Reds rediscover their style (sort of)

I was at OT yesterday to see United put four past Wigan Athletic. The free-flowing football didn’t really start until the second half but the flair and speed of the goals was just what we have been waiting for since August. Last year United were blowing teams away with attacking verve and style but this season so far they have had huge amounts of possession but created far fewer chances. Most fans haven’t worried too much as they have still managed to win but reds expect to watch stylish attacking football not narrow utilitarian 1-0 victories.

The most pleasing thing about yesterday’s win was the fact that some of the new boys began to look really good. Gerard Pique and Danny Simpson had really impressive games and Carlos Tevez opened the scoring with a tremendous individual goal. The pick of the bunch, however, was the young Brazilian Anderson who looked like an old-style midfield maestro. Early sightings this season suggested to me that he was being pushed into the first team too early and the Coventry debacle in the Carling Cup made you wonder whether he would ever be a £17m player. For now at least he has shown us a glimpse of what he could become.

Mike Riley the referee from Leeds had his characteristically poor game.

United are back (I hope)

NUT Executive confirm pay ballot

The NUT National Executive voted yesterday to confirm plans to ballot members to oppose the government’s planned pay limit for public sector workers. These plans will see the union ballot members in schools from December 10th until January 8th with an initial strike day set for January 30th. The Secretary of State for Education is due to receive the report from the teachers’ pay review body on the settlement for 2008-11 on October 26th and usually responds within weeks. The union leadership was keen to delay any ballot until the award for 2008-11 was known to members.

I proposed (and Alex Kenny froma East London seconded) an amendment to the timetable to enable us to open our ballot on October 29th, close it on November 19th and take action in the week beginning November 26th. This would mean that we could co-ordinate action with Unison local government members who are due to strike on November 14th and 15th over the same general issue. Their potential action is very important to teachers as they represent tens of thousands of school support staff. The civil service union, PCS, is also planning action alongside Unison. We would not have been able to strike on the same day but we would have been able to be part of a joint period of industrial action against the pay freeze which would maximise pressure on the government and public and media attention on what the issue.

 The proposal to go for an earlier ballot was defeated by 21 votes to 15 with 4 abstentions.

It was nevertheless worth putting to the Executive because (a) it was a better timetable for co-ordinated action (b) it encouraged people opposed to it to commit more clearly to balloting and action on their own timetable and (c) it increased the pressure on the union to produce effective material to build support amongst members for action on pay.

So now we unite around the campaign to get a yes vote and a decent turnout in the ballot later this term. 

NUT consultative conference on ‘faith schools’

The NUT is holding a seminar open to all members on ‘faith schools’. That’s ’schools controlled by religious organisations’ in plainer language. It will take place on Friday November 23rd at the Union’s HQ in Hamilton House Mabledon Place, London from 10am until 4.30.

The seminar has been organised by a Faith Schools Task Group established by the Union under the terms of a motion passed at the 2006 annual conference. At that conference there were motions calling for a move away from  religiously-controlled schools, opposition to the expansion of their number and the absorption of the existing faith schools into the local authority system of community schools. Against these was a motion, from a left-wing branch, supporting the right of, specifically, the Muslim community to it’s own faith schools on the grounds of equity. As is often the case both these positions were defeated in favour of an Executive-inspired fudge which called for the establishment of a working party which would work on developing Union policy and bringing a report to a future Conference. The group would have representatives from the regions and the Executive, it would organise a seminar and work to a set remit.

I am a member of the Task Group which has met on numerous occasions over the last 18 months and heard and interrogated evidence from the Catholic Education Service, the National Secular Society, the Jewish Education Council, the British Humanist Society, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Gay and Lesbian Christian Movement amongst others. We have also poured over a substantial amount of written evidence from religious and secular groups and academics.

The seminar will help to shape our final report which will go to the 2008 Annual Conference so I would urge NUT members to go along. I would particularly urge members who belive in a secular education system to attend and ensure that their view is heard. The danger is that, in an attempt to be even-handed, representation at the event from those who work in or strongly believe in religiously-controlled schools will heavily outweigh that from those who believe that the right to religious freedom should not include a right to proselytise on the rates or to select or reject children from any school because of the religious practices or beliefs of their parents.

