Tehchers- Scapegoats for the Cuts

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Oxford teachers on strike against the cuts - but NUT leaders prefer to The Labour-controlled ILEA has just voted in favour of a Tory proposal that a search should be made among London's primary schools for 'other' William Tyndale's.

• Meanwhile the disciplinary hearings to decide the fate of the six victimised teachers has been delayed and whether they should be private or public is still undecided.

Hounded by the bourgeois media and long since abandoned by the NUT, the Tyndale teachers have been treated as something of an embarassment even by so-callec 'progressives At a recent public meeting, Terry Ellis, the former headmaster, likened "progressive' education to a sledge ploughing across snow, pursued by the wolves of reaction, with those on the sledge minded to ditch the Tyndale teachers as a burden and a "bad example' This lack of support stems from a failure to understand the political function to which the Tyndale issue is being put, namely as a major plank in the attack on education spending, and, to that end, a means of curbing the militancy of teachers.

As in so many other anti-working class measures comprising the social contract, the attack has been lead not by Tories or by state bureaucrats, but by people elected as represențatives of the working class, Labour councillors and trade union leaders.

FLEXIBLE

Modern methods of teaching are more suited than traditional ones to producing 'flexible man' required by modern technology and have had the full weight of the bourgeois state behind them for a good decade.

But adequate resources have never been available to implement the low pupil teacher ratios and the variety and amount of equipment which these methods require.

fight union members.

With the deepening of the crisis of capitalism in which public spending has to be drastically reduced, this contradiction sharpens.

The recommendation of Chief Education Officer Briault to the. ILEA was that only two of the Tyndale teachers should be disciplined. No adequate grounds having been found to charge the others.

But then the Labour Group of the ILEA, intervening in this report before it reached the full • subcommittee, voted by an overwhelming majority to charge all six teachers, and to change the charge on Brian Hadow from one of misconduct as 'the main architect' of the trouble, to one of inneficiency.

LABOURITES

From the very beginni Lg it as Islington Labour counci Ors Id school managers, (who have never waged a fight on poverty or cuts in educational spending) who encouraged parents to sign a petition and build the campaign to scapegoat the teachers.

The Executive Committees of North London and Inner London Teachers Associations, both Stalinist-dominated, claim they supported the teachers until they took unofficial strike action and set up the pirate school.

COUNTERMANDED

In fact both bodies had flatly countermanded the decision taken by the North London branch that no inspection should be cooperated with until the political allegations that had been made had been inquired into.

Both NLTA and ILTA have steadfastly refused to lead any real fight beyond propaganda protests in defence of teachers' jobs and Conference on WAGE CONTROL AND UNION DEMOCRACY Sunday 24th October igbeth Hall, Birminghan Sessions 10am - 12.30pm. 1.30pm - 4.00pm.

Credentials, 50p, from Kevin Lee, Campaign Secretary, 44, Devonshire Road, Handsworth Wood, Birmingham 20 conditions of work.

They • will relish the exam șle of teachers disciplined for aking unofficial action as a whip with which they: can beat down militancy in other sectors.

ANY SCHOOL The charges laid against the Tyndale teachers could be made against virtually any school in the country.

The crisis in the schools reflects the social and economic crisis within capitalism itself. The attempt to lay the blame for this at the feet of these six teachers can only be done through a string of trumped up and rigged accusations.

We must fight to turn the accusations where they belong -against the local and national bureaucrats of the Labour Party and the NUT.

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THE SAME