Professionals and Mercenaries
Guest blog by ‘All in this together’.
Richard Marshall, the interim Copland Head hired by the
Gove/ Pavey/IEB coalition to do their dirty work for them, this week gave a new meaning to the much-abused word
‘professional’ when, in his last-day-of-term address to staff (and his first
official recognition that any member of staff had left the school all year) he
used it to describe the manner in which staff at Copland had responded to the
one hundred and thirty three redundancies he had diligently imposed on the
school since last July. By ‘professional’, Mr Marshall presumably meant that
his sackings had been achieved without loss of life and, ultimately, with a
kind of cowed resignation from the staff. In George Osborne’s would-be-macho world of balding male
willy-wagglers, where’ tough’ decisions have to be made with a fearless lack of
concern for the comfort or security of any individuals (except themselves),
this version of ‘professionalism’ can be
framed as some kind of brave and realistic acceptance of the unavoidable new
realities.
The inconvenient truth, however, is that Copland staff did
not behave at all in the manner which management clones mean when they employ
the weasel word ‘professional’ to mean
‘that of which I approve’. In reality,
Copland teachers used their collegiate
solidarity to resist at every stage what Richard Marshall and his sidekick Nick John had been hired to do. When the pair
arrived last July and demanded of Copland Heads of Department that they
nominate people they wanted sacked, apart from the odd shameful exception they
refused to do so. When the Heads of Department were then threatened that they
themselves would go unless they provided names, they still refused. That
resistance, an expression of the self-confident autonomous decision-making
which is the mark of real professionalism,
set the tone which continued throughout the year. Teachers at all levels (except
senior management, inevitably) have been united in their action against the
surrendering of the school to Ark Inc and its removal from local democratic
accountability. In the end, the fight was lost, as any fight
by a few hundred teachers, parents and pupils against Cameron plus Gove plus their friends
on Brent Council plus a hand-picked and craven IEB plus a couple of hired
‘tough’ guys was always going to be lost.
However, there are defeats and there are defeats. Ark and the spivs who own it have grabbed
Copland. They will give it a new name and claim the credit for the new building (which, in fact, was planned to go
ahead whoever ran the school). But Gove
has gone from the DfE and, as a result of his perceived ‘toxicity’ in the eyes
of the electorate (in large part a result of the loud and active resistance of
teachers like those at Copland) his hopes of leading the Tory party, and God
help us, the country, have gone too.
Copland staff can feel
proud of the fight they put up in defence of the jobs of their
colleagues (including dinner ladies, classroom assistants, mentors, support
staff, sports coaches, caretakers, cleaners as well as classroom
teachers). Their professionalism was
manifested in action not in apathetic quiescence and this kind of professional engagement and
concern is a crucially important part of
the checks and balances in any democratic society’s resistance to a bullying
centralised state.
So ‘professional’ is certainly what the great majority of
Copland staff have been, particularly in face of the despondency and
disillusionment which they inevitably felt as they watched their various
‘Leaders’ abandon them. But to use the word ‘professional’ in the way Mr Marshall
used it on Wednesday was an insult. However,
there is another variant of ‘professional’’s
many shades of meaning and it
relates to an any activity performed primarily for financial gain. At this
point the word almost takes on the meaning of ‘mercenary’, where any moral
qualms on the part of the people hired to carry out the activity can be
silenced by, to misquote a great British politician of the past, ‘stuffing
their mouths with ten pound notes’. There were people in the hall at Copland on Wednesday who
maybe were worthy of such an appellation; but it was certainly not those
teachers and ex-teachers who were having to listen to that ill-judged speech.
Congratulations to all the staff, parents and pupils who fought so hard and persistently to prevent forced academisation. Although you didn't succeed it was a battle worth fighting and an example and inspiration to others.
Martin Francis
