Jane Nellist, Coventry Socialist Party
When Tony Blair and the Labour Party swept into power in 1997, there was a tangible wave of optimism – ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ was the theme tune!
For many workers, the election of the Blair government on 1 May 1997 felt like a new dawn, with the hope that the damage of 18 years of a Tory government, under Margaret Thatcher and then John Major, would begin to be reversed.
The working class had suffered years of underfunded and neglected public services under the Tories, along with recessions and mass unemployment. The NHS and education had been particularly hard hit, along with attacks on council housing, benefits and the massive privatisation of public utilities.
Today we are still suffering from the impact of privatisation, which Labour refused to reverse. Energy and water companies rake in huge profits for shareholders, while we pay excessive prices for a less reliable service.
In education, the Tories’ 1988 Education Reform Act saw the National Curriculum and statutory testing introduced, and Local Management of Schools, which had huge funding implications for schools, especially those in more deprived areas. And of course later, they introduced what would become Ofsted!
New Labour’s 1997 manifesto placed a strong emphasis on education, promising to prioritise investment in schools, reduce class sizes, and enhance teacher training and support. Teachers who had endured the years of Tory underfunding hoped that these promises would offer a brighter future for education and the workforce.
But the Socialist cautioned at the time that any such expectations would be misleading; a Blair government would not be anything like previous Labour governments. The Labour Party no longer had mass participation of the working class at its base, and would not be pressured to act in the interests of workers; instead it would be a government more aligned to big business interests.
The editorial commented: “With the dust still settling there may be a feeling that Labour can bring change [but] Labour will continue the Tory agenda of privatisation… The remnants of the welfare state will continue to be eroded under Labour.” (The Socialist issue 14)
How true that proved to be!
Thatcher’s greatest achievement
In 2002, twelve years after Margaret Thatcher left office, she was asked at a dinner, what was her greatest achievement. Thatcher replied: “Tony Blair and New Labour!”
As a primary teacher in Coventry and a National Union of Teachers (NUT, now part of NEU) activist during the period of the Labour government from 1997 to 2010 under Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown, I certainly do not look back on those times with any joy – far from it! It was a time of relentless attacks right from the start, and which the union leadership failed to mobilise a strong enough campaign to challenge, despite the impact on the workforce and on our whole education system, affecting the education of our pupils and our communities.
Looking back on the bulletins and material that Socialist Party educators produced in those 13 years, the attacks came thick and fast.
One year after the election of a New Labour government, we wrote:
“Just a year ago, many teachers would have sung along to the music coming out of Blair’s battle bus, believing that things were going to get better. After years of being ground down by Tory policies, here was a government claiming to make education it’s top priority.
“The reality has been a bitter disappointment. This is a government that ignores the real issues of cuts, poverty and the divisive effects of forcing market policies on schools.” Socialist Party, National Union of Teachers Conference bulletin 1998
Just a year into a Labour government, it was clear, that although ‘Education, Education, Education!’ had been prime minister Tony Blair’s mantra, it translated into a whirlwind of attacks on staff working in schools supporting pupils; impacting on their pay, workload, working conditions, and their professional role that they had trained for. And what’s more, syphoning public money into private businesses.
PFI
Blair’s education secretary of state, David Blunkett (who incidentally had angered teachers at an NUT Conference even before Labour were elected for saying he’d sack incompetent teachers and close failing schools), and chancellor Gordon Brown pushed through a raft of education policies that included the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).
This allowed schools to be rebuilt and run by businesses. The cost to the public purse was 40% greater than the normal procurement methods, which many cash-strapped schools are still paying for today.
By wiping those debts across the public sector, the money could instead go towards making a big start repairing our crumbling schools and hospitals.
Whilst millions of pounds were squandered on the war in Iraq, schools were being forced into accepting ‘teaching-on-the-cheap’ because of the lack of funding for ‘planning, preparation and assessment’ time which aimed to reduce teacher workload. Rather than investing the funding to recruit more teachers, there was an expectation that support staff would cover lessons.
The pace of attacks on the state education system accelerated. Academies, Foundation schools, the continuing use of SATs and league tables and increased privatisation were just some of the issues that we faced.
In 1998, Blair put forward a Green Paper called ‘Teachers: Meeting the Challenge of Change’ which proposed performance-related pay for teachers, a new qualification for headteachers, and fast-tracking teachers into senior leadership positions, as well as a raft of other proposals which caused huge anger and worry amongst teachers.
Meetings were organised by left-wing activists in the teaching unions to discuss strategies to defeat these proposals, which included calling for the unions to mobilise for strike action.
The academisation programme was pushed. This allowed schools to be taken out of the control of local authorities and instead be run by businesses and religious organisations, giving them greater ‘freedoms’ which led to further attacks on education. Meanwhile, academy bosses paid themselves huge salaries.
Education Action Zones were also introduced by Labour, which were supposed to attract funding from the private sector to support schools but failed to attract the funding. Much of the public funding that was given was simply spent on admin and management costs.
Curriculum changes put more focus on maths and literacy, especially the introduction of the hour-long Literacy and Numeracy lessons, with a strict format that had to be followed. Schools in more deprived areas, such as the school I taught in, with more testing for pupils, led to a narrower curriculum, reducing the time for music and the arts.
