Larry Flanagan

It was the final AGM Report for General Secretary Larry Flanagan, who will stand down from the post over the summer. This article is an edited extract: read the full text of Larry’s speech at www.eis.org.uk/Meetings-And-Events/AGM2022

I’d like to start, at this first in-person event in three years, with a repetition of a huge public vote of thanks to all our members, all of Scotland’s teachers, and a vote of appreciation for the heroic efforts that were made over the past two years plus of the COVID pandemic.

I was recently at international summit of the teaching profession and I felt obliged to remind the gathering that whilst for many in the room being together physically was in a sense “new”; because most had been working from home, the actual school lockdown periods, challenging though they were, had been relatively short and for most teachers being physically in their workplace, with all the attendant risks of Covid, has been the norm over the last two years and had an impact on teacher wellbeing, teacher resilience and teacher attitudes.

And as we move into what is a Covid recovery period, I think we have to remind the politicians, the civil servants, the local councils, of that fact is that, over the last two years, teachers like other public sector workers have delivered throughout the Covid pandemic and frankly in a post Covid environment and we all deserve better than what is currently being offered. The business as usual attitude, which has developed very, very quickly, amongst people who used to talk about building back better, is simply not acceptable and we have to keep reminding others of the sacrificing effort that teachers have persevered with over the last two years.

Ten years ago, in my first AGM speech as General Secretary, I referenced the economic crisis which had been visited upon the country, at that time, by the greed of an unregulated banking and finance sector and which the public sector was being asked to pay for through pay freezes, pay restraint, attacks on pensions which were very real a decade ago, and continue to impact now, and cuts on living standards.

And here we are again – ten years later, with teachers and other public sector workers, being asked to pay for a crisis not of our making.

This is not a poor country. There is not a lack of resource or finance across the UK. There is a lack of political will to make the decisions that reverse the balance of poverty and wealth in our societies. And Trade Unions should be at the forefront in demanding change from our politicians.

And I believe, as a Trade Union, we have a very simple answer to this question as to asking us to pay again for the crisis, and that is simply no. We are not prepared to be the ones who make the sacrifices going forward. And I believe that as a union – we are in stronger place than we were ten years ago to fight back.

We have developed a union over the last decade, we have developed a very strong organising approach to how we operate, which is based on the premise of involving members in the activities of the union; yes, we wish to offer a gold-plated service when members need legal support and advice, but just to be clear, just because we offer insurance we are not an insurance company, we are a combative trade union, prepared and able to take on the fights we are required to undertake.

Value Education Value Teachers was a successful campaign, but it took nearly two years to raise membership engagement to the point we knew we would win the strike ballot that we had set in motion. And more to the point. it took those two years and the activities of members, including the massive demonstration, to persuade John Swinney as Deputy First Minister that we knew we would win the ballot. Which is the only reason, the only reason why the money appeared on the table at the 11th hour.

Colleagues, it will not take two years again to build that state of strike readiness. We are starting from a much higher level of member engagement, we are better organised, we are stronger and even just over the last day and this morning listening to the enthusiasm of speakers at the rostrum there, we are ready now for this 10% pay campaign and we will be strike ready come the Autumn.

I feel that people are ready for this fight because you have made the sacrifices over the last two years and we are not prepared to see the victory of Value Education Value Teachers wash down the drain because other people are making the wrong decisions. So, come the Autumn, COSLA and Scottish Government be on notice, we will be strike ready.

I may not be on the platform at the rallies, colleagues, but I can guarantee you, I will be on the picket lines. So, let’s build our campaign and let’s win another 10% that our members deserve.

Supporting Education

Today there is an absolute consensus about the need to tackle the impact of poverty on education and to promote equity and equality across the system – this is a critically important agenda for the kind of society which we want Scotland to be and the EIS helped shape that agenda over the last 10/15 years in particular, through the work of the equality committee and through the campaigning work of the Institute.

When I started teaching in 1979, schools didn’t seek to tackle the impact of poverty. They actually organised around the attainment gap. Some pupils were placed in so called “remedial classes” in S1 and stayed in those classes until S4.

In 1979, when I started teaching, the majority of boys in Scotland left school without formal qualifications because the only qualification was the O grade, and the O grade was designed for the top 30% of pupils in a school. So these young people had to stay on in school until 16, because of the school leaving age being raised in the 70s, were leaving school without qualifications. In my first 4th year class, I had 23 kids – 19 boys and 4 girls – and every single one of them left school to go straight onto the dole queue. And nobody batted an eyelid because they weren’t the ones destined for university.

Now that situation today would be completely unacceptable, it was unacceptable then, but the fact that today there would be an outcry if that was to happen I think shows some of the progress we have made in changing the agenda. So, I despair when I hear politicians talk about a halcyon past that somehow we have fallen from. It didn’t exist and frankly we need politicians to stop their constant bickering and to lend Scotland’s teachers their full support and more specifically to ensure that teachers have the proper resource and conditions to deliver for our young people today, because that is the challenge that lies before us.

I try to avoid being sucked into the party political Punch and Judy show, which is the norm in Scotland. We are a constructive trade union and we will speak to all parties and all levels of Government, obviously we’ve been speaking to the SNP-led Scottish Government for a considerable period of time.

I could spend time colleagues detailing the challenges we face in areas such as ASN, assessment, wellbeing, workload, but frankly the motions being debated at AGM cover all these issues comprehensively. I think we are creating a very positive set of actions going forward from our debates.

Looking back & looking forward

It’s been a great privilege to be General Secretary of the EIS for the last ten years. I have been a trade unionist activist all of my working life and for the past ten years I have been paid for doing what I used to do in almost all of my spare time.

I believe the Institute is in rude health – when I took over, our membership had dipped but we reversed that and we now stand at over 61,000 members and we have the highest Rep density we have ever had.

And I mention the Rep density because, school Rep is where I began my EIS journey – it is critical to our interaction with members with the union. School Rep is the person who is the lynchpin in terms of that interaction and we need to acknowledge the debt we owe for the altruistic service we receive from our Reps and ensure that they are being supported in every way they can be.

I’d like to offer my congratulations to Andrea – she will be a brilliant General Secretary and I look forward to seeing how she takes the union forward.

Thank you for all your support over the past decade, colleagues.

Here’s to the next 10 percent victory.