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A big shake-up of the Educational Institute of Scotland is planned by General Secretary John Pollock, an ex-chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland.
According to inside sources, Pollock plans to complete the transformation of EIS from a professional association run by a clique of headmasters into a full-blooded trade union run by J.D. Pollock. Long term plans include: * expanding recruitment to include all workers in the education service (not just teachers). * scrapping the educational advisory committees through which EIS acts in a senu-managerial role by helping run the SED examination system. * using the money saved on the advisory committees to affiliate to the British TUC. Pollock's plans to get a seat on the TUC General Council will be opposed by the reactionary headmaster-dominated National Council of the EIS which does not wish to upset the cosy relationship between the headmasters and the Directors of Education.
Pollock, however, is playing his own game. Since 1974, he has been building a personal base in EIS through balancing between the conservative promoted teachers in the secondary schools whose prospects are jeopardised by the cuts in public spending. and his Labour Party cronies in the Regional Councils. In return for the mess of potage of a weak contract of service dear to the heart of the promoted teachers, Pollock has tacitly taken the heat off the big Labour controlled Regions on the cuts issuc.
Pollock's current chief concern is to head off any alliance between the young non-promoted teachers, who wish to take militant action against the cuts, and the increasingly disenchanted promoted teachers. This requires a bit of 'left demagogy
on Pollock's part against the cuts: witness his speech to the STUC unemployment rally in Glasgow on December Ilth.
It also requires an attempt to free himself from the headmasters whose craven retreat before the cuts will drive the promoted teachers in the class room to the sort of unofficial strike action which gave John Pollock so many sleepless nights in 1974, It is known that Pollock was annoyed when the National Council vetoed his taking part in the November 17 anti cuts lobby of Parliament.
As yet, Pollock is not strong enough to take on the headmasters directly, but as time goes by we are likely to see Pollock make moves to reduce the power of the National Council and concentrate decision making in the National Executive Committee which is more open to his influence. It is rumoured that Pollock will try to outflank the National Council by breaking up the EIS into a series of semiautonomous sections along the lines of the newly-created Further Education Section. These would reduce the power of Council by exercising extensive independent negotiating powers. They would aiso help Pollock divide and rule.
These manoeuvres are being given free reign by the failure of the left inside EIS to reform a coherent opposition alter the crushing of the Rank and File group at the December 1975 EIS Special General Meeting which endorsed the Social Contract. The failure of Rank and File to develop policies capable of uniting all groups of teachers against the government's attacks has left the way open for other political currents to regroup the FIS left. Thus the recent formation of a broad left Organisation of Progressive Teachers in Glasgow.
OPT is composed largely of members of the Communist Party and the left wing of the Labour Party. The CP, though it boasts a fair number of EIS members, has always been reticent about organising openly in the union and lacks influence except peshaps in Aberdeen. Which direction OPT will take remains unclear, but CP broad left groupings in other unions have generally in the past restricted themselves to "pressuring" left bureaucrats. An ominous sign has been a quiet approach to pro-Pollock rising star of the EIS, Keir Bloomer, to joinOPT. Bloomer has let it be known he is "sympathetic" but unwilling to be openly associated with OPT.
At the moment, in obvious danger might be that Pollock would use OPT as a left cover in his tight with the headmasters, and the CP would take on the mantle of loyal opposition. The greatest failing of the left in ElSihas been to underestimate Pollock's opportunism. After all Pollock the man who claimed he would rather see a Tory government in London than a Labour government in Scotland is today campaigning in the EIS journal for greater devolution of education
Any serious left opposition in the FIS must be prepared to confront the Social Contract head on, and be prepared to do battle, not just with a clique of archreactionary head teachers, but also with John Pollock himself.
GEORGE KEREVAN