Secretary
Oxfordshire NUT (Personal capacity) THIS EASTER over a thousand delegates will gather at the NUT annual conference in Scarborough.
Media attention will, as always, be focused on this most political of (teacher) union conferences where 'executive bashing' has become almost routine.
Unable to win the vote in key debates the new realist leadership resorted to overturning conference decisions on the executive where they have an increasingly tenuous majority.
The results of this year's executive elections (half the seats are re-elected each year) offer the possibility of the long-awaited breakthrough by the left.
Even the SWP revoked their policy of refusing to 'get their hands dirty' and are standing candidates on the Socialist Teachers' Alliance slate and are likely to see one or two of their comrades elected.
The conference agenda has once again been set by the left with STA motions being prioritised for debate in five out of eight sections of the agenda.
Backing boycott
Last year the conference was dominated by the SATs issue. Now, following a second overwhelming ballot result, General Secretary Doug McAvoy, with his eyes set on five more years as Britain's top paid union bureaucrat has nailed his colours to the boycott mast and whipped the spineless right wing executive majority into line.
So the key debates will be on salaries and conditions of service. Although the government has agreed a pay 'rise' of 2.9% forteachers they are not funding it.
Most local authorities, having budgeted for less and with balances depleted by years of capping induced cuts, have passed the costs onto school budgets with little or no extra cash.
The inevitable consequences will be redundancies, larger class sizes and worsened condiBroad but by no means left: NUT General Secretary Doug McAvoy hopes to ride tide of anger over SATS to win a new term of office. tions of service.
Conference will be presented with the stark choice between the failed casework and atomised local action strategy of the executive or a national campaign alongside other public sector unions.
Recent advice issued by the 'five teacher associations' (which includes the scab PAT) is all about managing redundancies 'fairly' and shows that the new realists have learned nothing from the past 14 years.
The recent High Court decision against the lecturers union NATHE poses a massive threat to the NUT with its infamous membership computer.
The motion on the anti-union laws, to be moved by SO supporter Roy Leach, exposes the complete failure of the union and the TUC to seriously confront the Tories' laws.
The consequences of this policy are clear - further shackles imposed on unions - yet an executive amendment will seek to maintain the union's craven kowtowing to every piece of reactionary legislation the Tories (and judges) can dream up.
Other lively debates are likely around anti-racism, Section 11 and performance related pay (PRP).
The executive is seeking to reverse last year's decision to support both the ARA and ANL, citing the police riot in Welling as a reason to make support for the ANL conditional.
Cuts in Section 11 funding threaten thousands of teachers' jobs (most of them women from ethnic minorities) and would be a massive blow to children already subject to discrimination and increasingly subject to racanniversary. ist abuse and attacks.
Last year's conference voted for a national ballot for a boycott. of appraisal because of its links with PRP. The leadership's failure to implement this decision will provide yet another clear example of their lack of fitness to lead.
There are two left formations - the STA and the smaller Campaign for a Democratic Fighting Union. Both are genuine broad lefts and there are no principled obstacles to their merger. Yet this is vigorously opposed by the SWP and a few non-aligned socialists who argue that this would represent a shift to the right and a dilution of socialist politics within the union.
Democracy
They fail to understand that the STA is not a united front of revolutionary marxists but a genuine broad left in which a commitment to union democracy, accountability and defence of members' interests should be the touchstones of membership.
The left in the NUT is the best placed of all to create a genuine class-struggle union and yet the sectarianism of the SWP threatens this and the hard won gains of the past years.
As a result an open 'unity caucus' has been formed with the goal of building a genuine broad left which can mount the challenge to the right wing and new realists that teachers and the trade union movement so desperately need. Satwinder Bhamra has been falsely imprisoned for 11 years. A protest picket on March 9 marked the School youth join protests at f4m cuts in school spending by Walsall council By Terry Smith A re-run of the ballot for Regional Convenor, the senior elected post in the London Region of UNISON has been demanded after a series of irregularities came to light at the first meeting of the union's London Regional Council.
In the disputed election, left wing candidate Geoff Martin tied with Debbie Long, each receiving 59 votes. But under the proportional voting system used, Long won the post on the basis of more first preferences.
However it then emerged that a string of delegates who would have voted for Geoff Martin had been denied ballot papers, with officials claiming their registration papers must have been 'lost in the post'.
Martin, branding the ballot "a total shambles', has now written to UNISON General Secretary Alan Jinkinson, demanding a fresh ballot.
He and several prominent left wingers were elected to the Regional Executive, with UCH strike leader Candy Udwin topping the poll.
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