Someone has sent me an extraordinary newsletter from the outgoing secretary of the North Yorkshire NUT. It provides a unique insight into the leadership of the most militant of the teaching unions. As anyone with a child at school will know, the NUT has been instrumental in organising this week’s ‘day of action’ in the hope of closing as many schools as possible across the country.
Some of it is just boilerplate. For instance, there’s a quote from Fiona Millar claiming that the coalition’s academy programme is an abysmal failure. In fact, more than 450 academies have opened since last September — bringing the total to over 650. In addition, another 1,070 schools have applied to convert, meaning that over a third of all taxpayer-funded secondary schools are either academies or in the process of becoming one. By any measure, the policy is a resounding success.
This is just standard misinformation that the NUT and its allies disseminate as a matter of course. No, it’s the material contained in the ‘valedictory note’ of the newsletter that is revelatory. Here’s one choice quote: ‘As Hanns Jhost nearly said, “Whenever a headteacher says that the children and their learning are the most important thing in school, I take off the safety catch on my Browning.”’ Why does the writer of the newsletter object to this innocuous platitude? Because it’s the teachers who should come first, not the children. Teachers need to be ‘valued by management and leadership’ and ‘supported well in their own professional and personal development’. Any head who dares to suggest that children’s interests should take priority deserves to be shot, obviously.
But my favourite part is an attack on headteachers who display pictures of their families on their desks. Why do they do this? the author asks. ‘Is it because they might forget what their “loved ones” [ironic font and punctuation] look like during their hard day at their desk? A warning not to get too close to the attractive chair of the PTA (that moment in the role play area of Reception Two on Parents’ Evening last month could have been disastrous for both)? Or an attempt to show how family friendly they are? Answers by email to whatanicepersoniam@pretence.com.’ Only an out-and-out Spartist — a left-wing loon of the first water — would read something sinister into a person’s decision to put up photographs of his or her children. ‘Look, comrades. He’s trying to pretend he’s a human being. We’re not fooled, are we brothers?’
This sort of attitude to ‘management and leadership’ helps explain the crazy decision of the NUT’s leaders to call for industrial action over the issue of pension reform. To begin with, what the government is proposing is completely reasonable. Negotiations are ongoing — or they would be if the public sector unions hadn’t flounced off — but it looks overwhelmingly likely that the rise in employee contributions will only be 3 per cent. Even after that change, public sector pensions will still be hugely attractive, the sort of package that private sector workers can only dream about.
It’s possible that the government will propose a more draconian set of reforms, but strike action would still be unjustified. I’m not such an anti-trade unionist that I think there are no circumstances in which teachers should down tools, but this isn’t one. What sort of message does it send to strike for such nakedly self-interested reasons? The NUT is effectively saying to children, ‘If your mummy and daddy refuse to give you more pocket money, it’s perfectly legitimate for you to throw a tantrum.’
Then there’s the fact that when the NUT balloted its members to see if they wanted to strike, only 40 per cent bothered to vote. Doesn’t that tell the activists something about how estranged they are from the rank and file? The NUT is forever criticising free schools and academies on the grounds that they’re not ‘democratically accountable’, but how ‘democratic’ is it to call a strike when a majority of the members haven’t voted for it?
It’s not surprising, of course. The leaders of the NUT are almost all members of the loony left. Christine Blower, the general secretary, stood as a candidate in 2000 for the London Socialist Alliance, an affiliation of far left political groups broadly controlled by the Socialist Workers’ Party. What’s incredible is that ordinary teachers, most of whom are conservative with a small ‘c’, should join such a militant union. The NUT has said no to every educational reform of the last 50 years. It’s about time its members said no to its increasingly out of touch leaders.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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