Shortly before Michael Gove organised a strike for journalists in Dundee, I crossed a
school picket line with my mum, a teacher at my local school (Nairn Academy). She was a member of a teaching union, the PAT, that didn’t believe in strikes, so when the school closed the two of us
went in. It was a perfectly friendly affair: my teachers (and her colleagues) were at the gate, with no one else around. One of her colleagues handed her a leaflet and we went on inside. We never
discussed politics at home, and I still have no idea what my mum thought about Thatcher (it was 1985). But then, she and thousands of teachers like her took the basic view that kids should not be
dragged into disputes between adults. I didn’t think much of it then, but looking back now, understanding the pressures teachers must have been under, it was quite something.
Gove is today calling for parents to cross picket lines and keep schools open today; and I wonder how many will do so. You get far nastier picket lines out there than the Highland division of the EIS. The NUT’s leader, Christine Blower, uses bullying as a key tactic. The Spectator revealed last year that the NUT threaten schools thinking about opting for Academy status. And while the percentage opting for the strikes was significant, the turnout was 40 per cent. When you count all of the membership, just 37 per cent of the NUT members have opted for this strike, and 29 per cent of the ATL union has. This is not a nation ablaze with anger.
The unions have chosen very weak ground. They scarcely have the support of their own members, let alone the rest of the public. Had it waited a year, the coalition government might have run out of momentum or popularity. But Cameron is moving fast. The NUT had hoped to send Blower’s heavies around to pick off schools converting to academy status. They ended up with too many targets: a third of all secondaries in England have already converted, or are in the process of doing so.
That’s why the unions are moving now. School reform now looks unstoppable, and pension reform is next. But while one may feel sympathy for a coal miner facing redundnacy, or underpaid teacher, the cause now is less clear. They want to retire aged 60, and ask that this is paid for by people who will now have to work until they’re 66. As David Cameron says, it’s simply unfair. And why should children be denied a day’s education in this cause? Why take it out on the pupils?
Also, the low support amongst union members for the strike might have another explanation. Teachers seem to quite like Gove’s reforms. Freed from the unions’ national pay bargaining, the best teachers can now be paid anything. They can even set up a school or a chain of schools. Gove’s reforms are bad for union barons, but good for teachers. And the latter, by and large, hate the idea of abandoning kids to play out some pay dispute.
Even the public sector pension reforms mean more money for the lower-paid civil servants, and less for the guys at the top.
The unions have picked the wrong battle and the wrong cause at the wrong time. They are betting that Cameron will cave, just as he did over forests, NHS and a dozen other issues. Fundamentally, they want to know: can he be broken, as Heath was? Or is he a fighter, like Thatcher was? In the next few months, we will find out.
PS: I Tweeted earlier that crossing that picket line was my proudest childhood memory. I withdraw this unreservedly. My proudest memory is clearing the 1m in the high jump in primary three. It’s been all downhill since.
Comments