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From International Socialism (1st series), No.40,October/November 1969, pp.8-9.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The hugely successful half-day demonstration by London teachers on July 9 was a surprise to many – not least to the right-wing National Union of Teachers Executive who, indeed, had done their utmost to sabotage it. In the event over 7,000 teachers withdrew from their classrooms in order to march and pack out Central Hall and the Royal Festival Hall to voice their demands for an interim salary increase as well as for greatly improved conditions for teachers and children, including a rapid reduction in the size of over-large classes.
It is not the intention here to attempt to justify the teachers’ case, which must be considered against the background of the alarming shortfall in the resources devoted to education in this country as compared, say, with other capitalist countries like USA and Sweden. The aim is rather to examine how it is that a union like the NUT, which hitherto has been noted in the main for middle-class respectability, has now moved into taking industrial-type action.
The NUT, with some quarter of a million members, is by far the largest of the teachers’ unions. Its National Executive, however, is overwhelmingly dominated by Headteachers who, by their signatures to contracts of loyalty to the education authorities, can therefore be considered in large measure to be agents of the employers. The fact that they are paid on a completely separate scale further divorces them from the problems, needs and interests of the rank-and-file class teacher.
Recognition of this absurdity has been slow among teachers. For years, too, there has been a careful fostering of the nation that teachers are somehow superior to the industrial mass, should adopt ‘professional’ attitudes and never take any action which could be remotely designated as harmful to the children – what might be termed the ‘Florence Nightingale’ Syndrome – in an attempt to prevent any effective collective action.
Undoubtedly there has been a steady erosion of these attitudes concufrent with the rapid falling behind in the economic status of teachers due to the success of strongly organised industrial workers. At the same time this essential process has been greatly slowed down by incorrect rank-and-file leadership.
Until recently the only organised leadership amongst the teaching rank and file was provided by the Communist Party Educational Advisory Committee. At times this organisation did win considerable support, forcing the Union’s reactionary leaders to make, on occasions, threats of direct action and indeed of withdrawals of labour (their euphemism for the plebeian ‘strike’). In 1961 the NUT Executive, pushed by a rising tide of rank-and-file pressure, was within an ace of being forced to organise direct action. The Local Authorities had dug their heels in on an offer of a mere 40 per cent of the Union’s demand. A delegate conference insisted on ‘sanctions’, including withdrawals of labour. The Tory Government replied by proposing a further £5 million cut in the offer, directed principally at the lower paid younger teachers, pleading ‘economic difficulty’.
What followed seems nearer to fantasy than reality. The Authorities made a show of opposition to the Government and used all their guile to persuade the weak Union Executive, desperately looking for a way out of taking any effective action to join with them in ‘opposing’ the Government. Not so fantastic, one might say. But what was the line of the CP in this new situation? To rally the rank and file to force the Executive to carry out their instruction to fight? Not a bit of it! Their clarion call was to join the unholy alliance of the Executive and the employers ‘against’ the Government. Within a couple of weeks the employers had not surprisingly ratted and the Executive, seeing the rank and file in disorder following the gross betrayal of its CP leadership, meekly capitulated.
Demoralised and despondent, many militants threw in the sponge in disgust and left the Union. As for the CP this was the beginning of their end as an effective organised left-wing leadership. Bitter internal disputes, often breaking into the open, further weakened and discredited them, to the extent that few now take them at all seriously. Out of this confusion and disorder began to emerge the possibility of a new and more stable rank-and-file leadership. IS comrades played a not inconsiderable part in the soundings and discussions which followed. Out of all this and with the support of influential groups in Hackney, North London and Wandsworth the left-wing teachers’ journal Rank and File was launched in 1968. Its success can be measured by its general recognition as the reliable barometer of Union rank-and-file opinion and of the growing body of registered supporters around it. Alongside this has been the virtual eclipse of the CP organisation with their leader, Mr. Max Morris being thoroughly absorbed, as Mr. Anthony Crosland, Education Secretary in 1966 prophetically jibed would happen, into the NUT Executive.
This, then, was the background when the Salary issue blew up again last winter. The Executive once more weakly dithered on the edge of capitulation. They reckoned without this new element – the growing rank-and-file organisation. Wandsworth NUT had set up an Action Committee in December and prepared and distributed an effective leaflet at the New Year NUT Education Conference in London. A subsequent lobby of the Executive when news of the impending capitulation leaked out and a deputation of lobbiers was refused, developed into a mass sit-in and protest, occupation of the Executive Chamber. First steps were taken here to set up an unofficial campaigning body. At a subsequent meeting of the Wandsworth Action Committee thrown open to representatives from all over London the ad hoc Greater London Salaries Campaign Committee was born.
Its first job was to circularise all the 750 or so NUT branches throughout the country calling for a monthly meeting of delegates to plan tactics to be followed at a Special Conference of the Union called by the Executive to secure acceptance of a paltry salary offer. The London NUT leadership, feeling they could not beat them, made a show of joining. However, in spite of an effective demonstration organised by the Campaign Committee outside the Conference Hall the Executive narrowly won, sheltering behind the Prices and Incomes Act and a claim that the award would remove the differential between primary and secondary school teachers. This last proved to be quite illusory, incidentally.
The ad hoc Committee was encouraged by the large minority vote of 90,000 cast against acceptance and for strike action. It continued to meet, with fairly wide representation. Turning its face against unofficial protest strikes it set its sights firmly on transforming the minority into a majority for an Interim Award at the NUT Easter Conference. The official London leadership was won for this policy, and an amendment moved jointly by them and Wandsworth effectively obtained a substantial majority – a severe defeat for the Executive who complained that the ink was barely dry on the existing agreement. Mr. Max Morris, it should be noted, sat neutral on the platform.
This victory gave a shot in the arm to the militants and the ad hoc Committee turned its attention towards persuading the London organisation to take some direct action. The London Officers were forced to call a Special Council Meeting which overwhelmingly decided to call a half-day stoppage in July. The Committee was determined that the Mass Meeting proposed should be preceded by a March. In the teeth of bitter opposition from the right-wing and – guess who? – the official CP leadership, a March was agreed. The outstanding success of the demonstration confounded the right-wing opponents and dumbfounded the CP.
The lesson is clear – and not only surely for teachers. In the face of right-wing domination of the Union leadership it is essential to build a responsible, rank-and-file organisation to cut across traditional branch boundaries. The decision of this ad hoc Committee to resist impatient extraneous actions and to concentrate on working within the Union paid dividends. Its clear aims were not just to organise electioneering and place seeking, but to win the official organisation for clear, realisable policies and actions. Now, after this successful preliminary skirmish it sees its task as to carry the Union forward to bigger and more effective actions – as well as to encourage and develop similar organisations throughout the country. The call for a National One-Day strike before Christmas has been taken up by the NUT Young Teachers (now representing over half the membership). Undoubtedly such Committees will be even more necessary in the immediate future.
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