The indicative ballot: bureaucratic control dressed up as caution?

The UK’s anti-strike legislation, introduced by Thatcher and Major in the 1980s, and continued by Cameron with the Trade Union Act of 2016, means that this country has some of the most restrictive strike controls in the democratic world. Yet in this political climate, where it is already hard enough to call a strike, the NEU is adding its own layer of bureaucracy to make it even harder.

The union recently conducted an indicative ballot to ask members if they would be prepared to strike over pay and workload, and on this occasion has decided to follow up with a formal ballot on 3 October 2026. Critically, though, the law does not require an indicative ballot, and the NEU rule book does not require it either (rather, it requires and 'indicative survey', which could take a form other than a ballot): its use is a choice which puts a barrier between our desire and our power to act.

An indicative ballot is usually presented in the following way: let’s check if we can win before we spend money and political capital on a formal ballot. But what does it achieve? It adds weeks or months to the timeline between a dispute crystallising and industrial action happening, months that our learners can ill afford. During this time, momentum dissipates, the wealth gap widens, and reps report members growing fatigued as they struggle on in an underfunded system. It also gives leadership a veto dressed up as democracy: a disappointing ballot becomes justification for calling off action that members may well have voted for in a statutory ballot. It centralises a decision to proceed away from branches and workplaces, where the militancy is rooted, and where the need is dire.

After 40 years of anti-union legislation, has the executive — consciously or not — absorbed the logic of our anti-strike laws? 

This is the conservative function of union bureaucracy. Officials whose careers, salaries and positions depend on the union as an organisation have interests that are subtly different from its members, whose power depends on the union as a movement. The indicative ballot is one mechanism through which this divergence expresses itself. The NEU leadership doesn’t need to be cynical or corrupt for this to be true, they simply need to have internalised the idea that caution is professionalism, that managing a ballot is responsible leadership and that protecting the union from a legal challenge is its primary duty, rather than leading a dispute as aggressively as some of its members might wish.

The centre of our decision-making should be the workplace and branches. We should be building a union in which school reps have the confidence to assess the mood in schools directly, and we should demand that members be able to vote in statutory ballots without going through an indicative one first. We should be establishing our own strike committees to manage the tempo of the action, rather than relying on national officers, and demand that our leadership resource the dispute rather than manage and contain it.

The insistence on indicative ballots is not legally-mandated caution, it is a political choice, and it is one that reflects the degree to which the NEU leadership has made peace with a legal and industrial relations framework designed to neutralise our labour militancy. We are a long, long way from the days of being able to hold a meeting in a canteen, raise hands, and make the decision to go on strike, say, in solidarity with workers from other industries, or for political demands, and while the bosses maintain such control over our workplaces, the logic of capitalism will ensure that the state provision of education remains underfunded.

For teachers and support staff, the message is clear: the most significant obstacle to effective strike action isn’t always the employer or the law. Sometimes it’s the machinery of our own union.