‘Get the big calls right and you’ll be OK’

IT was dubbed a super-union by the media, but for many in the trade union movement the National Education Union – created in 2017 when the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the NUT amalgamated –was doomed.

“Other general secretaries who had seen mergers said it wouldn’t work and it would take at least ten years before the amalgamated union would start to function properly because there can be lots of infighting and jealousy between staff,” recalls Kevin Courtney, NEU joint general secretary and former general secretary of the NUT.

Six months after the two unions became one, those dire predictions seemed to be coming true. There was a lot of staff angst, with both general secretaries dealing with complaints from their respective staff, who were struggling to work out who would do what, says Mary Bousted, who had been general secretary of ATL for 14 years. “No amalgamation is easy, particularly for staff, and it was a really difficult time. ATL staff worried the organisation would be swallowed up by the much bigger NUT, which regarded the smaller union as Johnny-come-latelys,” she explains.

The two unions had decided to ballot their members on a merger as a response to the growing threat to education posed by former Education Secretary Michael Gove’s fast expansion of academisation. Kevin and Mary had already worked together successfully in 2011 during the pensions dispute.

But in those early months postamalgamation, it wasn’t just the staff who were struggling to adjust. Mary and Kevin admit they, too, found the rapid change tricky to manage.

Turning point

“I think as general secretaries, we were both feeling a bit of grief about what we had given up, even though we knew amalgamating was the right thing to do. We had both lost a bit of control because we were now sharing it. At that time, Kevin was still working mainly in the NUT office, I was still at ATL’s London office. We were still finding out how it would all work, and we didn’t know each other that well,” she adds.

It was at an awayday that things came to a head.

“It was a cold winter’s day and, without a great deal of enthusiasm, we were going through some aims. I had just knocked over half a pot of coffee – so things weren’t going well – and I just said ‘I feel so bloody miserable’. Kevin looked a bit shocked and said ‘well, I feel so miserable, too,’” remembers Mary. “That made things a lot easier, just having an honest conversation. It was quite cathartic. We were able to talk about why we felt as we did and then we were able to get on with what we were doing.”

Kevin also looks back on the day as a bit of a turning point. “The big issue for me had been that sense of buyer’s remorse. People will be very familiar with that after a big purchase. There was a sense of loss of the union I had been a member of for so many years, and the sense of giving up my position and authority as its general secretary, and a free-floating, unformed concern for colleagues and the union’s traditions.

“At the same time, Mary and mine’s relationship was new and untested. Acknowledging those concerns with one another, and agreeing to work the issues through together, was a big step forward.”

Not that there was an overnight transformation. The frank conversation helped their relationship grow, but things remained tough for some time. Mary admits to doing something many leaders will recognise – going out and looking confident and purposeful when often she felt neither.

“As a leader, you do the best you can. You listen to people, and you take advice, but in the end it’s your job to make a decision. If you get it right 75 per cent of the time, and you get the big calls right, you’ll be OK,” she says. “You have to be resilient. You have to work very hard and cope with being tired, but the reward is that your job is very interesting. I’ve had the opportunity to do a job I feel is morally and ethically the right thing. Not everyone gets the chance to work in a job where you’re doing a good thing.”

Signs of success

Looking back on the early days of the NEU, Mary says: “I’d say we had a bit of a crisis of confidence around whether we had done the right thing. It didn’t quite feel we had at the time, but clearly it was the right thing.”

The NEU’s success in its first five years is proof of that. Under Kevin and Mary’s leadership, the union has gone from strength to strength.

Their professional respect for one another has grown, and with it a firm friendship.

“It’s important you like someone,” says Mary, while Kevin cites their personal chemistry as a key ingredient in the success of their joint leadership, along with mutual trust. They share the same vision for education. They are also each committed to unions being organising unions, says Kevin, with a strong rep base in schools and colleges.

Each brings different, though complementary, skills to the partnership. Kevin is a great campaigner who has taught her how to be relentless, says Mary. For his part, Kevin admires Mary’s academic knowledge of education and writing – she is a former English teacher – and her intellectual demolition of Ofsted.

This mix of friendship, professional respect and different skills has helped them build the NEU, now the third largest union in the Trades Union Congress.

The first sign of the union as a campaigning force, with the power to influence, came early. The School Cuts website, allowing users to see how much funding individual schools had lost, became a powerful campaigning tool, helping to make school funding a key issue in the 2017 General Election. Research by pollsters Survation revealed that around 750,000 voters had changed their mind about who to vote for because of the Government’s school funding policy.

In 2019, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson increased school funding by £2.6 billion for 2020/21.

Tough times

In March 2020, Mary and Kevin’s still relatively new partnership was put to the test when they found themselves leading the union’s then 460,000 members (there are now more 500,000) through the worst public health crisis in a hundred years.

The Covid-19 pandemic coincided, disastrously, with Gavin Williamson’s stint as Education Secretary. While he and the rest of Government reacted too slowly, and always inadequately, to the mounting health crisis and growing numbers of Covid deaths, Kevin and Mary acted swiftly and decisively to advise and protect members. This put the pair in the firing line, and they were often attacked in the media, which implied the union was misleading members and denying children their education. “The establishment was down on our heads, and we had to support each other through that,” says Mary.

Kevin nods, adding: “Williamson started calling us the ‘no education union’, saying we were closing schools and depriving children of education. If he had taken our advice, schools would have been closed for far less time.”

He credits NEU staff for the part they played in the union’s response to the pandemic, from the really good advice they provided on health and safety to building the best communication techniques in the trade union sector.

While he and Mary have some skills as leaders, he says, they are always drawing on the knowledge of staff.

The communications strategy, using the latest technology, allowed them to get union messages, guidance and advice out to hundreds of thousands of members in workplaces, and then later, their homes.

Making big calls

On 3 January 2021, more than 400,000 people joined a Zoom call, where Mary and Kevin advised members, who were being expected to return to schools and colleges, they had the right to use Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 to refuse to attend their workplace if they believed it was unsafe.

Mary says: “I didn’t sleep for two nights before the call, but by the end of the day thousands of primary teachers had written a Section 44 letter. I was scared at that point because we were going up against the force of the state – not that being scared stopped us. It made us more determined. But that doesn’t come without personal cost. You think ‘is my phone being hacked?’”

The following day Boris Johnson U-turned and admitted schools were unsafe, partially closing them again. The union gained 20,000 members within the month, and 100,000 new Facebook followers, giving it the biggest social media presence of any union in the UK. “I honestly think the NEU saved so many lives over that time. Not just teachers, but parents and grandparents,” says Kevin.

New members joined in their thousands and rep numbers shot up. The union’s actions during this period were a masterclass in organising and activism, during which it built a solid base for the pay and funding strike ballot at the start of this year. The NEU was the only education union able to get the Yes vote for strike action back in February, and the success of our industrial action throughout this year, which has won strong public support, has paved the way for other education unions to ballot their members for action in the autumn if Education Secretary Gillian Keegan fails to improve the pay offer.

“We are a really effective union. We are able to mobilise quickly. We have a strong activist base. We are able to lead the intellectual argument and we are able to organise quickly to be effective industrially. And I am very proud of it,” says Mary passionately.

Kevin agrees. It’s unlikely the dispute will be resolved by the time he and Mary depart in August, but to have met the strike thresholds alone – and taken action – is in itself a huge achievement. “It feels good to be leaving on a high,” he smiles.

As incoming general secretary Daniel Kebede admitted at this year’s annual conference, Mary and Kevin will be a tough act to follow.