This was an incredibly prescribed way of teaching and, in order to reduce the time in preparation of lessons, teachers were paying out of their own pocket for resources to support these new ways of teaching.
Throughout this period, Socialist Party members tried to build alliances with communities, groups and other trade union members in order to build the biggest-possible opposition – producing leaflets and pamphlets explaining the dangers. Unfortunately, there were others on the left who tried to close that down.
We used opportunities at NUT Conference to put forward motions and amendments and speak in debates to raise the issues of an alternative fighting strategy, producing leaflets and pamphlets, receiving a good response from members. We didn’t always win the votes but we planted the seeds!
A group was formed called STOPP – School Teachers Opposed to Performance Pay, which we played a major role in – organising a demonstration and rally in London, and producing information for members.
Socialist Party members and supporters organised groups of teachers to lobby the Department for Education ‘roadshows’.
We also identified that, in order to protect teaching staff from workload and the break-up of our conditions, we needed to fight for a national contract – not just on pay but on working hours, as workload was increasing rapidly, as well as victimisation and bullying.
Pensions started to become a much bigger issue for workers as New Labour started attacking other sections of the public sector. Under pressure from members and activists – and backed up by Linda Taaffe, Socialist Party member on the NUT national executive – the NUT leadership agreed to a consultative strike ballot. The government was temporarily forced to back down.
One of the few policies that New Labour introduced which did have some benefits was the Sure Start programme, with the aim of “giving children the best possible start in life” through improvement of childcare, early education, health and family support, with an emphasis on outreach and community development. It never had time to embed itself and has faced the axe under the Tories.
NHS
Education was not the only area to be impacted by New Labour. The NHS and council services also suffered from a barrage of neo-liberal attacks which laid the foundations for the continuing assault by the Tory-led governments since 2010.
As we move closer to a general election which must be called before December 2024, workers across all sectors are desperate for change. Our public services have been run into the ground, and millions driven into low-paid and precarious work. The cost-of-living crisis has created increased poverty levels for millions, yet the rich have got richer!
Many younger workers have never experienced living or working under anything other than a Tory government. Understandably, workers are crying out for change.
Young teachers and support staff could be forgiven for grasping at the hope that things would be better under a Keir Starmer-led government.
The same workers have taken part in the strike wave of a generation, forcing more money from a government that initially refused to even talk about pay.
Unlike Blair, ahead of the general election, Starmer’s mantra is not ‘Education, Education, Education’, but ‘fiscal responsibility’. In other words, definitely not addressing the needs of those thousands of striking education workers with huge investment in our education system. And definitely not a substantial fully funded pay rise for education workers.
And, unlike Blair, Starmer won’t be coming into office after a five-year period of economic growth, but in the midst of a global capitalist crisis with British capitalism performing worse than its peers. There will be no ‘honeymoon’ of substance for Starmer’s New Labour.
When previous Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn addressed the NEU conference in 2019, he was given a very long standing ovation by educators when he outlined how his plans for a National Education Service would begin to address many of the issues facing schools, and repair the damage of years of Tory and New Labour attacks and cuts.
It wasn’t perfect, but the manifesto offered real hope of a plan to begin to rebuild our public services, especially education, health and social care.
But Starmer has already sacked off nearly every commitment he made when he was elected leader in 2020, and is using every opportunity to try to demonstrate to the bosses that he will govern in their interests.
His latest, extremely wordy, policy statement on education offers very little substance and even less hope for educators. While Jeremy Corbyn pledged to get rid of Ofsted and replace it with a system that supports schools, Starmer’s response is to tinker about with the wording of the gradings!
In fact, when Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s shadow education minister, addressed the NEU conference in 2022, she was heckled, with many delegates walking out when she tried to defend Labour’s plan to retain Ofsted.
The next period is crucial for education unions. We must start to prepare for the huge battles that we will inevitably face, including the possibility of education workers’ strikes being hit by the Tories’ new anti-union minimum service levels legislation.
The Socialist Party fights to arm the trade unions with a clear strategy of how we can win for members and for the working class. That includes addressing the chronic underfunding of education and a reduction of educators’ workload; restoring proper levels of pay and ending the toxic culture of Ofsted once and for all; reducing class sizes to enable teachers to teach more effectively with a huge investment in school facilities; providing a supportive environment and training which will keep staff in the classroom and stop the haemorrhage of our skilled educators.
It also means fighting for a political voice for the working class, to challenge Tories and Labour acting in big-business interests.
Blair’s New Labour claimed its priority was: ‘education, education, education’, but when it came into office, the reality was shown to be ‘privatisation, cuts and testing’.
‘Was Blair’s New Labour really good for public services?’ Absolutely not! And under a ‘new’ New Labour government led by Starmer, we are going to have to fight like hell to protect our services, jobs, pensions and communities. Linked to that is the need to fight for socialist change – so that rather than ever-larger sums of money going the way of the super-rich capitalists, instead it goes into meeting our needs and funding our services, including free, high-quality education for all.
- Jane is the President of Coventry Trades Union Council and served on the NUT Executive Committee between 2014-2018
