Distrust in capitalist democracy at an all time high

The strategists of capitalism are worried. Global levels of distrust in democracy are at an all-time high. In reality, this represents a growing dissatisfaction with capitalism itself.

The University of Cambridge has just released its 'Global Satisfaction with Democracy' report. It is based on surveys taken from the 1970s to 2019, representing nearly 2.5 billion individuals across 77 nations.

Capitalism therefore has to take its conclusion seriously: that a clear majority - 57.5% - are "dissatisfied" with democracy in their countries.

The report gives 2005 as the global high point - although, even then, 39% were still unhappy with their democracy. But since that time, in the aftermath of the global recession of the late 2000s, there has been a sharp rise in dissatisfaction. Some of the most populous parliamentary democracies - the United States, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico - have led the way.

In Britain, following temporary peaks in dissatisfaction following Blair's decision to support war in Iraq (2003) and the scandal over parliamentary expenses (2009), dissatisfaction has surged since the Brexit referendum result. It now stands at around 60%, a majority of British respondents for the first time since the mid-1970s.

Are these results really any surprise? Of course, real power in a capitalist democracy remains with those who own and control the economy, not with parliament. But democracy still matters for the working class.

Even in Britain, the universal right to vote for your MP in the supposed 'mother of parliaments' was only won through determined working-class struggle. Internationally, many have perished at the hands of dictatorships or in the struggle to overthrow them.

But workers who voted for politicians in the hope they would make their lives better are increasingly disappointed. For growing numbers of people, 21st century capitalism is failing to lift their living conditions.

The report goes through different regions and countries globally. The failure of capitalism to deliver for its citizens is starkly shown by the corresponding levels of disillusionment in parliamentary democracy.

In Europe, for example, the report notes a growing "satisfaction gap" between the still-relatively-stable Germany, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, and growing discontent in France, Greece and Spain. The rightward collapse of former mass workers' parties will have added to the general distrust of politicians.

The failure to deliver real change for the mass of the population through either the Arab Spring revolutions, social-democratic governments in Latin America, or the end of apartheid in South Africa is also all evident.

The report acknowledges where the problem lies. "If satisfaction with democracy is now falling... it is not because citizens' expectations are excessive or unrealistic, but because democratic institutions are falling short of the outcomes that matter most for their legitimacy, including probity in office, upholding the rule of law, responsiveness to public concerns, ensuring economic and financial security, and raising living standards for the larger majority of society."

It concludes that "the best means of restoring democratic legitimacy would be for this to change." But that will be much easier said than done for crisis-bound global capitalism.

The report points out how right-wing populists like Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil have profited from this dissatisfaction by falsely presenting themselves as standing for 'the people' against the establishment politicians. Boris Johnson has, of course, done the same over Brexit. In reality they also represent the interests of big business against workers.

As workers realise they have been duped by Johnson - and by Trump and the other right-wing populists - their dissatisfaction with the results of capitalist "democracy" will only rise further.

A socialist society would be based instead on public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy and huge wealth they generate, planned under democratic workers' control and management. Mass workers' parties fighting for socialism, to allow ordinary people to genuinely "take back control" of their lives, are urgently needed to provide a way forward.

• Read the full report via cam.ac.uk/stories/dissatisfactiondemocracy
•  This article was carried in the Socialist newspaper, 05.02.2020.

Could the Tories use Prevent legislation against socialists?

The Guardian newspaper has revealed that the logos of over eighty different left-wing, environmental and animal rights groups – including that of the Socialist Party – have been included in a guidance document circulated by Counter Terrorism Policing. 

The inclusion of their logos, alongside those of fascist and white supremacist groups, understandably drew an angry reaction from campaigns such as Greenpeace, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Extinction Rebellion [XR].

Socialist Party members will also be angered by any inference that our determination to build a socialist society to end war, poverty and climate change should be considered ‘extreme’. However, particularly after the revelations of undercover spying on our members and others by the Special Demonstration Squad, political policing directed against socialists and trade unionists comes, of course, as no surprise.

Should this guidance document be taken as a serious threat or not? Counter Terrorism Policing tried to play down the issue, claiming that the guidance was simply to help people distinguish between “legitimate protest groups” and “extremists”. But definitions of ‘legitimate’ and ‘extreme’ can change – especially under this Conservative government.

For example, when it was revealed that XR had been specifically listed as an ‘extremist’ organisation in their separate guidance, South-East Counter Terrorism Policing apologised for making an “error of judgement”. However, Priti Patel, the new Home Secretary, while accepting that XR was a “protest organisation” rather than a terrorist group, made clear that the government was “constantly looking at individuals and groups” and that “everything has to be based in terms of risk to the public”.

These documents were produced as part of the Prevent strategy, supposedly designed to ‘prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. However, it is the wrong strategy to meet that objective. It dissuades teachers and young people from openly discussing issues and risks increasing the alienation that leads some people into the dead end of individual terrorism.

