(Secretary, Oxfordshire NUT) Education is suttering an accelerating wave of cuts in services and jobs. But the cuts, caused by poll tax cap. ping and cuts in government grants, are often devolved to ocal level by the effects of Local Management of Schools (LMS) - the delegation of funding to individual The response of the big teachins union, dreadful. Languishing in the grip of general secretary Doug McAvoy, overpaid full-time of icials and a group of executive members who bizarrely call themselves the 'Broad Left', the union has failed to give ade quate support to local anti-cuts struggles.
How to overcome this situation was the focus of a conference attended by more than 70 NUT activists in Oxford last Saturday. Delegated by 36 NUT associations, the conference brought together activists sup porting the Socialist Teachers Alliance (STA), the Campaign for A Democratic and Fighting Union, and non-affiliated left wingers.
Among those who spoke at the conference were union treasurer-elect lan Murch, who bureaucratic corruption, blundering the unions strike und to pay for glossy booklets and useless daverusing canpaigns.
The oreanisers' aim was ta break the isolation of the numerous current fightbacks Local reports from delegates short-lived strikes, reluctantly sanctioned by the national union, but deprived of the support, publicity and national co05084808 they need and deserve.
A central concern of the conference, in addition to discussedundancies, cuts and lack of resources, was democracy in the NUT.
The McAvoy leadership is it is likely to affect only another 12,000 Hit by new cuts: inner city schools with black pupils one of the most authoritarian revealed a national picture of and anti-democratic in the trade unions. Last Easter's NUT tions ruled out of order for outside the aims and objects of the NUT, and not even published, let alone debated. Oxford conference ing strategies for fighting decided to launch a campaign for a one-day national strike something the JUT leadership has alway refused, hiding behind the anti-union laws.
Another meeting will be called to co-ordinate the left's intervention at this year's NUT conference, and to ensure that cuts and redundincies take centre-stage there.
And a conference of black teachers and community groups to discuss the fight against the 15 per cent cut in section il funding money given by the Home Office to aid the teaching of children from the 'new Commonwealth'.
This cutback has hit inner-city schools with many black pupils very hard.