Surprise vote in NEU

Submitted by AWL on 2 November, 2021 - 9:40
Niamh Sweeney

The Deputy General Secretary (DGS) election in the National Education Union (NEU) has been won by "moderate" candidate Niamh Sweeney. It had been expected that Gawain Little of the “NEU Left” would win.

Workers’ Liberty supported Martin Powell-Davies, the candidate of the rank-and-file Education Solidarity Network, and we advocated a transfer to Sweeney to stop Little. Little is a prominent member of Communist Party of Britain, with all that entails.

In the first round Little got 9,953, Powell-Davies 6,724, and Sweeney 11,035. Sweeney got around 60% of Powell-Davies’s second preferences. Sweeney will have benefited from being the only woman in the election in a union overwhelmingly representing women. Before the NEU she was a member of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL). In the new union many prominent ex-ATL members continue to act as a caucus, evidently of some strength. Her platform was posed as moving beyond factionalism and representing all our members.

For the “NEU Left” the result is a significant blow. What is essentially a bureaucratic lash-up to win positions keeps failing to win positions. There will surely be internal ructions. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), despite being avowedly anti-Stalinist, supported the high-Stalinist Little, but apparently with qualms (Socialist Worker did not mention his campaign).

Fewer than 7% of members voted. In part that must be due to the extraordinary fatigue school workers are experiencing as school leaderships drive unrealistic catch-up schemes. However, the low turnout, the election of someone on the right of the union, and the disappointing result for Powell-Davies are sobering. They show how much work rank-and-file militants in the union have to do. Sweeney is surely now in pole position for the General Secretary election in two years’ time.

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