01.05.2025

One union to another

Matt Wrack has been the target of a nasty smear campaign. The obvious problem, as far as his critics are concerned, is that he represents militant trade unionism. However, our movement needs radical democracy, including in its trade unions, says Carla Roberts

The drama around Matt Wrack’s appointment as general secretary of the NASUWT, the teachers’ union (formerly National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers) - and the subsequent decision to rerun the election by the union leadership after a concerted media campaign - reflects a number of problems with the way trade unions are organised and run.

After announcing that Wrack had been elected unopposed, the union has been taken to court by its Welsh regional officer, Neil Butler, who was blocked from seeking nominations on the grounds that he is not a member of the union. But then, of course, neither is Matt Wrack. No doubt, there is something in the rules that if a candidate is nominated by the executive, that rule does not apply. Nevertheless, the union very quickly capitulated (paying a substantial amount in costs to Butler) and branches now have until May 26 to nominate general secretary candidates. Butler, or anyone else, will need 25 nominations within that time - no easy feat, we would have thought.

First of all, we should say about the scandal that socialists should have absolutely no problem defending Wrack from the smears he has been subjected to in recent days. There is no question that the attacks come from the right and come with a rightwing agenda. The unnamed “government ministers”, or indeed, the bourgeois newspapers quoting them, clearly do not give a flying hoot about the fact that he has “no teaching experience”. They are, however, undoubtedly worried about Wrack’s “overly combative approach to industrial relations, taking the union away from the mainstream views of the school workforce”.¹

There was - and perhaps still is - a serious possibility that the more ‘moderate’ NASUWT under the leadership of Matt Wrack could unite with the National Education Union (NEU), led by the leftwinger Daniel Kebede. Not immediately, mind - the NEU’s recent unity call was rebuffed by NASUWT conference on April 28.² But under the leadership of comrade Wrack, the invitation would probably have been revisited. And even without a unification, it is clear to all that the possibility of united (strike) action by all teachers would inflict far more serious damage to the government (neither union is affiliated to the Labour Party, incidentally).

So-called concerns

The campaign against Wrack was - as is to be expected these days - garnished with the obligatory “concerns by Jewish teachers”, who allegedly oppose the “appointment of somebody who appears to be insensitive to their concerns”. It turns out - entirely unsurprisingly - that rather than “Jewish teachers” speaking out against comrade Wrack, it is in fact the ‘Partnership for Jewish Schools’, which was set up by the pro-Zionist Jewish Leadership Council.³ They are guessing that “the many Jewish members of the NASUWT are likely to find this appointment particularly challenging”. Whether they really do find it challenging, is, however, another question altogether.

Pro-imperialists

As an aside, that has not stopped the risible and pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty arguing that “we should not dismiss [Jewish teachers’] concerns, or delegitimise them, just because Wrack is on the left or because others have seized on it for their own reasons”, as an unsigned article on the AWL website states. It bizarrely goes on to claim that there are former members of the NEU who joined the NASUWT, because of the “repeated use in the NEU of the - highly ambiguous - term ‘Zionist’ as a label for the war crimes committed by the Netanyahu gang, which meant that they, as Zionists, were feeling held responsible, or made uncomfortable, in their own union.”⁴

Not as Jews, we should note - but as Zionists! They should indeed feel “uncomfortable”, we would argue - and then some. The current campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza is absolutely part and parcel of Zionism. After all, the Nakba in 1948 saw almost a million Palestinian Arabs violently displaced - their land, homes and belongings taken away, by Zionists. Zionism is based on the systematic oppression of the Palestinians. There clearly can be no progressive or non-racist Zionism. The AWL still cannot see the wood for the trees - or understand what role the anti-Semitism smear campaign has played in the campaign against the left, even though it became a victim of it too (the AWL was proscribed by the Labour Party in 2022).