They could mark a worrying step towards widening Prevent’s scope to include a very different objective - to clamp down on anti-Government protest. The legislation already refers to “not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism”. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see this being directed at climate change protestors or trade unionists organising strikes and mass demonstrations.

If left unchallenged, both school students and their teachers may start to be questioned and pressurised about their support for socialist parties and campaigns. Left-wing trade unionists might even face being barred from their posts in schools and other public services.

Trade unions should be demanding that the Government withdraws these documents and the Prevent strategy, and make clear that they will act to defend its members organising against the extreme and damaging effects of capitalism on millions of people and our planet.

This article has been written for inclusion in Issue 1070 of  the Socialist newspaper:

https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/30137/22-01-2020/protesting-is-not-terrorism

How do we limit excessive workload in schools?

School staff will start 2020 fearing yet more attacks on education from a Johnson Government. The Tories have already shown us that they can’t be trusted – certainly not on school funding, nor on teacher workload.

Despite all their promises, staff cuts continue, leaving even more student needs unmet and further increasing the workload of remaining staff. It’s a scandal that 10% of teachers are leaving the profession every year – but it also exposes the failure of education unions to take advantage of the shortage of experienced staff to organise to win real gains for members.

It’s good that a debate is opening up in the NEU about what needs to change. Yes, unions need to refocus on building strength in the workplace, organising and recruiting reps and winning victories.

Battles will have to be fought against further academisation and to oppose more job cuts. Staff should call on schools to refuse to cut posts but instead join unions in demanding that politicians deliver on their funding promises. Well organised school groups and branches can also negotiate for policies that reduce workload and disapply performance pay. However, real gains that cover all our members require national action.

Lessons can be learned from the two national indicative ballots held by the NEU over the last year – and how other unions have reached ballot thresholds successfully. Absolutely the wrong conclusion to draw would be that a national ballot can’t be won. The depth of the crisis in schools - for both staff and the students we teach - is too great for unions to just pursue local battles alone.

Yes, the right preparation is required but, as US teachers have shown, a clear and unifying set of demands is also vital. A National Contract for Education provides that.

So, let’s build in schools but make clear from the start that we are building for national action to win contractual conditions binding on all employers that guarantee better pay and conditions for staff – and better learning conditions for school students.

A draft National Contract for debate at NEU Conference
Six NEU Districts have put forward a motion for 2020 NEU Conference calling on the Executive to commence negotiations with the Government around the following demands:
Pay school staff properly
i. A pay rise of 10% for all school staff;
ii. Guaranteed pay progression. End performance-related pay;
iii. Trade-union negotiated pay scales for all points plus additional London and Fringe allowances that properly meet the additional cost of living.
An end to excessive teacher workload
iv. A minimum 20% planning, preparation and assessment time for all within the timetabled week;
v. A maximum working week, with a legal limit to working hours over 195 days of directed time;
vi. Trade-union negotiated policies that ensure teachers can complete their planning, preparation and assessment and other responsibilities within this limit.
Sufficient staffing to meet needs
vii. A trade-union negotiated class size and staffing policy.
Collective bargaining and accountability
viii. Trade union negotiating structures between elected reps and management to be set up with every school and employer.

Organise to win
Trade union attempts to appeal to successive Tory Education Ministers to ‘see sense’ and act on workload have failed to deliver meaningful change for most members. A campaign for a National Contract for Education can change that.

Government promises have inevitably proved to be empty because the Tories are wedded to austerity. That means imposing funding cuts and using Ofsted, ‘support plans’, performance pay and all the rest of the accountability regime to bully remaining staff to do more work for less pay. It’s been made worse by academisation and the fragmentation that allows different schools and employers to apply different policies on pay and also on key workload drivers like marking.  

Union negotiators have also failed to seriously challenge a Pay and Conditions Document that gives employers such free rein, particularly the open-ended requirement on teachers to “work such reasonable additional hours as may be necessary to enable the effective discharge of the teacher’s professional duties”.

We need a new Contract for Education that replaces that clause with a clear limit on weekly working hours. In other words, not just the 32½ hours of ‘directed’ duties a week but limiting all the work expected on top of that in preparing and assessing – which for many teachers is another 30 hours!

For now, many teachers feel they have no choice but to work long hours in order to be ready for their classes and to meet management demands. So a contractual limit is not sufficient alone. A national contract must also include a minimum 20% PPA time for all and trade union negotiation structures that ensure that all policies are adjusted so that the work can be done in the time available. Then, teachers could finally get back their evenings and weekends!

There is scope to try and win elements of an improved Contract through campaigns aimed at individual employers too. Some Headteachers and employers, in order to act on teacher retention, have already introduced improvements such as the ‘Workload Charters’ in Nottingham and Coventry. But national change is needed to solve a national crisis.

The NEU should replicate some of the work carried out by US unions in building awareness and pressure from below in advance of annual contract negotiations. In our case, the call for a New Contract should be placed on the Review Body, Government and all employers.

NEU members should also make clear that they expect their Executive members to give such a lead – or to stand aside for those who will.

