The UK’s largest teaching union has called Reform UK “far-right and racist”, and its leader has dismissed Nigel Farage as “a poundshop Donald Trump,” as the union pledged funds to oppose the party’s candidates in elections.
Delegates to the National Education Union’s annual conference backed a motion stating that “far-right and racist organisations, including Reform, seek to build on the despair, poverty and alienation in our society by scapegoating refugees, asylum seekers, Muslims, Jews and others who do not fit their beliefs”.
The motion also committed the NEU to use its political fund for campaigns against Reform election candidates and to support the union’s branches in local activity.
Speakers in favour of the motion argued that some Reform UK candidates and activists “have been former members of fascist organisations or espoused their views” as justification.
Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, told journalists: “I’m sure Reform claim that they are not a racist organisation. However, they seem to be attracting an awful lot of former BNP activists, which would make me question that.
“But fundamentally I have great concerns about what a Reform government would do to education.”
Asked about the NEU motion at a campaign event in Durham, Farage described Kebede as “a self-declared Marxist … someone who is absolutely determined that our children should be poisoned at school, their minds should be poisoned about everything to do with this country”.
Farage said Kebede was “encouraging … indoctrination of teenagers in our schools by telling kids that Reform is a racist party”. He added: “If we win the 2029 general election, we will go to war with the National Education Union and the other leftwing teaching unions.”
Kebede said Farage’s comments were “lifted directly from the Donald Trump playbook”.
“Both Elon Musk and Donald Trump have been directly attacking the AFT and the NEA, the American teachers’ unions,” he said. “And this is what Nigel Farage is: he’s a poundshop Donald Trump.”
Asked if he thought Farage was racist, Kebede said: “I think Nigel Farage is a rightwing populist.”
The NEU’s annual conference in Harrogate also voted to hold a formal ballot authorising strike action if the government failed to increase its 2.8% pay offer to teachers in England next year, and failed to fully compensate school budgets for any pay increase.
Kebede said: “Conference voted unanimously to move to a formal ballot should the outcome of the pay review body process be unacceptable, and if there is not a real-terms funding increase for schools made in the June spending review. So there are two main trigger points.”
Asked if he was interested in coordinated public industrial strike action, Kebede said: “We have conversations with other unions all the time, not just in education but also health, where there were great concerns around 2.8% pay awards being made.”
After the motion was carried, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said: “With school staff, parents and young people working so hard to turn the tide on school attendance, any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible.
“Following a 5.5% pay award in hugely challenging fiscal context, I would urge the NEU to put children first.”
Source: theguardian.com
