About a month and a half ago, Enoch Powell made one of his more intelligible social analyses. Disgusted with the teachor lawlessness and anarching boine or "lawlessness and anarchy industrial action to back up their pay claim. They had "deliberately undertaken to set an example of lawlessness, ill faith and indifference to duty (!) and to bring that example home to their pupils in the most direct, impressive and personal manner." At least he understands what we are at.
Last March, the teachers representatives on the Burnham Committee kowtowed to the PIB's limit of a 3½% ceiling and accepted a 6½% pay increase (to be paid over two years). They returned to the union's Special Conference and the agreement was fiercely contested, but the executive won, and the agreement was ratified. Less than a month later, the annual conference gave vent to its disgust and demanded that the NUT put in for an interim pay award: a rise on the basic scale of £135 p.a. The executive swallowed hard and agreed faintly. SLOW PROGRESS In a union with no experience of industrial action, it took a little time to work out how to pressurise an unwilling employer: and it has also taken time to work out how to pressurise an unwilling executive. Over the last nine months we have seen them pushed from sanctioning limited local action, one- or half-day strikes, fortnight strikes, and eventually to refusing to participate in the farce of compulsory arbitration. They have now decided to hold referenda for aras manding immediate and more drastic action: withdrawal of teachers from large NOT UnDERA 2135 FOR I LESS SELL