I'll be a leading a workshop discussion on a National Contract for Education at this event, hosted by the Education Solidarity Network, on Saturday 11th January. Book your free place here.

Be on the right side of history today - Vote Labour

 For an initial analysis of the General Election result , see the Socialist Party website

Ofsted try to ignore teachers' contracts (again!) - vote to scrap Ofsted on 12 December!

A very useful set of advice on the latest Ofsted inspection framework has been circulated to NEU members this weekend. The advice reminds members of their contractual rights - rights which Ofsted either don't understand or, more to the point, want Heads to ignore.

The advice follows reports of the difficult experiences suffered by NEU members during Ofsted inspections since the new framework was introduced earlier this year. 

As the NEU advice explains, under the new arrangements "inspectors are doing ‘deep dives’ into subjects, agreed in the pre-inspection phone call with the head teacher … and, as part of the ‘deep dive’, inspectors meet with subject leaders". 

The problem with this structure is that it's based on the assumption that staff are being paid and contracted to carry out those roles as subject leaders. However, especially in primary schools, that often isn't the case. 

Many primary staff - and sometimes experienced 'Upper Pay Range' staff in secondary schools as well - have been pressurised into leading on subject areas without any additional responsibility payment (TLR). Just as significantly given the intolerable workload on staff, many have also not been given any additional non-contact time to carry out these additional responsibilities. 

If left unchallenged, Ofsted's new framework will make these abuses become even more common than they are already.

Ofsted - trying to override teachers' contractual conditions

The statutory conditions set out in the School Teachers Pay and Conditions' Document (and a very similar document applying in Wales) leave a lot to be desired, failing in particular to clearly limit teachers' overall working hours. 

However, on this issue they are crystal clear: “Teachers are expected to contribute ... to curriculum development by sharing their professional expertise with colleagues and advising on effective practice. This does not mean that they can be expected to take on the responsibility of, and accountability for, a subject area or to manage other teachers without appropriate additional payment. Responsibilities of this nature should be part of a post that is in the leadership group or linked to a post which attracts a TLR [payment]” (2019 STPCD Section 3 para 48).

Paragraph 52.6 of Section 2 on "Management Time" states that such a teacher with leadership or management responsibilities is also entitled to additional time for discharging those responsibilities.

NEU advice - "Act now, and act together!"

The NEU, correctly, is advising members to stand together as a union group and refuse to be bullied by management and/or Ofsted into overriding their contractual rights. 

The NEU advises that, during Ofsted inspections:

• If you have not been given the necessary non-contact time and other support to undertake the responsibilities of subject leader, you should not attend meetings with inspectors without the presence of a senior member of staff who will contribute to the discussion of the curriculum, its delivery and monitoring, throughout the school.
• If you do attend a meeting with inspectors, with or without a senior member of staff present, you should make it clear to inspectors that the NEU, your union, has advised you that you cannot be held responsible for the quality of the curriculum in the subject deep dive, because your school has been unable to give you additional time or to pay you for that responsibility. 
• If you are in a small school where there is no-one else who could take on the responsibility of, and accountability for, a subject area or to manage other teachers, the school leader should write to the lead inspector in the region to state that the school cannot implement a part, or parts of the Quality of Education judgment requirements, because it does not have the resources necessary to provide staff with the time and payment to undertake those responsibilities fully.
  

Time to abolish these Ofsted bullies!

From Labour's Manifesto for 'Real Change'

Unfortunately, Ofsted, and the threat of Ofsted 'failure', has been used to bully school staff into taking on unreasonable workload for far too long. 

That's why teachers will be heartened to see Labour's General Election manifesto saying the following:

"Schools are being subjected to intensified testing, inspection, league tables and competition. These aren’t improving pupil achievement or narrowing the attainment gap, but are contributing to a growing teacher recruitment and retention crisis" … " We will replace Ofsted and transfer responsibility for inspections to a new body, designed to drive school improvement". 

Every NEU member needs to make sure that this latest bullying behaviour is the impetus we need to say "enough is enough". Act together to stand up to the bullies and Vote together for the abolition of Ofsted on 12 December! 

Cuts and crisis: stop Tory school havoc!

Tory austerity and education policies have damaged the education of millions of young people. This General Election gives young voters, their parents and school staff a chance to throw Boris Johnson and his Government out of office.

This article has been written for the next issue of 'The Socialist', the weekly newspaper of the Socialist Party. You can also read it here. 

Significant damage has been inflicted by school spending cuts. UK Education spending in 2020 is projected to be as low as 4% of national wealth (or GDP). That would be the lowest figure on record since 1959.

Courtesy of schoolcuts.org.uk

The Conservatives have utterly failed to keep the promise in their 2015 manifesto “to protect school funding”. In reality, funding per pupil has fallen at the same time as the demands on school budgets have grown. Figures from the trade-union backed ‘School Cuts’ campaign show that rises in pupil numbers alongside the extra costs of pensions, pay and inflation have left an annual shortfall of over £2billion in English schools alone. Schools in Wales, although funded separately to England, face significant financial pressures as well.

