Jones - co-architect of a sell-out. ers at the report. Jack Jones called a national docks delegate conference of the TGWU to try to get them to accept the report. There were thousands of dockers outside Transport House when the conference took place, and great battles with the police. Aftera long hattle Jones swung a majority in his favour. When this was announced there were riots outside and dockers stormed the meeting room. Jones was physically attacked, for which dockers were later disciplined by the union. The National Port Stewards Committee tried to keep the strike going - but it was impossible against the weight of the TGWU.
The dockers' fears had been right Aldington-Jones reduced registered dockers from 60,000 then to 9.000 today. It was also the end of the Blue Union, which had played a militant role in these events. One of the most apt comments amd about the Bluc Union came from Morris Foley, a former TGWU full time official, who said: "This union (the NASD) had done a lot for our industry. They were for many years the backbone of the union movement as far as London was concerned'. Unfortunately culmination of dwindling membership caused by rodundancies and an erosion of their negotiating rights finally forced the NASD into amalgamation with the TGWU.
Now that the chips are down in a new con frontation with a hard-line Tory govemment, today's dockers are once again up against a crisis of trade union and political leadership, and facing the need to organise their own strength to ensure they are not held back by the likes of Todd and his co-thinkers among TG WU officials and executive members.
There is no scope for half measures. If the dockers are defeated or sold out this time around there will be little if any chance to come back again for another try later on: dockers have much to defend, and the strong traditions of docks militancy have much to offer other sections of workers confronting today's ruthless employers offensive.
FEATURES
education?
The past few years have seen a ferocious attack on working class educational interests by the Tories, culminating in the passing of the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA). The Labour leadership, clothed in its new realist garb has either been silent on these attacks or bent under the pressure of the Tory offensive towards supporting "progressive' notions such as regular testing! The NUT leadership has been more interested in defeating and marginalising the left in the union than in mobilising teachers in defence of their interests.
The combination of ERA together with the defeat of teachers over pay and conditions, the defcat of left Labour councils and the defeat of the Innet London Teachers' (ILTA); which has been the vanguard of left teachers, mark a qualitative defeat for the working class, and hence the successful installation of key elements of the "new Tory cducation".
Local management of
The keystone of ERA is the introduction of Local Management of Schools (LMS). More than the national curriculum or even national testing, this will change the face of British education.
There is genuine dissatisfaction, both among teachers and parents, with the bureaucratic management of schools by Local Education Authorities (LEAs). By offering apparently greater power to schools and to parents and goverors, the Tories hope that they will win consent to other changes. In this contest, it should be noted that while some genuine powers are handed over, the overall effect of ERA is a centralising one. The Act provides the Secretary of State with well over 300 new powers, including the power to lay down detailed programmes of study. Moreover, the power which govemors will have under LMS will be severely constrained by lack of funds and govering bodies will end up having to administer expenditure cuts and/or spend time and effort on fund-raising from private sources. Nevertheless, it is necessary for the left to develop a policy which allows genuine participation of parents and students in the managoment of schools.
LMS signals the end of effective local authority control of education. Where education has, since 1944, formed the major part of local authority expenditure, together with housing and social services, LEAs will now function as "clearing houses' for the distribution of funds to schools. Only 7 percent of the education budget will be allowed to remain under the direct control of the LEA, and this will have to be spread very thinly to cover a range of "discretionary"
provinion, from school mealsto in service training of teachers (other than that funded directly by the goverment), support for children with "special educational needs" and supply coverto allow "facility time' for teachers with union responsibilities. LEA's will be unable to lay down policy on such issucs as gender and "racial equality (though they will he allowed to provide guidelines) and, other than the distrihution of funds, their anly real function will be the inspection of schools to ensure that the national curriculum is being delivered.
This will have disastrous effects on the power of the unions in the cducation sector, which will be forced to negotiate in small, single workplaces, since national and local agreements on conditions of service will hecome untenable and unenforccable. The effect of LMS, taken together with open enrolment and the possibility of opting out, is likely to be an increase in competition between schools and between individual teachers. The NUT (and other unions) will need strategies for preventing this. In particular, the tendency of the NUT to look increasingly to case work" in the op posite of the strategy needed -especially when, as in the case of the Highbury Quadrant teachers, it is unwilling to delend militants within its own ranks.
The ERA and women
The vast majority of people emplyed in education are women. The effects of the ERA and, in particular, of LMS on them are likely to be disastrous. Equal opportunities practices may well appear to be (and may objectively be) more expensive. Rights to maternity leave are likely to bo under carly attack - indeed, there are arcady signs that it will not be guaranteed in all cases. Part time, temporary and cantal supply posts are overwhelmingly held by women, and these, too, are likely to be increas ingly threatened. Dinner supervisors and cleaning staff will also be under attack with the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering. These are issues which the left must take up and force the unions to fight on.
