socialist teachers to discuss how to fight both the Government's plans for education and the feeble "leadership' within the NUT.
The NUT is led by right-wing Labourites intent on maintaining the "professional' image of teachers. Improvements in the education system were won by the working class during the long economic boom following the last war. The NUT leadership played the role of brokers in this process: a body offering "professional' advice to both Tory and Labour Governments.
PROMOTION
Promotion up the union ladder often went hand in hand with job promotion. Little 'shop floor' organisation and still less a militant tradition was built up. In a union 250,000 strong, two thirds of whom are women, the vast majority of the national executive is composed of head teachers and men.
But the basis for the cosy relationship between the leadership of the NUT and the State has been destroyed by the growing economic crisis and the education cuts. In 1973 Tory Chancellor Barber lopped £182 million off the education budget, this year Healey took another £86 million. As the axe fell, and fell again, the NUT made ritual protests but did nothing to mobilise the membership.
The pattern was well established. They had already accepted Phases 1, 2 and 3 of the Tory Government's as had Max Morris, Communist Party member and then President of the NUT. The CP saved its militancy for attacking militants fighting incomes policy. It has continued to lead witch-hunts against revolutionary teachers while never speaking out against the Social ConWhen Reg Prentice received warm applause for his vigorous defence of the Social Contract and education cuts at the Easter 1975 annual conference of the National Union of Teachers, it was the last straw for many socialist militants in the audience. They decided to call a conference for Bernard Regan tract despite its leading positions on the union executive.
The International Socialists, once the dominant force on the far left inside the NUT, has failed to confront these bankrupt policies with politics. The latest issue of Rank and File reduces the fight against the right wing and stalinist bureaucracy to abolishing the postal ballot in union elections.
Far from posing class- wide demands uniting the whole of the labour and trade union movement in the defence and extension of the education system, IS see the fight against the cuts simply as a sectoral struggle against the Government's policies on public sector financing. simple policy of saving our own bacon' not only splits teachers from the rest of the working class, it does not even solve the problems teachers REBELLIOUSNESS Unfortunately many teachers, even socialists, are confused as to the source of their problems. Solutions to truancy, rebelliousness, violence and so on are seen in terms of developing better personal relationships with children, creating interesting lessons, and instilling a certain amount of non-physical discipline. All these things can and should be discussed. damental problem is the education system itself. It is built not to educate but to act as a giant selection and rejection sieve for capitalism in its search for the appropriate number IMG TEACHERS & SOCIAL WORKERS REPORT FROM of technicians, managers, and supervisors - the rest become workers which confronts them when they get out - are the concern of the whole working class. working class has the capacity to transform the education system. The But a WARBURTON, But the funSped him from taking up the job.
far-right hangers on.
Thus the problems which confront teachers and youth within the schools and the increasing unemployment And only the tors, or the teacners, pupis and their parents one quarter.
task facing socialist teachers is to take the whole debate on education into the workers movement, developing a campaign not simply to fight the cuts but to effectively isolate the reactionary Black Paperites and their DIALOGUE The Open Conference of Socialist Teachers on 12 July aims to begin this process by opening a long overdue dialogue on the left about the way forward in education. As such it represents a modest but extremely Teachers lobbied the Inner London Education Authority on 24 June to present a petition in support of a gay teacher, John Warburton, victimised for answering his pupils' questions on homosexuality. He has since been offered a job at another school, but because he refused to sign a declaration pledging that he would not discuss homosexuality with his pupils the ILEA has stop Over 2,000 teachers signed the petition, saying that they too would refuse to sign such a declaration, despite pressure on Warburton from the NUT Executive to agree to the ILEA's demand. The Warburton case highlights not only the way sexuality is treated in schools, but also the fundamental question of who should control the curriculum and in whose interests: the administra means a cut in real buying power of When the Leeds City Council met to important event in the life of militant teachers. The fact that a wide spectrum of the left as well as Labour Party members will be attending shows the opportunities that exist both to break out of the right-wing stranglehold of the union leadership and to turn away from the Rank and File cul de-sac of the IS.
Next week Red Weekly will be carrying material by teacher members of the International Marxist Group explaining the tasks to which we think the conference must direct its attention and what socialist teach ers must do in the coming period. ecument muscoe encea ano ast vear s level in real money terms restored, taking account of inflation, as a first step towards
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GAY TEACHERS NO AGAINST GAYS
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GAY TEACHERS VICTIMISATION NOW