Stop School Cuts 
Those cuts mean schools have fewer teachers, fewer teaching assistants and larger class sizes. Staff cuts have particularly hit music, design, arts and language posts in secondary schools, contributing to a further narrowing of the curriculum.

Cuts mean thousands of youngsters with special educational needs and disabilities are not having their needs adequately met. Schools are catering for complex needs without adequate staffing and resources.

Rising child poverty, a direct result of Tory austerity, also has inevitable emotional and behavioural consequences. Yet, with budgets for youth, child and adolescent mental health services all being slashed, underfunded schools are being left to somehow pick up the pieces.

Sixth Form class sizes are mushrooming in a sector that traditionally always had smaller student numbers per teacher. Of course, those students won’t escape the funding crisis if they continue to higher education. However, they’ll have to pay for the privilege by racking up tens of thousands of pounds of debt for huge tuition fees and rising living costs.

Toll on staff
Underfunding is also exacting a terrible toll on staff. Salaries for teachers have fallen by over 15% in real-terms since 2010. That’s been made worse by schools trying to limit their pay bill by refusing annual progression up their pay scales, further adding to staff demoralisation.

Support staff and teaching posts have been cut, adding to the demands on the staff remaining. Government promises to act on teacher workload have proven to be worthless. The average working week for a teacher in England remains a staggering 50 hours, with a quarter working more than 60 hours a week.

Those pressures are deepening the ongoing crisis in teacher retention, with the Government’s own figures confirming that a THIRD of newly qualified staff now leave teaching within the first five years. Small wonder that schools continue to be blighted by constant staff turnover, especially those supporting the most disadvantaged communities where pressure on staff is greatest.

In short, the Tories have wreaked havoc on our schools, staff and education. They have to go!

Corbyn Promises Change: building a ‘National Education Service’

On becoming Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn pledged to transform education through a ‘National Education Service’. The General Election gives him the chance to carry out this vital transformation.

Corbyn’s initial proposals highlighted genuine ‘lifelong learning’, including scrapping tuition fees, investing in Early Years ‘Sure Start’ centre provision and reversing cuts to the adult skills budget.

There was a welcome confirmation at September’s 2019 Labour Party Conference that a Corbyn government would indeed abolish tuition fees, cap the cost of school uniforms and provide free nursery education for all two to four year olds.

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner also committed to ending the Ofsted school inspection regime, replacing their reports with “health checks” organised through local authorities.

Jeremy Corbyn had also previously announced that Labour would scrap ‘Sats’ exams in English primary schools, including the new baseline assessments for four year olds. Correctly, Corbyn has criticised the pressure Sats put on young children and the way they narrow the primary curriculum as schools concentrate on boosting the test scores on which they will be judged. Of course teachers would continue to rely on assessment to inform their work – and to inform, children, their parents and carers – but the failing of children through high-stakes testing would cease.

Reversing Blair’s Marketisation
Abolishing Ofsted and SATs - and their Welsh counterparts Estyn and National Testing in Wales - would be significant first steps towards ending the pro-market consensus that existed between all the main parties under the capitalist Labour leadership of Tony Blair.

Under ‘New Labour’, neo-liberal education policies were imposed, as they were across the globe at that time. They were designed to cut costs by making schools compete in an education marketplace.

Schools ‘failed’ by Ofsted or found at the bottom of SAT League Tables could then be blamed for their poor performance – rather than putting the blame where it really lies, on government failure to tackle poverty and fund schools properly.

Ofsted outcomes have been used to bully staff and undermine schools. After receiving ‘inadequate’ ratings, over 500 primary schools have been forced out of local authority control into the hands of unaccountable, publicly funded but privately run ‘multi-academy trusts’.

This has accelerated the fragmentation of education in England. Of course, academisation hasn't improved education - only the bank balances of those private profiteers who control them.

In reality, SATs results and Ofsted gradings have always owed more to child poverty than teacher performance.

Recent research has confirmed that schools where a high number of pupils are entitled to free school meals are far more likely to be deemed ‘inadequate’ than schools without those levels of poverty. Reversing austerity more generally is essential to improve educational outcomes too.

Reversing Tory Cuts
With polling showing that school cuts are an important issue for voters, it’s not surprising that all the main parties are promising more money for schools. But who can be believed?

The Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition was responsible for year-on-year cuts in the proportion of UK GDP spent on education from 2010 onwards. Until recently, the Tories largely denied that school cuts were an issue. In 2018, the then Tory Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, had to apologise when he was reported to the UK Statistics Authority for making false claims about government school spending!

Knowing a General Election was on the cards, Johnson promised schools would have “£14 billion additional funding over the next three years”. However, once inflation and triple-counting is taken into account, the pledge is actually more like £4.3 billion a year.

That’s not even enough to reverse the cuts suffered since 2010, let alone to increase spending to genuinely improve education. 83% of schools would still have less money per pupil in real terms next year than they had in 2015.

