Standing Up for Education: organising at the local level

This article describes how one local teachers’ union branch has developed an active and imaginative campaign as it has challenged both national education policy and also the very specific attacks on schools in the community. By connecting local and national issues, and by linking struggles on pay and pensions to wider questions of policy, the local union has been able to engage both teachers and parents in broad campaigns that ‘stand up for education’. Organising to Re-organise In October 2013 joint strike action by the teachers’ unions NASUWT and NUT was taken under the familiar slogans of ‘fair pay’ and ‘defend our pensions’. However, alongside these demands was another cry – that of ‘Stand Up For Education’. Green T-Shirts and banners bearing this slogan were a ubiquitous presence on demonstrations and rallies the length and breadth of the country. Since then, the NUT nationally has turned the slogan into an organising and mobilising idea. Hundreds of ‘Stand Up For Education’ stalls have been organised by NUT activists in all major towns and cities, ‘Stand Up For Education’ leaflets and booklets have been produced, and the green T-Shirts and banners have featured in subsequent strike action. Like other NUT groups, we at the Nottingham NUT took up the slogan and orientated our work around it. However, in addition to the national campaign we were involved in, teachers in Nottingham have faced their own, more local threat. This is why the union has sought to embrace the national turn towards social movement trade unionism – most clearly articulated by NUT General Secretary Christine Blower at the union’s 2014 conference – but also to apply this in our own specific context as the union in Nottingham has sought to respond to the crisis faced by teachers in the city.