Revolt of the Meek

The 70 delegates to the annual conference of the northwest area of Britain's National Association of Schoolmasters could scarcely contain themselves as the speaker from Lancaster ripped into the Minister of Education. Sir David Eccles, said the speaker, "has achieved the impossible. Alone and unaided and with consummate skill and genius, he has driven the meekest, mildest, most long-suffering body of men and women in the Western Hemisphere to revolt." The men and women in question were the schoolteachers of Britain. Their mood had never been more surly.

The cause of the fuss was Sir David's attempt to increase the teachers' Superannuation Account (pension fund) by $840 million. The additional 1% salary levy he wanted to impose would cost the average teacher $20 a year, and the schoolmasters felt that this was a cut they could ill afford. Their minimum paychecks, they pointed out, were already a good $3 under the national average ($26.46). "We are sunk so low," protested one Scotsman, "that our sacred profession . . . has become the subject of cheap political jokes and material for the cartoonist's wit."

As Sir David's proposals went to Parliament, the profession erupted. The National Union of Teachers asked its 220,000 members to cease taking care of students' contributions to the National Savings Committee. The National Association of Schoolmasters asked its members to vote on whether to cease all such extra services as supervising school meals and coaching sports. In Glasgow, 5,000 teachers walked out of their classrooms to attend mass protest meetings.

The cries for Sir David's scalp grew more and more shrill. The executive committee of the Educational Institute of Scotland demanded his resignation, and the schoolmasters of Leeds did the same. In Birmingham, a mass meeting of teachers recommended that all official functions attended by the Minister be boycotted.

Last week, in an effort to still the storm, Sir David issued a soothing statement urging local school authorities to hurry up and see whether they could give their teachers a raise. But no one expected that his gesture would have much effect. The meek were up in arms and on the verge of the biggest display of teacher defiance in British history. As a matter of fact, Sir David would probably be in the soup no matter what he decided to do. "If he showed himself in our staff room," said one teacher from Peterborough, "he would be lucky if he were not tarred and feathered on the spot."

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