Angela Rayner has promised that “A Labour government will fully reverse Tory cuts and give our schools the funding they need to ensure every child gets a good education”. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has pledged that schools will receive some of Labour’s proposed £150 billion ‘social transformation fund’ for upgrade work.

These are policies which every parent, school student and member of staff will be hoping – and expecting – a Labour government to carry out.

Standing Firm for Education: how to defend reforms


Education will be one of the key issues that could determine the outcome of the General Election. If Labour boldly campaigns to reverse school cuts and end tuition fees, SATs and Ofsted, it could help convince both working-class and middle-class voters to back a Corbyn government. 

But the real test would then follow – to stand up to big business and implement Corbyn’s manifesto commitments.

Where’s the money?
Corbyn’s has previously proposed to pay for greater education spending through a small increase in corporation tax from its present very low 19%. It’s not a radical step. Even back in 2010, the standard rate was 28%. In 1979, it was 52%!

Nevertheless, any attempt to divert more wealth towards “the many not the few” will be resisted by the capitalist class. Already, financial institutions - who will be piling on the pressure against the background of a likely world recession - are saying it would result in lower investment in Britain, and so fewer jobs and lower growth.

Increased tax rates would also be met with further tax avoidance and evasion by big business. Of course, the best way to combat that, and to genuinely control the economy, would be to nationalise the main firms and financial institutions under democratic workers’ control and management.

It seems likely that the Labour election manifesto will pledge to end fee-paying 'independent' schools’ spurious 'charitable status'. A further route to provide additional resources for state education would be to implement the policy also agreed by Labour Party Conference to redistribute their resources across state education.

To be carried out successfully, a Labour government would need to assure staff in independent schools that their jobs and conditions were secure.

However, as it provides such a challenge to the privileges so fiercely guarded by the wealthy, it may well remain just a paper policy unless the workers’ movement pushes for its implementation.

If Corbyn is serious about introducing a genuinely transformative ‘National Education Service’, he will need to ensure that, as with the NHS, it is not continually undermined by the existence of a parallel private sector available only to those who can afford it.

Local democracy, not academies
A more immediately pressing education policy agreed by Labour’s 2019 Conference is also facing resistance from the right of the Party. This called for an end to academy schools, with all publicly funded schools to be placed under the control of their local authority through "reformed, democratically accountable local education committees with stakeholder representation". 

Without this urgent step being taken, ensuring control lies with school staff, parents, students and the local community, any ‘National Education Service’ will fail. A national system can’t operate if half of England’s pupils continue to be educated in schools controlled by over 1000 different unaccountable Multi Academy Trusts, with their own policies and competing interests.

The struggle to reverse academisation is part of the struggle to make sure Labour becomes truly a party that acts reliably in workers’ interests. Shamefully, too many Labour MPs and Councillors still share Blair’s ideological support for the marketisation of schools. 

Parents and trade unionists must demand that Labour’s Conference policy is put into practice and fiercely campaign against any further attempts to widen academisation if any new administration seeks to implement such a policy after the Election.

Trade Unions decisive
Whoever wins on 12 December, school staff unions need to organise to demand a National Contract that guarantees improved pay, working and learning conditions. That’s essential if we are to reverse the damage done by years of staff turnover and start to provide the stability and resources needed to meet every student’s needs.

The best result for education would clearly be a Corbyn-led majority Labour government. However, even in that best case scenario, mass pressure will be needed to counteract the pressures that will be put on a Labour government to accept the diktats of big business – not least via the Blairites in his own party. If it’s a Tory-led administration, then there will be no choice but to fight - and to fight hard.

Already around half of academies are in deficit, and about a quarter of local authority secondary schools are too. Even more will follow once they have spent their remaining reserves.

Labour councillors and school governors should stand with parents and staff and refuse to implement any more cuts, backing unions taking strike action to defend education. They should follow the successful example of Valentine School where a campaign led by the National Education Union (NEU) won a two year cuts freeze.

Resistance is already growing. Strong campaigns based on strike action, such as those in Newham, East London, have shown academisation can be defeated. 

This month will see NEU members in sixth forms and University and College Union (UCU) members in higher education taking strike action in separate disputes over pay, working conditions and other concerns. Earlier this year, Scottish teachers organised by the EIS union were successful in winning significant pay rises through the threat of national strike action.

Whatever the result of the General Election, trade unions need to prepare for decisive action, linking up with parents and school communities, to defend education.

'No Outsiders' - how can we build unity against racism and homophobia?

After over a decade of intensified attacks on workers’ living standards, and without the labour movement organising decisively to oppose them, it is almost inevitable that the growing anger and alienation within working-class communities can instead be misdirected towards chauvinism and division. It is the task of socialists, without ever conceding to discriminatory views, to find a way to overcome those divisions and help bring workers together in the united struggle needed to solve the problems that they face.



These dangers have been only too obvious in the protests that erupted in Birmingham earlier this year outside two primary schools. Both have developed teaching programmes designed to help educate youngsters about equality and diversity, including same-sex relationships. However, some local parents have objected that children are being taught ideas that they see as being inappropriate and unacceptable.


