President Hull NUT (personal capacity) VOTING for the election for General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers for the five-year term 1999-2004 ended at the start of the summer. Doug McAvoy was re-elected to the post of General Secretary. The results were McAvoy 39,245 and left challenger Christine Blower 22,183.
The vote was a disappointment for the left in the NUT, which has waged a united and well-organised campaign. However, the result was not totally surprising. McAvoy had carefully positioned himself against the government on the key issue of Performance Related Pay and had appeared, to many, to be willing to lead a serious campaign on the issue at NUT conference. The reality has been that there was no strike action in the summer term. A boycott of appraisal has been introduced following a successful ballot.
This ballot has not yet had any major effect partly because most well organised schools have not been participating in appraisal schemes for a number of years.
The real battle is yet to come and will revolve around New Labour's new appraisal scheme which will be used to try to bring in Performance Related Pay.
The left needs to continue to build the campaigns around Performance Related Pay and privatisation. We need to remind everyone that the vote for McAvoy was not a vote for the government despite ministers welcoming McAvoy's victory.
Even McAvoy's keenest supporters are critical of New Labour. The left needs to work to convince ordinary teachers of the need to actively take on New Labour and to make them understand the all-to-real possibility of the newly elected General Secretary trying to reach agreement with the government on the basis of some spurious