Opinion
The radicals leading Britain’s teachers’ union
The NEU’s growing alignment with hard-left causes and anti-Israel rhetoric risks turning classrooms into political battlegrounds
April 15, 2025 14:41
3 min read
The NEU’s growing alignment with hard-left causes and anti-Israel rhetoric risks turning classrooms into political battlegrounds
April 15, 2025 14:41It’s Easter season, and that means it’s time for the annual conference of the National Education Union – the gathering of many of the most destructive forces in education.
It is, of course, a golden rule – an unbreakable rule, indeed – that any hard-left dominated organisation is always obsessed with Israel. The National Education Union (NEU), which has over half a million teacher members and is the largest and most powerful education union in Europe, is no exception.
In the “international” section of its motions document for the conference, which began on Monday in Harrogate, there are no mentions of China, Congo, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen. There are 16 mentions of Russia. And there are 20 mentions of Israel – and 33 of Palestine.
Its general secretary is Daniel Kebede, who once had to apologise for saying that people close to the downfall of his hero, Jeremy Corbyn, were being paid “30 pieces of silver” – a classic antisemitic trope. Kebede is the poster boy for the hard Left, and his union champions all its usual causes. The NEU’s website, for example, includes a detailed section on “decolonising the curriculum”, while 13 members of its National Executive signed a statement by the Stop the War Coalition blaming Nato for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Last March, Kebede was one of the leading lights at Palestine Land Day, where he marched alongside Raghad Altikriti, chair of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), which the then-Communities Secretary, Michael Gove, had described in the Commons just two weeks earlier as being “a cause for concern” under a new government definition of extremism. The MAB, Mr Gove told MPs, was “the British affiliate” of the Muslim Brotherhood.
At another anti-Israel rally last year, Kebede marched with Ismail Patel, who visited Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and told a rally in 2009: “Hamas is no terrorist organisation... We salute Hamas for standing up to Israel... We are all Hamas.” In 2021, Patel praised the killer of tour guide Eli Kay in Jerusalem as a “martyr”.
And, last year, a picture emerged of Kebede at a conference in Argentina with Saed Erziqat, the head of the Palestinian teachers’ union – who, in a social media post, called October 7 a “bright day”. At last year’s NEU conference, Kebede spoke at a fringe event alongside Anas Altikriti, who has said that hostage-taking is a “very important part” of any “act of resistance” and that Israel is “mimicking” Nazis.
Kebede has also been present at many of the “Free Palestine” marches since the October 7 massacre. He makes no secret of what he wants to see. In 2021, he told a rally: “It’s time to stand together and oppose apartheid, oppose the occupation and fight for Palestinian liberation. Let’s do it for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza – it’s about time we globalise the intifada.” An NEU spokesperson claimed Kebede was simply voicing “an expression of solidarity and support for civic protests”.
But Kebede’s obsession is par for the course in the NEU. Branch meetings often place Israel and Palestine, rather than education, at the top of their agendas. Last year, its LGBT+ division discussed a motion attacking Israel’s LGBT+-positive approach as “pinkwashing”, in other words nothing but a ploy “to detract from their human rights abuses and deflect attention away from other discriminatory practices”.
And its annual conference last year gave a standing ovation to the “Palestinian Ambassador”, Husam Zomlot. In his speech, Zomlot thanked NEU Executive member Louise Regan, who also happens to be chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). Indeed, three of the PSC’s 14 directors are also key NEU figures: Bernard Regan, who was on the NUT’s executive for 25 years, NEU Bolton’s International Solidarity Officer Julia Simpkins, and Northumberland NEU district secretary Alex Snowdon.
Research by Nicole Lampert has revealed that the NEU had 23 official speakers at the 41 main PSC protests between October 2023 and November 2024 – nearly twice as many as the next union, the RMT, Britain’s transport union. At one demo sponsored by the NEU in Leicester, its logo appeared next to those of 5 Pillars and CAGE International.
From its former guise as the National Union of Teachers through to its current incarnation as the NEU, the union’s Easter conference has provided a yearly demonstration of everything wrong with education – as an array of members you might hesitate to let babysit your child, let alone teach them, rant away with their hard-left drivel.
One year, David Blunkett (then Labour’s education spokesman) was forced to take refuge in a cupboard to escape a threatening mob of militant teachers.
Its finest hour, perhaps, came over performance-related pay, which Blunkett introduced when he took office. The union went to court – and won – over a technical infringement in its implementation. It was, as Blunkett put it, the first example in history of a union congratulating itself for stopping a pay rise.