While the controversy has hit the headlines in Birmingham, the issue could be one that emerges in other cities too. Similar protests have already been held in Nottingham. After all, the two schools were only teaching the kind of ‘Relationships Education’ that many primary schools will also have in place and, under new Government regulations, becomes a compulsory requirement from September 2020. 


Is it inappropriate teaching? Well, the curriculum programme that received most of the publicity, “No Outsiders”, can be easily accessed on the website of Parkfield Community School in Saltley, Birmingham, where they were developed, led by Andrew Moffat, its assistant head teacher. Most education staff looking at these materials will be impressed by their content and the proposed learning intentions.

Under the heading of ‘No Outsiders for a Faith Community – Everyone is Welcome In Our School’, the resources include well-known books that help young children discuss and celebrate differences, like the story of Elmer, the multi-coloured patchwork elephant. Other lessons encourage children to challenge racism and discrimination and to make ‘outsiders’ feel welcome. 


However, in contrast to the new Regulations which remain vague about the exact requirements on teaching primary school children about LGBT+ relationships, the ‘No Outsiders’ programme also includes teaching content about children with same-sex parents. For this, it uses as a resource “And Tango Makes Three”, a children’s book about two male penguins that raised a female chick together in a New York zoo. This is a book that has faced censorship in Hong Kong, Singapore and some US states. Another suggested resource is “Mommy, Mamma and Me”, another children’s book about a toddler with two mothers. This book was apparently highlighted by some of the protestors as, in their view, unnecessarily introducing young children to the idea that some people are LGBT+. 


Of course, this is where the controversy lies. While, to an education professional, ‘No Outsiders’ looks like a well-constructed curriculum model, to a local parent who has not been involved in the development of the materials, it could instead look like an attempt to impose ‘ outsiders’ ’ beliefs on their community, particularly to the disadvantaged and predominantly Pakistani communities that these inner-city schools support.


Caught in the crossfire, local Headteachers have complained that the Conservative Government’s refusal to set down clear statutory requirements has left them unsupported. Firmer legislation would help make sure that all children had access to fully rounded health, relationships and sex education. Partly in response to the controversy in Birmingham, this year’s Annual Conference of the National Education Union backed an urgency motion calling for the government to make lessons about LGBT+ relationships mandatory in both primary and secondary education.


However, while stronger regulations would enable Heads to point to their legal responsibilities for teaching what they know might be unpopular with some parents, relying on legislation does nothing to address underlying prejudice nor to help win parental support for an inclusive curriculum. Neither can the list of protected characteristics within the Equality Act help resolve the divisions that arise when people who identify with a particular characteristic – in this case religion or belief as against sexual orientation – perceive that they are in conflict. That requires a different approach.


The Birmingham protests began at the beginning of 2019, soon after a Parkfield School parent started a petition complaining that ‘No Outsiders’ contradicted Islamic faith. Demonstrations then started outside the school with some parents withdrawing their children from lessons. There are now fears that a growing minority of children across the city are being permanently ‘homeschooled’, withdrawing them entirely from receiving a full curriculum and the support of fully qualified teachers and school staff.


Parkfield School decided to withdraw ‘No Outsiders’ temporarily to allow senior staff to discuss with parents, but then felt able to reintroduce the programme in the summer term after several months of consultation. The biggest and most hostile protests then emerged outside another Birmingham school, Anderton Park community primary, in Balsall Heath. 


The spokesperson for the Anderton Park protestors, Shakeel Afsar, described in the press as a ‘local property developer’, argued that parents “weren’t consulted by [the Headteacher] about her LGBTQ agenda, and are upset that they’re being ignored. Their four-year-old kids are coming home confused asking about two mummies and two daddies, and boys being girls and girls being boys. That’s too young.” (The Observer, 21 September 2019).


Opponents of Afsar point out that he is not a parent of a child at the school. However, his sister is an Anderton Park parent and he and other protest organisers were clearly able to mobilise significant numbers from the local community to protest rallies outside the school gates. The largest protest on 24 May, called to “show the media that we are united and will not compromise on our faith principles”, numbered over 300. 


The protest leaders deny they are being homophobic. They seek to draw a distinction between respecting someone’s right to be LGBT+ and schools teaching children that same-sex relationships should be accepted as being as valid as any other consensual relationship. However, that distinction clearly still fails to accept LGBT+ equality. Some on the protests were undoubtedly motivated by more deeply held homophobic views, including Christian fundamentalists who joined the 24 May protests. 


It’s also clear that, whatever the motivation of the protestors, the publicity around them has encouraged homophobia. West Midlands Police have described “a huge spike in homophobic hate crime reports” since the protests started.  

With children and staff having to walk past frequent noisy demonstrations, Anderton Park School successfully obtained a temporary court injunction preventing protests at the school gates. However, the legal action will have only added to the discontent amongst the protestors and Afsar vowed that demonstrations would start again outside the “exclusion zone” once children went back to school this September. The numbers so far have been much smaller but the tensions have not gone away.