Opting out
As with the proposals for re-organisation of the NHS, opting our is a staging post on the road to privatisation. The issues raised by LMS will be even more acute in schools which have opted out, which will have total control of employment and conditions of service. Under LMS employment will be in a somewhat ambiguous position — contracts will be with LEAs, while hiring and firing will become the responsibility of the school's governors. However, none of this ambiguity will exist in opted out schools: Contracts will be with the school alone, and governing bodies will be ahle to refuse to recog nise unions, to decide on the tems of their con tracts and so on, without let or hindrance:
While most of the schools which have decided to opt out so far are those under threat of closure or those in wealthy areas where parents aspire to private education, there have been some votes to opt out by parents in inner city areas (Small Heath school in Birmingham, for example), where cuts in education expenditure by the BA have led parents to believe that their children's education will benefit from being removed from LEA control. The national curriculum and national testing
Baker's intentions in the introduction of LMS and opting out have been well thought out and, in the absence of major action from the unions and the Labour Party, are quite likely to be successful. But there is a contradiction within the introduction of the national curriculum which can, and should, be exploited.
Baker's ideas on education are simplistic. bascd on his own memories of (private) schooling. Although the members of the various working parties on the National Curriculum and on testing have been hand picked by him for their record of conservatism in education (Profs Black, Cox, and co), their reports have not been in line with his demands. in particular, the Cox Report on the English curriculum has, for the most part, been based on the best practice current in primary schools.
In spite of sending the reports back for redrafting, and, in the cases of science and maths getting most of what he wanted, there remains the possibility, particularly in the case of English and particularly in primary schools, for progressive teachers to subvert the intentions of the Tories, The probiem with this will, of course be that the introduction of national testing is likely to lead to 'teaching to the test". just as it did in the days of the 11 plus - some thing which progressive teachers must oppose.
This is not to argue that left teachers should content theniscives with trying to subvert the national curriculum. Nonetheles, it is important that every avenue for opposition to ERA should be used, and this is one which must not
Racism and religion
The overall effect of ERA is likely to be racist. Under LMS it is likely that schools with large numhers of black students will lose funding. which will not be compensated for by the use of Section I1 funds. Testing will operate in racist (and sexist) ways, with large numbers of black children relegated to lower streams carly on in their education. In spite of this, there in a large section of the black community who regard the introduction of the national curriculum as being positive, hoping that it will go some way towards ensuring equality of opportunity for their children. The concern of these parents over the institutional racism of the education system, nearly 20 yeam after the publication of Bernard Coard's How the West Indian child is made educationally suh-normal in the British school system, is well-founded and mcans that we have to ensure that an antiracist perspective is integrated into opposition
Meanwhile, the clause enforcing Christian
LL
EA
RE worship has increased pressure towards the egtablishment of denominational schools for Muslims and other black groups. This pressure must be resisted and all forms of religious worship in schools opposed
While all this represents an cormously significant attack on working class rights it carries within it the basis for continuing the fight. Whereas
10 years ago, the majority of teachers voted Conservative, loday the attacks on their pay and conditions of scrvice and on the education system ая a whole has seen the radicalisation of a large layer of
The teachers.
majority of teachers are dissatisfied with ERA.
and flashpoints are hound to arise as LMS is in-
Recently the Socialist Teachers" Alliance
(STA), which is the largest left grouping in the
NUT, has begun to move away from a narrow view of the task for left teachers as heing purely to do with pay and conditions. It has produced a Charter for Education, which has been taken into the Chesterfield movement;
STA members facilitated the education workshop at the Women for Socialism Con ference and are among those leading the
Women for Socialism day school on Socialist
Feminism and Education to be held on June 10.
The STA is sponsoring a model resolution for this year's Labour Party Conference, which is based on the need foraction on education which is not confined to pay and conditions; and its resolutions to NUT national conference spanned a wide range of issues, including salaries and conditions of service, racis, equal opportunities and Local Management of
At NUT conference, the STA inflicted a number of important defeats on the exocutive, notably on union democracy and racism (with the executive accepting the STA resolution after their amendment to it was beavily defeated). The STA effectively set the agenda for conference, with its resolutions being the main ones in virtually every section.
*Broad Left' (which, in the NUT. means the right) leadership of the union is in disarray, with sections of it opposing General Secretary desig nate Doug McAvoy's moves to tum the NUT into another EETPU, and they were clearly divided on a number of crucial issues at conference. For example, Marian Darke, who will
Baker's ideas are based on memories of private schools. almost certainly be opponng McAvay in the coming union elections from within the 'Broad Left , made a speech opposing the executive's position on whether NUT members should apply for jobs in City Technology Colleges: this proved critical in swinging the delegates behind the STA resolution.
However, there is still a long way to go. Exactly how to fight LMS effectively will be the subject of further dehate within the STA, and will certainly be discussed at a Conditions of Service Conference to be called by Ealing NUT in conjunction with other STA-controlled Associations in September.
The resolutions at national conference calling for action were either narrowly defcated or only narrowly won, and General Secretary Fred Jarvis was able to arguc, at the end of conference, that such a situation did not provide a
The defeat of the executive on issues of democracy has led to the union's first everelec. tion for the position of General Secretary, to be followed later in the year with elections for Deputy General Secretary. The STA's candidate in the General Socretary election will be Bernard Regan, and he will be fighting on a class struggle platfonn, paying particularattention to the needs and rights of women, black and lesbian and gay teachers. In the current situation in the union, it is entirely possible that he will run McAvoy much closer than the NUT's leadership would like, and that STA candidates could he elected to the posts of Deputy General Socretary and Vice President. If this happens, it will represent a major move
Debbie Epstein
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 15 Mav 1989 PHOTO: John Harris/AFL Page 9