Blog: Teachers on strike? It's 1971 all over again

Blog: The public sector in foment. Teachers on strike. Schools shut. A rally in London...

It's all very familiar – but also all very long ago, writes Toby Neal

Because today's industrial action comes, by coincidence, on the 40th anniversary of a previous day of turmoil in the schools when thousands of teachers staged a one-day pay-related strike.

That was back on June 30, 1971, in a decade which was defined by widespread industrial unrest and when strikes were the weapon of choice among a heavily unionised workforce. A walkout could be prompted by something as trivial as the price of drinks in the works vending machine.

The 1971 strike involved 400 Shropshire teachers and affected many schools across the county, and four were closed completely.

Those which closed were Oswestry Boys' Modern, Wellington Boys' Modern, Orleton Lane Infants, and Ludlow CE Secondary School. However, children at many more schools across Shropshire were given the day off.

These included about 160 children, comprising five senior classes, at Whitchurch Modern School.

Two teaching unions were involved in the dispute and the fact that a third, the National Union of Teachers, was on the other side of the argument which prompted the strike in the first place is an indication of some of the complexities which bedevilled 1970s industrial relations.

In the battle were the National Association of Schoolmasters and the Union of Women Teachers. They were protesting about the structure of the Burnham Committee – the teachers' pay body.

The strike coincided with the first sitting of the arbitration tribunal on teachers' salaries.

As well as the strike, there was a lobby of MPs and a rally in Hyde Park.

Meanwhile, the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions, with about 160 members in Shropshire, was simultaneously holding protest meetings over its own pay claim. It was looking for an average pay increase of 35 per cent. No, you haven't read that wrong – 35 per cent!

How things have changed.