Wrack is being attacked by the pro-Zionist right, because he dares call out Israel’s horrendous crimes in Gaza and on the West Bank. He also defended Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour leader. Indeed, comrade Wrack led the FBU to reaffiliate in November 2015 (it had disaffiliated in 2004 in opposition to Tony Blair). In March 2016, Wrack himself rejoined the Labour Party and went on to become chair of the semi-comatose Labour Representation Committee, thereby effectively fronting its admittedly tame opposition to the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt of socialists and pro-Palestine campaigners. Wrack resigned from the LRC in 2022, when it became clear that, with the end of the Corbyn movement, the LRC had managed to shrink to nothing.⁵

He has also committed himself to the socialist principle of workers’ leaders taking a salary based on the average pay of their members - no doubt something he learned during in his years in Militant Tendency. He explained his thinking after his election as general secretary of the FBU in 2005,⁶ stating that he had

decided to set aside £1,000 per month from my FBU salary and I have established a separate bank account into which I pay this amount every month by standing order. The fund established in this account is intended to be used to support trade union and Labour movement campaigns and initiatives. I intend to publish each year the total that has been paid into the fund and the causes to which donations have been made.

Ten years later, in 2015, he explained to the BBC that the amount is

now about £1,050 a month, about 30% of my pay coming in. I donate to trade union solidarity organisations, the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, strike funds coming in, so a range of issues. For me it’s about me not getting completely out of touch with my members. The money is not going to change the world, but about the political point of trying not to lose touch with my members.⁷

We also know from personal experience that he financially supported the short-lived Grassroots Momentum (set up after Jon Lansman’s coup in Momentum, when he abolished all democratic structures) and many other campaigns.

We could quibble that his wages had presumably gone up more than £150 a month between 2005 and 2015, but that would indeed be petty. He tried to put into practice a hugely important principle of the workers’ movement and deserves credit for that. We have not seen a similar statement since he has been in the running for general secretary of NASWUT, we must admit - but we expect him to make a similar commitment.

The more serious problem in this regard is that comrade Wrack was acting as an individual, not as part of an organised working class party that could hold him to account or indeed decide where the money should go. The same goes for his politics, of course. He was acting alone for much of the time. He might have been a member of the LRC (and the Labour Party) at least for some of this period, but he was not acting under the discipline or political direction of either. He is a political freelancer. And this is now starting to show.

While we refuse to be lectured by the right on the issue, there is indeed something rather odd about comrade Wrack moving from heading the FBU (having worked as a firefighter for many years) to heading a union of teachers. That does look a lot like professional trade unionism, rather than a worker representing his fellow workers.

Allegations

Comrade Wrack led the FBU for almost 20 years, but lost to former vice-president Steve Wright in January 2025 - and decided not to contest the election result, although it turned out that there were some serious, apparently administrative, problems (it turned out that 3,059 members did not receive a ballot paper⁸). Considering that Wright defeated Wrack by only 1,752 votes, we would have thought that a challenge would have been the obvious thing to do.

Wright, a long-time Labour Party member, is what we might call a typical Labour ‘moderate’. For example, he called on Labour MPs to vote against the benefits bill and describes himself as a “socialist”⁹ (Sir Keir Starmer probably still does too, once in a while). While he is probably not part of the Labour right, he is clearly to the right of comrade Wrack. He stood as a “unity candidate” against the “divisions and factionalism that have dominated our union at the highest level”.¹⁰ A thinly-disguised reference to a ‘scandal’ in the FBU that had been brewing since around 2022 and was clearly based on a politicised attack on comrade Wrack, involving some minor alleged rule-breaking.¹¹ It was Steve Wright who led the disciplinary investigation against Wrack.

The comrade was cleared, but it was probably enough of a muddle to lose him the position of general secretary. Perhaps he judged that moving on to another union would be a better and ‘safer’ option than challenging the FBU election. Had comrade Wrack been a member of the CPGB, we would have strongly ‘advised’ him not to go for the job at NASUWT - and would have expected him to act as a disciplined communist.

We also would have argued for a transparent and democratic election process, right from the start. We have no sympathy with Neil Butler, whose High Court challenge led to the NASUWT executive committee’s hasty U-turn. There will now be a ‘proper’ election - incredibly, this will be the first election for general secretary in NASUWT in over 35 years. Since 1990, the position seems to have been handed out by ‘uncontested election’ - ie, appointment.¹²

Communists fight for radical democracy in all working class organisations, including the trade unions - that is the only way to transform the working class into the ruling class of society itself.