ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the experience of Europe’s largest education union, the UK’s National Education Union (NEU), is explored as an exercise in union renewal focused on developing a counter-hegemonic response to the neoliberal restructuring of the English school system. England’s school system has been in the vanguard of the radical neoliberal reform of public education, and this process has involved intentional efforts to destabilise and marginalise the power of organised teachers, as represented through their trade unions. This chapter outlines the NEU’s own ‘war of position’ as it has sought to resist neoliberal reform by combining industrial action with ideological struggle. Crucial to the effectiveness of the union’s approach have been the union’s efforts to build a base of ‘organisers and leaders’ at the school level, capable of working as organic intellectuals in their workplaces. However, this has been accompanied by the national leadership of the union as it has acted as a type of ‘collective intellectual’ helping form a collective will in a counter-hegemonic movement of resistance. The actions of teachers, working through the union, have had some significant success, in the context of a very hostile environment. The experience points to the possibilities of an educative approach to leadership that combines leadership being exercised at all levels, and both individually and collectively.
