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From Socialist Review, No. 268, November 2002.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Website.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
‘Duncan was modest about his outstanding abilities’
For Duncan the personal and political were one – he never considered his own wellbeing and gave what he could to both.
My first meeting with Duncan was when he was an engineering worker in Manchester in 1952. Tony Cliff and I and our one year old baby went to Manchester with the aim of building a Socialist Review group in the town, and stayed with Duncan in his tiny room, which contained a single bed and chest of drawers. Out went the contents of a drawer to accommodate the baby, the bed was given to us, and Duncan slept on the hard floor with a thin blanket. Whatever comforts there were – food, a hot water bottle – were piled on us. He was totally self effacing. After giving us all he had he started on the politics and organisation we had come to discuss.
In the late 1960s he joined what would become the Socialist Workers Party, after a long absence working for the National Council of Labour Colleges in Scotland and getting a science degree at Edinburgh University (where he became the student chess champion). I handed him the application form and was astonished to see him putting down a monthly subscription to the party of two thirds of his teacher’s salary. He turned out to be the only member I ever had to argue with to reduce his subscription instead of increasing it. He stood his ground for a long time before succumbing to our combined onslaught and somewhat reducing his subscription.
He gave the same total selfless commitment to his political and industrial activity. We worked closely together in the National Union of Teachers during the huge industrial strike movement of the 1970s, which for teachers lasted from the end of 1969 to 1975. We had to overcome the NUT executive’s total opposition to teachers’ strikes for half a century. London had to lead the way, as teachers in the capital were much more financially stressed by the low level of the nationally negotiated wage, and its teachers potentially more militant. The Finance and General Purposes Committee of the Inner London Teachers’ Association was the main body that had to be won over. Of its 24 members, six were from the Communist Party and three of us, including Duncan and myself, were from Teachers’ Rank and File. The rest – mostly headteachers – were reactionary opponents of strikes. Duncan, who had been active in a very militant Wandsworth Teachers’ Association, had been fighting these reactionaries for some time.
When the Rank and File decided to call for pay strikes in 1969 Duncan took over the leadership of the movement and led a terrific, tireless struggle to get the vote for strike action. He was a magnificent debater, and coolly, in a restrained, teacherly manner, thoroughly outwitted all the heads in both knowledge and arguing ability time after time. The first month, three of the 24 (us Rank and Filers) voted to strike, the second month six (the CP split in half), the third month, nine and the fourth month all. This was after non-stop arguments, with Duncan, using the influence of the rising struggle of the working class at the time, towering over the opposition, leaving them no room for manoeuvre.
This led to the most glorious chapter in the NUT’s history, with constant strikes nationally up to 1975, which pushed teachers’ salaries up massively both nationally and for London. One of our London Allowance strikes for £350 actually achieved more than we were asking for – £351 (because for some reason the computers could not manage a figure with a nought on the end). Duncan was the chief steward at our demonstrations and rallies. Teachers’ social and political consciousness rose sky high, and Rank and File Teacher grew to be a substantial force with a regular broadsheet newsletter till the 1980s (which Duncan edited for many years), many educational and industrial pamphlets, conferences both educational and trade union, and hundreds of new members.
Duncan played a crucial role in the movement, which changed teachers’ attitudes from being ‘ragged trousered educationalists’ who needed two jobs to keep their heads above water to being organised trade unionists and an integral part of the working class.
He did this while continuing to be active in general political work and the meetings and committees attendant upon that, and also being a main political educator in the party – ‘top of the pops’ at Marxism every year, as most attenders acknowledged. At the same time he was totally self effacing, always pushing others forward, and ultra-modest about his outstanding abilities
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Last updated: 12 June 2021