Covid helped me truly realise the power of our class

WE are well and truly into autumn and it well and truly feels like it. The long summer holidays seem a long time ago and mince pies are filling the shelves of my local Co-op where until recently they had been selling charcoal for barbecues.

As the nights close in and the heating is coming on at home, talk in the staff room is increasingly around the cost-of-living crisis and there is a real sense of dread and exasperation.

A fellow member of my trade union came up to me this week and asked if we could go on strike sooner because their gas and electric bill was now over £4,000 a year.

I’ve had discussions with other colleagues about how to make food go further by bulking it out with lentils and barley. Add to this talk of power blackouts and these truly feel like unprecedented times.  

The NEU’s indicative pay ballot for teachers has now closed and the results show the strength of feeling among educators throughout the country.

A massive 86 per cent of teachers who took part in the NEU’s indicative ballot voted for strike action, as did 78 per cent of support staff. Record-breaking results for the union.

The next step now is for the postal ballot, a much harder hurdle to overcome but one we are ready for.  

We have spent my entire teaching career being abused by one government after the next. We are oversurveilled, overworked and underappreciated.

Covid was, I believe, a wake-up call for educators. It showed us more clearly what happens when we aren’t available.

This in turn made us realise the power we had. We do not want to strike, we do not want any more disruption to our children’s education — but we aren’t going to go gently into that good night. We are going to fight.   

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Greater Manchester Morning Star readers’ group this week and there were, repeatedly, comments that showed a disillusionment with the Labour Party.

As a labour movement we have to accept that although Keir Starmer may be a knight, he is not going to ride in on a white horse and save us.

At a time where the labour movement is under fierce attack the opposition are worried about upsetting the liberal media. As at every time in the past we have to help ourselves.  

2019 and the Corbyn era are a long time ago now. In the years that followed we’ve seen war, pandemic, two monarchs, two (soon to be three) prime ministers — and I’ve lost count of the number of education secretaries.  

It’s time to rise from the depths of despair into which we sank as we mourned the loss of the chance of a socialist-led Parliament; we must channel our energy into the struggle.

For my sins, I poured a lot of my time into the Labour Party in 2019. I became our CLP media officer and then political education officer.

Though I felt that within these roles I didn’t do much to advance the cause of socialism in Britain, or even in Bolton, I did learn that it is possible to do some good.  

During the pandemic some comrades and I set up a group to co-ordinate the mutual aid efforts in our area. We arranged foodbank collections, shopping for the vulnerable and found experts to give advice for those who found themselves laid off.

This experience made me realise what an organised group of workers can do. We stepped in when the government both local and national was in chaos and we provided the services they could not.

I also found this more fulfilling than motions and debates on bus lanes and door-knocking sessions asking people who they were going to vote for.  

The Labour Party learnt nothing from this though, reverting as soon as possible to its old ways. This experience made me realise that if we truly want change in society then we need to organise in our workplaces and our communities.

Our unions, though sometimes ossified, have the best potential to do this. They have the networks and resources. They must now, though, recognise the talents of grassroots organisers in our communities and support them.

Political education groups like Beehive and Strike Mcr need their support as do other projects such as Organise Now! and Strike Map who operate on a shoestring from individual donations and volunteer labour.  

The country is in custody once again and the opposition has nothing to offer us. Let’s offer the working class a true alternative by building our own networks and structures. Not in Westminster but in our workplaces and in our communities.