be a member
of a
When asked his thoughts on the article, Mr Gove, 41, who read English at
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, was silent before muttering: ‘I had better get back
to you on that.’ He was later unavailable for comment.