‘Like the Spirit of the Army'

By contrast to its long-time rival, the National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT), ² the National Association of Schoolmasters (NAS) has attracted relatively little academic interest, ³ and that which it has attracted has been hostile. ⁴ The NUWT is now defunct ⁵ but the NAS endures, in an unwieldy sounding alliance with the Union of Women Teachers (UWT) ⁶ as the NASUWT. ⁷ In what follows I shall argue that the all-male NAS of the inter-war years was never more fully or acutely described than by the member who likened it to the army. In doing so he captured the essence of its appeal to its members: masculinist solidarity along quasi-militaristic lines, in effect the appeal of fascism.