| Today, Tuesday 1 October, saw tens of thousands of teachers strike in the Eastern, Yorkshire and Humberside and Midlands regions of England. Members of the NUT and NASUWT unions joined big marches and strike rallies to protest Michael Gove’s attacks on education. Teachers struck today against the assault on their pay and pensions and increased workload. In Sheffield over 2,000 teachers assembled outside the City Hall, Barkers’ Pool at 10am. A short rally was held before the march through town. Martin John from the PCS union told strikers that civil service workers face the same attacks that teachers do and that national coordinated strikes are necessary if we are going to stop the Tories’ attacks. A school student told the rally how proud she was of the stand that teachers were taking. The rally then marched down to Pond’s Forge Leisure centre where a huge rally was held. The rally was addressed by a local teacher who called for unions to name the day for a national strike, Christine Blower, NUT general secretary, and a representative of the TUC who told the rally, “The TUC will organise coordinated strike action if our members ask for it.” Midlands Around 5,000 teachers marched through Birmingham today. The march was young, lively and noisy with chants of ‘Gove Out’ running through it. At the rally in the ICC Chris Keates, NASUWT general secretary was joined by Rob Johnston from the Midlands TUC. The speech by Doug Morgan, a Birmingham NUT member brought the house down when he said, “Teachers are ready to take national action later this term if Gove doesn’t pull back from the brink…… If it means more strikes than we’ll take them…if it means uniting the resistance we’ll do that too! …. Victory to the NASUWT, victory to the NUT and let’s look forward to a victory for education” Around 1000 teachers joined a rally in Nottingham and over 1500 rallied in Leeds. Other rallies took place in Cambridge and Norwich. Further regional strikes will take place in the North East, Cumbria, London, South East and South West regions on Thursday 17 October. |