18.04.1996

NUT votes for democracy

Over Easter the leadership of the National Union of Teachers suffered a blow in their attempt to turn the union in to a teachers’ version of the Automobile Association with unquestioning loyalty to Blair.

With the left increasing in strength amongst activists, the leadership has increasingly lost control over the union. This Easter NUT general secretary Doug McAvoy, in an attempt to stop the left, brought proposals to its conference which would atomise the membership even more. Their only democratic involvement would consist of ticking boxes and then returning the pre-paid envelope. Delegates threw out these moves with an increasing majority on every occasion.

One proposal was for every motion passed at conference to be put to a vote of the whole membership. Yet in a recent ballot only 18% of the whole membership voted for such a scheme. Even McAvoy hardly has a mandate. In the last election for general secretary he only narrowly beat the left candidate.

McAvoy’s worries over the growing strength of the left were confirmed when it gained an extra five places on the executive prior to conference. McAvoy’s backers, the mis-named ‘Broad Left group’, which consists of Blairites and ex-Eurocommunists, now only has a majority of two.

Although the gains made by the left groups - the Socialist Teachers Alliance and the Campaign for a Democratic and Fighting Union - are to be welcomed, there is the danger that one set of union bureaucrats will replace another. Many may have been in their youth members of Trotskyist groups, but they have long since abandoned any militancy. The majority of them feel more at home as part of the Labour Party left than Scargill’s SLP or the revolutionary left.

The two left groupings function more like typical ‘Broad Left’ organisations than rank and file ones. They have increasingly cut themselves off from the bulk of the membership. Obsessed with union elections, they have been unwilling to provide a political challenge to the leadership.

Tony Coughlin