Thanks for your support!

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has supported me. Your help has made sure that I HAVE BEEN ELECTED onto the NUT National Executive.

The results for the Inner London seats (two places to be filled) were:
ALEX KENNY 1100 (elected)
MARTIN POWELL-DAVIES 857 (elected)
Sara Tomlinson 682

This victory comes despite (as usual!), my candidature not receiving the backing of the STA and CDFU left groups within the Union. I hope that the result will remind others on the Left within the Executive that many classroom teachers are frustrated at the Union's failure to take firm action to protect teachers from the constant pressures we face.

The platform that I stood on was clear - for a national ballot on workload and for united action to fight cuts to pay, jobs and pensions. I hope that my election can help make sure that we can build such a program of action - to defend teachers and education.

Martin

NUT support London UCU demo against cuts

The National Union banner on today's march against cuts in Higher and Further education.

£2.5 billion of cuts to Higher Education are planned - out of a total budget of £12 million. These proposed cuts mean that many courses and colleges will struggle to survive. It also means the squandering of the potential of many thousands of school leavers who will not be able to find a college place.

Reports from those on the march who had been up early to join the BA pickets at Heathrow also reported the strength of feeling of UNITE/BASSA members there.

The threat of the Swedish 'free-schools' model

A seminar, hosted by Ken Purchase MP and the Anti-Academies Alliance, held in Westminster last night focussed on the threat to education from the Swedish 'Free Schools' model favoured by the Tories.

A representative from the Swedish teachers' unions explained how these 'independent' schools - funded by the 'state' but increasingly run by large for-profit education companies - have opened up an educational divide in their country. Twenty years of research have shown that the schools do not improve quality, but increase costs and social segregation.

Professor Stephen Ball warned how this threat was the latest step in the break-up of state education alongside Academies, Trusts, and 'contracted out' schools like those already given over to education businesses to run in Surrey and Enfield. The 'free schools' are allowed to make profits, leeching money out of hard-pressed school budgets. To do so, multinational education businesses will want to grab hold of whole chains of schools to boost their profit margins.

I was a number of contributors from the audience who pointed to the danger of new schools being opened to meet roll pressures in London that, under Labour's 'competition' rules, would be run by private concerns, not Local Authorities. As spending cuts bite, these schools would look to cut costs by selecting those pupils that could achieve the best results for the minimum input. In other words, pupils with the greatest needs would find themselves pushed aside.

Local Authority schooling has been under attack from both the Tories and New Labour. The Liberal Democrats are now calling for 'sponsor managed schools' which are just Academies under another name.

Whoever wins the election, trade unions will face an even greater attack on comprehensive education. We have to respond.

United against cuts and racism in Barking

I was proud to carry the Lewisham NUT banner on the Youth Fight for Jobs march today through the streets of Barking, where the BNP's leader Nick Griffin is hoping to be elected MP.

As the demonstration went through the council estates and streets, residents came to their doors to hear our chants calling for workers' unity against racism and against public sector cuts: "When they say cut and privatise, when the BNP tell racist lies - We fight back and organise"

The car horns from motorists and the many leaflets taken by those we passed showed the welcome the march received. One local community worker who joined the march explained to me how the BNP had few active members in the area but that they had won council seats out of the frustration of local voters for the way the main parties had treated them. He hoped to work with Youth Fight for Jobs in Barking to offer young people a way forward in fighting for a future and in rejecting the BNP.

Trade unions have to campaign to expose the lies of the BNP - but we have to go further. It is the fact that all the main parties share the same policies of cuts and privatisation that allows the BNP to pose as something different. We need to offer a real alternative at the ballot box. That's why I have called in my election address for unions to support anti-cuts candidates for councillors and MPs as another weapon in challenging the attacks facing teachers and education.

Please support Lewisham NUT members taking action

NUT members at Northbrook School took strike action today - see the report on the Classroom Teacher website and send in your messsages of support.