Some of the protest placards have raised concerns that children are being sexualised at too early an age, a concern that many parents might have some sympathy with. However, Anderton Park’s headteacher has explained that, unlike some other primaries, they have specifically chosen not to teach sex education at all. Neither is their relationships education, nor Parkfield’s ‘No Outsiders’ programme, predominantly about LGBT+ equality. They teach about supportive relationships and challenging stereotypes more generally. Clearly sex education always has to be age-appropriate but needs to be included in the curriculum, certainly at secondary school, if not earlier too. Teaching about relationships, including LGBT+ relationships, is needed throughout schooling.


Other placards raise issues that are harder to resolve. “Say no to undermining parental rights and authority" was one demand that goes to the heart of the conflict. Who has the final say on what a school should teach - Government, local politicians, staff and their unions, schools or parents?


Unfortunately, in Birmingham, the final decision-making has effectively often been with the unaccountable leaders of the Multi Academy Trusts that have been given control of so many of the city’s schools. The ethos encouraged by successive Governments that community schools can be turned into academy schools and then run by self-appointed leaders without local communities having any say may well have contributed to the tensions that have emerged.


Socialists would argue that all schools should be democratically accountable and, to use the current jargon, all “stakeholders” should have a say in how schools are run and what is taught within them. The motion agreed at Labour’s recent Party Conference calling for an end to academies and for all schools to be under the control of their local authority through “reformed, democratically accountable local education committees with stakeholder representation” is an important step in that direction. 


This policy could, if acted upon, be developed into building inclusive bodies that would allow genuine democratic control of schools through elected representatives of the local community, parents, staff and their trade unions and older school students. Those kind of committees would provide the forum for discussing areas of controversy and to gain the authority needed to arrive at decisions that would win general acceptance. That would need to include policies over sex, health and relationships education as well as provision for students and staff with different faiths.

A socialist education system would also need to strike a balance between mandatory content set out nationally for all schools to follow, making sure that no school could opt out from its responsibilities to teach a broad, balanced, inclusive curriculum, and flexibility that would allow for input and variation on a local basis. There can be no fixed formula - the balance would need to be developed and adapted in practice through democratic debate*. However, there can be no equivocation on all children being taught relationships education, including same-sex relationships.
(* the debate about where that balance should lie and the nature of that mandatory content was being so fervently debated by Bolshevik educators developing a new school curriculum after the Russian Revolution that the school year at the start of 1918 had to be delayed by a month!). 


Of course, Birmingham’s inner-city communities have no reason to trust any policy coming from this Conservative Government, whether on schools or any other issue. Behind the window-dressing of supporting ‘equalities’, Tory cuts to schools, health services, jobs and living standards have only created ever-rising inequality. It has been the most disadvantaged and discriminated against sections of society, whether it be women, LGBT+ workers or impoverished black or Asian communities like those in inner-city Birmingham, who have been hardest hit. 


It’s no coincidence that Parkfield and Anderton Park, as well as having children overwhelmingly from Muslim families, are also situated in two of the most deprived wards in the whole of England. Birmingham City Council figures estimate that the average adult income in the area is less than £12,000 a year. 


These predominantly Pakistani heritage parents also have further reasons to be suspicious about what the Tories have to say, especially about education. They will know from history that the supposed “British Values” of ‘tolerance’ and ‘mutual respect’ have soon been dispensed with when imperialist interests have been at stake. They will have experienced how the Government’s ‘counter-terrorism’ Prevent Duty has too often been attached to stereotypical fears about Muslim communities. Specifically in this area of Birmingham, they will have seen how that prejudice was evident in the way that politicians reacted to the wildly exaggerated ‘Trojan Horse’ claims of an “Islamist plot” to take over local schools in 2014.


Those who have studied the actual evidence are confident that the letter that supposedly revealed the plot was actually a hoax. The case against the senior staff charged with wrongdoing eventually collapsed in 2017 when it became clear that key evidence had been withheld from their defence. However, this was long after the damage had been done. 

The misreporting around ‘Trojan Horse’ was used by the Government to help justify making ‘Prevent’ a statutory duty on schools in 2015. Education Secretary Nicky Morgan was falsely able to claim that “what we saw in the Birmingham schools at the heart of the Trojan Horse Affair [was] a concerted effort to limit young people’s world view and spread poisonous views”.


It’s not surprising that many British Muslims saw Prevent being used to stigmatise their faith as being prone to ‘extremism’ and that this grievance will have been particularly deeply felt in Birmingham. 

Unfortunately, this does not seem to have been sufficiently understood by Andrew Moffat, the author of the ‘No Outsiders’ programme. Moffat, an openly gay teacher, is clearly motivated to use his undoubted skills as a teacher to challenge inequality. He admits that, when first developing materials ten years ago, that he'd made mistakes: “Number one, I just based it on LGBT, it was single issue. And number two I hadn't engaged with the parents.” Moffat therefore correctly framed his later ‘No Outsiders’ materials on challenging inequality more broadly. The meetings that he has held with parents after the initial protests this year also seem to have helped answer some misapprehensions. 