For more details of the event, including how to register click on this link:

http://www.teachers.org.uk/story.php?id=4069

The Chavistas: a conversation or a monologue?

Today I received this invitation:

Conversation on the Venezuelan Constitutional Reform
Thursday 4 October, 6.30pm
Bolívar Hall, 54 Grafton Way, London W1T
nearest Tube: Warren Street.
No booking necessary.

With: Colin Burgon, Labour MP for Elmet, President of the Venezuelan Labour Parliamentary Group
Julia Buxton (tbc), Senior Research Fellow, Centre for International Cooperation and Security, University of Bradford
Alfredo Toro Hardy, Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Chair: Professor Geoffrey Hawthorn, University of Cambridge

Presumably that’ll be the ‘constitutional reform’ that does the following:

• extends the presidential term from 6 to 7 years
• allows the president to decide to re-submit for election as often as he wants, unlike now
• gives the President the authority to promote officers at all ranks in the army
• gives the President ’supreme authority in the chain of command in all its entities, components and units’
• authorizes Chavez to rule by decree for a further year with the power to renew this authority later.

 It appears not to be a popular view on the left just now but whether this guy is broadly on the side of good or not we should be just a bit sceptical of the concentration of so much state power in the hands of any one individual or party. Chaez’s keenest fans will defend all this with stories of his achievements and the dangers he faces. But whether from left or right the concentration of powers in this way (not to mention the revent decision to form alliances with reactionaries like Ahmedinajad) has always been justified by reference to external threats. How many of thse experiences to we have to go through before we learn?  

And that is only a brief summary. For more see www.ft-ci.org/article.php3?id_article=975

Organise, agitate, organise…..and blog?

It ’s time to have a go at this blogging phenomena. So much of my time is spent trying to keep others informed of what is happening in my union, locally and nationally or keep myself informed of what is happening in other unions and in politics generally that I have become a bit more convinced that a regular blog might help. So welcome to the Notebook of an Agitator.

I am the secretary of my union branch, Leeds NUT, and also one of two National Executive members of the union representing West Yorkshire. As an active socialist I am a member of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) and within my union I belong to both of the ‘rank-and-file’ groups in the Union, the Socialist Teachers Alliance(STA) and the Campaign for a Democratic and Fighting Union (CDFU).

So time and commitment allowing, this blog should include news, information and comment on teacher trade unionism, trade union matters more generally as well as those bits of wider socialist debate that I have time to take up. This is likely to be plenty as I come from a socialist tradition known as ‘the third camp’ which differs very sharply indeed from the mainstream left in the UK, not least on questions of international solidarity and imperialism. To keep it fairly simple for now, I reject completely the currently fashionable idea that ‘my enemies enemy is my friend’ and, if rough guides to politics are what you want, prefer to think that ‘my friends enemy is my enemy too’. If this is too obtuse for those less familiar with left-wing politics let me say that I refuse to look sympathetically on or to withold criticism from, for example, the regime in Iran because they are regarded as evil by the US. Why? Because I regard my friends in Iran to be the teacher trade unionists and other workers activists who in the last year have been arrested and beaten up by Ahmedinajad’s police and the young gay men who have been hanged. Their enemy, the Iranian President and his theocratic regime, is mine too and no amount of crude ‘anti-imperialist’ invective will convince me otherwise.

On a different, but in it’s own way no less serious note, I am a committed ‘red’ of a different sort. As a season ticket holder at Old Trafford (North Stand lower tier for those who know it) I may well work out my frustrations and joys here. This week I will be taking my 15-year old son to see United play AS Roma in the Champions League and hoping that our slow and stuttering start to the season doesn’t combine with Roma’s hunger for revenge after a 7-1 thrashing last year doesn’t lead to defeat.

If all goes really well there may be time to talk books, films, telly, comedy, music etc etc but that’s probably a bit ambitious.

So if I have told you about this blog and you have any interest in keeping in touch then save this in your favourites, call in occasionally and comment when something riles, provokes or impresses you.