The public is with us as we fight the good fight

We won’t give up, NEU joint general secretary Kevin

Courtney.

WE were warned not to strike. It will “damage the reputation of the profession in the eyes of the public at a profoundly challenging time for many families”, former Education Secretary Kit Malthouse told us back in October as we prepared to ballot. Well, he was wrong.

On 1 February, teachers in England and Wales, along with support staff in Wales, went on strike for the first time in 12 years. Cheering, applause and car honking rang out across towns and cities, in a quite extraordinary display of public support. Passers-by joined our pickets, they listened sympathetically to what NEU members had to tell them.

18 letters, six squandered meetings

People on the street listened, while the Government has not. Over the past eight months we have written a total of 18 letters to four education secretaries (the fifth was in post for an absurdly brief 24 hours, allowing no time for communication either way), making plain the devastating impact of poor pay and its effects, along with workload, on recruitment and retention.

We have had six meetings. The last of them, just two days before the strike, where Gillian Keegan squandered yet another opportunity to resolve the dispute.

Never mind an offer of a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise – there was no offer of any kind.

That is despite our repeated warnings about the damage a five per cent pay rise (at the time it was awarded last summer inflation was 12.3 per cent) will do to teachers’ living standards, on top of years of below-inflation pay rises, and the strong link between poor pay and the worsening national teacher shortage.

The Government doesn’t need to take the union’s word for it that there is a crisis.

Its own figures provide the evidence. For example, its target for recruitment of new secondary school teachers was missed by a staggering 41 per cent this year. But ministers have not listened and so they must now accept responsibility for our action. It has showed us that the public believes in teachers, and in what they have to say about the dire state schools have been left in by years of underfunding, including of teacher pay rises.

Pupils suffer as teacher numbers tumble

In fact, NEU members didn’t share their own stories with members of the public on 1 February, because you believe your individual circumstances, although incredibly challenging, are less important than what is happening to the education system overall. Instead, it was the increasingly impossible job of trying to deliver the very best for children and young people with fewer and fewer teachers that you told people about.

At the same time, Gillian Keegan was on breakfast television talking about “future pay rises”, but refusing to commit to a better deal for this year. When will the crisis in our schools be treated with any degree of seriousness by this Education Secretary –or by any Education Secretary?

Our dispute will not end until Gillian Keegan begins negotiating. She has no choice. The Government can no longer assume vast sections of the country will take its side when there is national industrial action. It has been to the well once too often. Without voters onside, maintaining its position of no-negotiation will be impossible. The Government, which has operated so chaotically for so long, is simply unable to sell a story to the public that what our members are asking for is unreasonable.

Ignore us at your peril

It is important that we take heart from the huge amount of support we have, but also recognise it for what is – power. There were around 40,000 people from a number of unions who took part in the London demo on 1 February, and many thousands joined local demonstrations across England and Wales, powered by an energy and spirit I have never seen in my many years as a trade unionist. Our members’ message is cutting through. Gillian Keegan will ignore that at her peril. The public is with us, and our members have the strength and fight to strike until they get what they deserve and what schools desperately need. We won’t give up.