However, when asked why, after four years of using the materials at Parkfield, the protests suddenly began in 2019, Moffat has no real explanation. Some critics have pointed to the links made in Moffat’s publicity materials between the ‘No Outsiders’ programme and the Prevent agenda as being a contributory factor.


Moffat’s original ‘No Outsiders’ resource book, as published in 2016, was subtitled “Teaching the Equality Act in Primary Schools”. However, his latest 2018 book, “Reclaiming Radical Ideas in Schools”, while also containing materials promoting diversity, does so in the context of promoting ‘British Values’ and meeting the ‘Prevent Duty’. That is a mistake.


The Birmingham protests have shown that LGBT+ equality is not fully accepted by everyone in the local Muslim community. However, nobody should fall for the divisive agenda that tries to portray this as being a prejudice that is inextricably linked with Islam. As with all faiths, conservative and more progressive approaches can coincide. Beliefs can change, influenced by events and class consciousness in wider society. Faith communities are certainly also not the only places where homophobia can be found. The question for socialists is how best to tackle it, wherever it arises.

As with those taken in by far-right racist ideas, socialists needed to distinguish between out-and-out reactionaries and alienated workers who are searching for answers – and who will look for solutions from both right and left. The wrong approach risks driving these workers further towards reaction. 


Some LGBT+ campaigners from the local Asian community have shown a better understanding of what’s needed to overcome the suspicion that many of these alienated parents will have at what could too easily seem like the privileged liberal middle-class lecturing them about equality.


Khakan Qureshi from ‘Birmingham South Asians LGBT’, who has spoken out about the rise in homophobia that has accompanied the protests, explains that the dispute is “damaging for both of my communities” but rightly adds that “this is made out to be a Muslim v gay issue when, actually, this prejudice and fear exists all over England. No one talks about how class or socioeconomics affect these attitudes.” (Observer, 21 September).


In the same article, another local LGBT+ campaigner, Saima Razzaq, explains how the wrong approach could simply widen the alienation felt by these marginalised communities: “The answers have to come from within our community ... It has to be done sensitively, and we have to have those conversations as Muslims, British Pakistanis, as people from Birmingham. It can’t be done through the white saviours who are holding counter-protests at the school. That’s not helping, it reeks of a colonial mindset to me. Did they not think how that looks?”


Razzaq had also earlier explained that “this community are still bruised from Trojan horse and it is a very deprived area. People need to be sensitive to these issues” adding that “Pointing our fingers from a white middle-class collective is not going to go down well”  (Independent, 30 March 2019).

Socialists would add that those conversations need to be had as workers coming together to defend ourselves as a class, and jointly overcoming the ‘divide-and-rule’ policies designed to prevent that unity. That also means that workers need to rely on their own organisations, especially trade unions, to intervene and support negotiations, not allowing the agenda to be set by unaccountable careerists or establishment politicians.


Shakeel Afsar has used the protests in part for self-promotion, alienating some of his support when he posed for publicity shots with right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins in June. Local Labour MP Roger Godsiff angered his Party colleagues by publicly backing the protests. Jess Phillips, Labour MP for a neighbouring constituency, gained publicity for opposing the protests. However, as her constant undermining of Jeremy Corbyn has shown, Phillips is a pro-capitalist politician whose opposition to inequality will never embrace the socialist policies that are really required to tackle it.


The only way that these prejudices can be addressed is by arguing for equality from the point of view of the needs of working-class communities, rather than from an abstract moral standpoint. The roots of discrimination and prejudice, racism and sexism, are rooted in class society. Socialists need to explain how a wealthy minority can only maintain its rule over the exploited majority through fostering division, but that, through united collective action, workers can fight that exploitation. The recent successful struggles of both the Birmingham bin workers and home carers provide concrete examples that socialists and trade unionists can point to locally. 


We have to patiently explain that the poverty and discrimination faced by the inner-city communities of Birmingham can only be fought against through united struggle, and that’s why it is in none of our interests to allow the wealthy to divide us on the basis of religion, sexual orientation or on any other grounds. Of course, to permanently end exploitation, that united struggle has to succeed in winning a socialist society where democratic decision-making would be at the heart of a socialist plan of production.


The prejudice fostered by capitalism means that the kind of division that has been seen around these Birmingham schools will sometimes inevitably cut across and set back collective struggle. Regrettably, there will be some poisoned by the ideas of identity politics that focus on what they see as their own competing oppressions rather than seeing the need to forge a united struggle to overcome oppression and discrimination as a whole.


However, as in Birmingham, the correct approach of the best campaigners will be to try and bring workers and communities together to resolve differences through genuine open democratic discussion. Those patient discussions, combined with the experience of united workers’ struggles which the trade unions must urgently lead, can succeed in overcoming prejudice and oppression.

This article was written for the November 2019 edition of Socialism Today, the theoretical magazine of the Socialist Party in England and Wales.