Thanks for visiting my blog

If you have decided to take a look at my blog after receiving a ballot paper for the NUT Executive election, many thanks for taking the time to read further.

There is obviously only so much that I can write in the few hundred words allocated to each candidate in the election address booklet. I hope the various posts on this blog will help explain what I stand for - and explain why I am asking for your support in this election.

I am standing for election because, bluntly, the NUT's present strategy has failed to defend teachers and education. That doesn't mean that the NUT is to blame for the problems we face - that's down to the shared policies of all the main parties who have been responsible for Ofsted, SATs and league tables, privatisation and all the endless initiatives piled upon us (and upon our pupils too). But it does mean that we need a leadership with a strategy that can start to successfully respond to these challenges - and the even greater ones to come after the General Election.

On pay, workload - and now on SATs - our national campaigns have lacked a clear direction. I will argue for clear campaigns, where the Executive goes out and builds support in schools so that we can take the collective action needed to defend teachers and education. For example, as one primary rep who had just heard about the restriction of the SATs ballot to just Heads and Deputies told me yesterday, "We need someone on the Executive who knows what they are doing - I'll be asking all my staff to vote for you".

I have a long record of dedicated support for members and successful campaigning. That has included battles against Section 11 redundancies, Performance Pay, opposing Academies (with my research quoted in the latest Civitas report on "The Secrets of Academies’ Success"), marches and rallies with parents against cuts and closures (like the one above through Lewisham High Street), for London Allowances - and many more.

One of my proudest achievements was the successful defence of Alison Moore, a black teacher attacked by racists in her school grounds. We successfully encouraged Alison to stay in her workplace - where she still is today - and organised a huge rally of local people standing together against racism in their community.

I am also proud of the dedicated support that I have given hundreds of teachers over the years, helping to win numerous cases and to defend members against allegations, capabilities, disciplinaries and so on. That individual work has also helped build Lewisham from the 900 or so members it had when I first became NUT Secretary to around 1800 today. Lewisham NUT is now a strong Association with consistently quorate meetings, a diverse range of members and committee officers, and always one of the best Associations in the country when it comes to turnout in action ballots.

But I also know that there are real limits to what a Local Association can achieve alone. The present Executive strategy of fighting school-by-school on issues like workload just isn't good enough. National issues need national action, bringing all members together so that they are confident to act. That's what I have successfully argued at the last two NUT Annual Conferences - but the Executive has still not implemented that vital policy. My election can strengthen those of us - like the supporters of the 'Classroom Teacher' newsletter (see web link on right) - that want to cut workload through national action. So please VOTE POWELL-DAVIES 1!

SERTUC Public Services Conference success

The desire to build united opposition to public sector cuts was evident in the response to yesterday's meeting called by the SE Region of the TUC at Congress House.

Trade union delegates from across the public sector packed in to hear firstly from the economist Graham Turner. He pointed to the madness of cutting posts in HM Revenue and Customs while tax avoidance and tax evasion continued to bleed the economy of the funds needed for public services.

As I pointed out from the Chair, for some delegates it was still a 'phoney war' waiting for the cuts to come but for others the attacks are already very real. Chris Baugh, PCS Assistant General Secretary, explained why their civil service members will be taking two days of strike action on Monday and Tuesday. Mark Campbell from the UCU Executive outlined the massive cuts that have been announced for post-16 education, in both FE and HE.

But the tone of discussion in both the plenary sessions and the workshops was not that these cuts were inevitable but that, together, we must organise to defend pay, pensions, jobs and services.

The joint demonstration to "defend the welfare state and public services" from Embankment to Trafalgar Square on Saturday April 10th was announced as an important date in the diary to build for.

Those of us on the SERTUC Public Services Committee will also be meeting later in March to discuss the campaigning proposals made on the day, including the suggestion that we hold another conference after the General Election to respond and prepare to the attacks that may soon be announced by an incoming Government.