Majority of Members at Largest Teachers Union Are ‘Unaware’ of Far-Left Motions Pushed at Conferences

Striking members of the National Education Union (NEU) on Piccadilly march to a rally in Trafalgar Square, central London, on March 15, 2023. Aaron Chown/PA Media

The majority of teacher members in The National Education Union (NEU) are unaware of its “shift” into hyper-progressive causes a source told The Epoch Times.

The source requested anonymity out of a concern of retribution.

A “tiny base” of far-left activists at the UK’s largest education union is responsible for putting forward hyper-progressive motions at conferences because its members are apathetic, a NEU source told The Epoch Times.

This has led to some creating alternative unions amid growing concerns about schools incorporating critical race theory and gender ideology into teaching materials.

In April, the National Education Union (NEU) passed a motion at its annual conference that backed bringing Drag Queen Story Time into school as it would “help challenge the heteronormative culture and curriculum” in education.

Delegates voted for the union to work with LGBT educators to create guidance on how to set up LGBT spaces or lunch clubs so more schools participate and the spaces become “usualised” through practice.

According to The Classroom website, in the context of the schools, “usualising” occurs when a teacher references lesbian, gay, or bisexual sexual orientation without “inviting further comment.”

With 510,000 members, the NEU is the largest education union in the UK and Europe.

The NEU source that the union is popular because “it does good work in securing pay conditions, has a good legal team, with solicitors and officers that are trained in casework.”

A ‘Shift’

However, the source said that a “shift” happened around 2016 when the LGBT union group seemed to align with the LGBT lobby Stonewall and implemented motions around its policy.

“A new dynamic came into the union, identitarian nonsense which has grown and crystalised around identity groups,” the source said.

He said that despite motions voted upon at school union conferences becoming policy, they didn’t relate too much to what happens in schools because the majority of teachers don’t know about them.

He said there is a small base of activists at the NEU and that this base is “tiny.”

He estimated 5–20 people are responsible for writing the most excessively progressive motions at the conferences, translating to about 150 people as “hardcore hard-left” from Communist-aligned and independent intersectionality activists.

“Though the vast majority of teachers won’t know the motions and don’t really care,” he said.

He said the “drag queen story hour” motion was “crazy” but he also pointed to one about a proposed union definition of transphobia.

This would have allowed teachers who discuss sex-based women’s rights with transgender colleagues to be considered “transphobic.”

However, the source said he believed that the motion was instructed by solicitors to be shut down. The Epoch Times has not been able to verify this claim. The NEU did not respond to requests for comment.

He said, rather than inviting successful gay actors, intellectuals, playwrights, etc, who are “rooted in this society” the activists push Drag Queens in schools “because they believe this opens the door to a new egalitarian utopian society.”

‘Extreme Ideologue’

The source echoed the concerns that were picked up in the publication Unherd about the NEU’s new leadership, which said that the UK’s largest teaching union is being taken “over by an extreme ideologue.”

Daniel Kebede, who was recently elected as NEU general secretary, is a regular writer for the British communist daily newspaper The Morning Star.

A low turnout overall, 9 percent, handed the leadership to primary school teacher Kebede.

In a video from 2020, Kebede said that he was looking at how to strengthen “anti-racism” currently in education by developing a decolonising agenda around the curriculum.

He added that the curriculum is very “Eurocentric” and that children are taught this “kind of nationalistic island-nation narrative of British history that doesn’t reflect the truth.”

Increasingly See Their Role as ‘Progressive’

Some are setting up new unions, however.

The Scottish Union for Education (SUE) was founded after concerned parents, grandparents, teachers, and ex-teachers raised growing concerns about schools incorporating critical race theory and gender ideology into teaching materials.

Stuart Waiton, senior lecturer in sociology and criminology at Abertay University, founded the union, which will operate under the banner of “education not indoctrination.”

Waiton told The Epoch Times by email that he thinks unions “increasingly see their role as ”progressive,“ the teaching unions, or at least the EIS [The Educational Institute of Scotland] in Scotland being one of the worst examples of this.”

He warned that “teachers as activists are a threat to education and a potential danger to children.”

He pointed out that EIS, Scotland’s largest teaching union, in March came out in support of the new self-ID gender change laws.

“The EIS is clear that trans women are women and trans men are men,” the union wrote.

“This was after Sturgeon resigned and the furore over male rapists being dumped into female prisons. One can only assume from this that this teachers union thinks rapists should be placed in women’s prisons,“ said Waiton.

“It also suggests that they have become ideological and see it as the role of teachers to promote a transgender ideology to children,” he added.

He said that new organisations are needed for teachers and lecturers, “ones that defend classical educational principles, of academic freedom, in universities, and an understanding that schools are there to impart the knowledge of disciplines rather than to be social justice activists.”

The NEU and the EIS did not respond to the Epoch Times’ request for comment.