Teachers face new tests
The success of any political camgauged by the witch hunt it inspires. The history of the labour and trade union movement is littered with examples: the Zinoviev letter; the Moscow trials; the smearing of Arthur Scargill.
In the case of George Galloway the charge was led by the Murdoch press with the Sun calling for Galloway to be imprisoned for inciting troops to mutiny and ended with a previously little known reporter from Conrad Black's Telegraph miraculously discovering documents that purport to reveal that George Galloway was directly in the pay of Saddam Hussein to the tune of £375,000 per annum.
The Telegraph called for Galloway to be tried for treason and, like the Sun, regretted that the death penalty was no longer available for such crimes.
Shortly after the war ended Tony Blair ....
Under fire: Galloway rushed to the Sun's offices to give Murdoch an exclusive. He had considered his position ... ... he'd had to entertain the possibility of resig nation.
This admission in itself showed how near the anti-war movement had come to success in the campaign against war with Iraq. No one person is identified more closely with the Stop the War movement than George Galloway. Galloway works tirelessly for the movement, addressing meetings large and small up and down the country.
In the week before the April 12 demonstration he drew a thousand people to a meeting in Liverpool; his speech started and finished with a standing ovation. Liverpool well remembers the reporting of the Sun newspaper when it accused Liverpool football fans of urinating on the dying at Hillsborough; sales of the Sun have never recovered on Merseyside.
There are two points to be made about these latest 'allegations'. Firstly there are uncanny similarities with the case of Arthur Scargill. Scargill as leader of the NUM was accused by the Daily Mirror of using money Inbar Tamari, Duncan Cryer and Stuart Richardson report from NUT conference
Standard Attainment Tests (SATS) are STares eye rested an old,
parents. They have created an education system where rigid teaching is prevalent and creativity has decreased. Many pupils are becoming very alienated by the inappropriate curriculum.
League tables based on SATs are divisive and create so-called 'sink' schools.
The decisions taken by NUT conference at Easter show the union is committed to a boycott of some of the tests. NUT activists need to insist that action must be taken jointly with other teaching unions.
We must campaign for further support from parents for a boycott. We need to hold street stalls and to encourage the formation of parent-teacher anti-SATs groups and ensure there is material in the local press.
Many local NUT associations will be sponsoring a conference soon to be organised by Herts NUT about SATs. NUT members should try to ensure that their association is represented and raise the conference at local branch meetings.
The other key debate at the conference was on "remodelling the workforce" - giving classroom assistants teachers' responsibilities without teachers' pay. All the other teachers' unions and the unions representing support staff have signed an agreement on this issue. This accepts that "higher level" classroom assistants could teach whole and of taking money from the hardship fund for the families of the striking miners for personal use. In the same way Galloway is accused of taking money destined to feed the Iraqi people for his personal use. The message in each case is the same: these leaders may say they are fighting for you but they are only out for themselves.
With the Galloway story the Telegraph expanded its original claims to state that anti-war activists were acting for profit, not just Galloway but also the entire leadership of Stop the War.
Secondly the story is presented as an oldfashioned journalistic scoop. It will be recalled that the Mirror journalists received a journalist of the year' award for the Scargill story, presented by Labour leader Neil Kinnock. No doubt Telegraph reporter David Blair will receive a similar accolade.
Of course false documents have already been used to make the case for war. The government "Dossier' included now discredited claims that Iraq had purchased uraclasses in return for vague commitments to reduce teacher workload.
NUT general secretary Doug McAvoy, has been fairly firm in rejecting this agreement.
His closing speech at conference remind. ed delegates that the NUT had organised industrial action in the late |9th/early 20th century to insist that pupils were taught by qualified teachers.
Others in Broadlyspeaking, the right wing group who control the union, were clearly uncomfortable with this militant position and made this clear in their conference bulletin. But not only were the right unsuccessful in weakening the Executive position, but a left amendment strengthening it was carried. Anti war debate
The conference was united in opposition to the war, and voiced its concern for the lives and safety of the people of Iraq, the teachers, the children they teach, and their families, while repeating its support for justice for the Palestinian people.
Delegates overwhelmingly supported anti-war demonstrations and initiatives promoting union policy on Iraq and Palestine. The motion also committed the union to send a delegation to Palestine to report to next year's conference on the situation facing Palestinian teachers and students.
Speakers at a packed anti-war fringe meeting included next year's NUT president Mary Compton, Jeremy Corbyn MP, ricated documentation.
Should there be any doubt as to the lengths the British state will go to protect its essential interests, the report from the Stevens inquiry should be required reading (see page 19).
Arthur Scargill was exonerated on all charges. Shortly afterwards it was revealed that the real criminal in the labour move. ment was Mirror-owner Robert Maxwell, who siphoned off hundreds of millions of pounds from his employees' pension fund
There is a real story of corruption and theft in Iraq. It concerns those with close personal and business ties to the Bush administration. They will benefit from the reconstruction contracts in Iraq and the fig. ures concerned will be in the billions, not millions.
It is certain that when the history of the granting of those contracts is written there will be some of those now pursuing George Galloway who will have had their noses in that particular trough. and Diane Langford of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Anti-racist debate
Conference opposed the segregated teaching of children from refugees and asylum seeker families in detention centres They condemned both BNP councillors and the outrageous comments made by Blunkett on the 'swamping of schools by refugees and asylum seekers.
The most contentious issue was an amendment, brilliantly proposed by Baljit Ghale, the first black woman on the NUT executive, which exposed the internal racism within the NUT and outlined how to combat it.
This amendment would recognise the right of the Black teachers' conference to submit motions to the union's annual conference, and find ways for guaranteed places for black members on the NUT executive.
Despite careful phrasing, these proposals met fierce opposition from the 'broad left' which controls the national executive Conference rejected this opposition, and passed the amendment by a large majority
Bradford and Halifax teachers and a Blackburn councillor, together with Nick Lowes of Searchlight, spoke at a fringe meeting on The Rise of the BP and Racism in Schools', attended by 150
200 attended the anti-Sats rally, whereas the public events of the political organisations were much smaller, with the Socialist Alliance, with 40 attending, being the largest.