To: All NASUWT members
From: Eamonn O'Kane, NASUWT General Secretary

February 2004

Dear Member,

Relationship with NUT

It is with some regret that I have to write to you on the above.

As many of you know, I have advocated strongly the case for maximum co-operation between the teacher unions believing, as I do, in the old adage that in unity is strength.

Indeed, several years ago I wrote a pamphlet which set out the case for thinking seriously about a possible merger between the TUC teacher union affiliates, ATL, NASUWT and NUT, which produced quite a controversy in the National Executive and Conference.

However, the persistent, unfair and corrosive attacks by the NUT on ourselves and ATL over the last year, following our signing of the National Agreement, has effectively undermined any possibility of harmonious co-operation.

Enclosed in the documentation [below] is a necessary rebuttal of the NUT's most recent outrageous attack. Necessary, because at the end of the day no self-respecting trade union can remain silent in the face of such calumnies.

Best wishes

Yours sincerely

Eamonn O'Kane
General Secretary

Has the NUT gone nuts?

For well over a year now, NASUWT and ATL have been subjected to a barrage of criticism from the NUT. This has taken the form of weekly adverts in the TES lambasting NASUWT for signing up to the National Agreement 'Raising Standards and Tackling Workload'. The adverts have vilified and constantly misrepresented the position of the signatory unions, including three of the largest affiliates to the TUC who represent support staff.

In order to preserve whatever semblance of unity remains in the profession, both NASUWT and ATL have not responded in kind to the NUT attacks. However, such forbearance is no longer possible in the face of the latest attack by the NUT in a document described as 'THE BETRAYAL - A SUMMARY'.

This is a document, distributed to all members of the NUT, in which it is claimed NASUWT and ATL have betrayed their members by the recent agreement on Upper Pay Spine 3. NASUWT and ATL are accused by the NUT of toadying up to the Government and, in effect, betraying the interests of their members by signing this agreement.

NASUWT and ATL, by engaging in serious negotiations, as any self-respecting union would seek to do, means, as far as the NUT is concerned, that we are described as the 'Government's unions'.

In the last eighteen months we have made the most significant advances for teachers for many, many years. In every case, the NUT has sought to disrupt, frustrate and ultimately destroy these.

Let us look briefly at the record of the NUT in recent years:

• this is the union that opposed the introduction of the Threshold arrangements back in 1998, went to Court in order to prevent their payment to the thousands and thousands of deserving teachers, lost the Court case but succeeded in delaying payment of the Threshold for many months;
• this is the union that belatedly joined with the NASUWT in our workload campaign but then refused to sign the Agreement which will do so much to resolve the workload problem;
• this is the union that spent thousands of pounds of its members' hard-earned subscriptions in attacking fellow trade unionists by placing virtually weekly adverts in the educational press;
• this is the union that is so faction-riven that the leadership is forced to kow-tow to the lowest common denominator in order to retain some semblance of credibility
• this is the union that claimed the overwhelming majority of its members would vote to support a boycott of Key Stages 1 and 2, but then ignominiously lost the vote;
• this is the union which launched a major campaign in an Oldham school against the employment of cover supervisors, provided for under the National Agreement, but was then forced to watch its members turn their back on the leadership's insistence that they should continue to take responsibility for cover;
• this is the union that has not produced one positive idea on how to move forward in terms of making real gains for teachers' pay and conditions;
• this is the union that engages relentlessly in the rhetoric of militancy but consistently fails to make good its promises about militant action;
• this is the union that is, in effect, a paper tiger and whose leadership is increasingly gaining the opprobrium and contempt, not just of other teaching unions but of the trade union movement in general;
• this is the union whose representatives, in last September's debate at the TUC on the National Agreement, had not the guts to stand up in open debate at Congress and defend their position. They remained mute, preferring instead to distribute leaflets attacking the Agreement to delegates;
• this is the union that, irony upon ironies, proclaims that its fundamental aim is professional unity. By engaging in this bitter and grubby little membership campaign, the NUT has done more to discredit the idea of professional unity than any other organisation has done for over a generation.

The time has long gone when the NUT could proclaim it spoke for the majority of the profession. It has now become a mouthpiece of ultra-left factions which dominate its National Executive, and are totally unrepresentative of teacher opinion in general.

The ATL and NASUWT, with their combined membership of 383,500, can now speak clearly on behalf of the majority of the profession. NASUWT now calls upon the majority of sensible and responsible members of the NUT to think seriously about the future, by rejecting the disastrous road chosen by the leadership of their union and to join NASUWT and ATL in the critical task of providing a better future for all teachers.