Max Morris: NUT president who pioneered a militant approach and championed comprehensive education for all

An insight into the character of Max Morris, former President of the National Union of Teachers, can be gleaned from one of his previous entries in Who's Who. He lists his recreations as: "Baiting the Department for Education and Science; ridiculing Trotskyists and trendies; tasting malt whisky." Morris certainly made a success out of the first two recreations. One suspects he may well have done with the third as well.

Morris's early years were spent in the Gorbals, Glasgow, where he was born in 1913. His father was a teacher and Morris was to reminisce about a childhood spent as a member of "a rather intellectual family, full of books, political discussions". After a degree in History at University College London, he trained to be a teacher at the Institute of Eduction, taking up his first post in Willesden, north-west London.

He joined the NUT in 1935, and remained active in it all his life. He was prominent at its conference last Easter – still with a pithy few words to say about the direction the union was taking.

If he displayed a lifelong dislike of the antics of Trotskyists, it has to be said that he is credited with pioneering a more militant stand by the union – away from its image as an academic talking shop before the 1960s. He gained a seat on its executive in 1966 and was prominent in strike campaigns, including successful action for an increase in the London allowance in the early 1970s.

At the time of joining the executive, he described it as "almost 100 per cent right-wing, either Conservative or right-wing Labour, and the floor [of its conference] was very conformist". He believed he moved the union from "militant respectability to respectable militancy".

Morris became president of the union in 1973, when Margaret Thatcher was Education Secretary. Despite their obvious political differences, he had a healthy respect for her abilities. "We got on very well," he said. "She didn't accept rubbish from her civil servants." Union activists from then would argue that Morris adopted a similar stance in the way he ran his presidency. He certainly left behind him a reputation for having had more influence on shaping union policy than many of his predecessors or successors. The union never left his thoughts in retirement, either. At every conference, he could be seen sitting on the front row – reserved for former officials – not always showing enthusiasm for the direction the conference was taking as the left gained more of a stranglehold on the executive.

In his early union days, Morris was a member of the Communist party – an affiliation which led to his career being held back, as the then Conservative-controlled Middlesex County Council, in whose area he was teaching, operated a policy of banning Communists from holding headships. Later, though, in 1962, he became head of Chamberlayne Wood Secondary School in Brent, north-west London, before moving to take up the headship of Willesden High School, where he carved out his educational reputation. It was a school born of an amalgamation between a grammar, secondary modern and technical school.

Morris held the post at Willesden High School until his retirement from the profession in 1978, and he helped transform it into a flagship comprehensive. On his teaching staff during those 11 years was a young maths teacher, the former National Union of Students president Charles Clarke who was later to take office in the Department for Education and Skills – the government department Morris liked to bait – as Education Secretary. He always said he believed Clarke had missed out on what could have been a true vocation in life and had been "much better at handling numbers" than taking responsible for the country's entire education budget.

One of Morris's biggest regrets was that his former school hit upon hard times after his departure, and closed to make way for one the Government's first privately sponsored flagship academies, the Capital Academy, bolstered with £2m sponsorship from local boy made good Frank Lowe, an agent to sporting superstars.

"We were a flagship comprehensive in those days [when Morris was head]," he recalled. "I think it's dreadful. What they've done with Willesden High is hand it over to some millionaire with all its assets, all its values."

During his life, Morris made the political journey from the Communist party to Labour, becoming a councillor after his retirement. He was a member of the ruling Labour group on Haringey Council, noted for its ultra-left stance under the leadership of Bernie Grant, later the MP for Tottenham. Morris was regarded as a "comparatively right-wing member" by contemporaries. On losing his council seat in 1986 he cited the public's attitude towards Grant's left-wing policies as the reason – while left-wing colleagues on the council pointed out that it was only their more right-wing colleague who had lost his seat.

Along with his wife Margaret, a prominent historian, Morris also became active in the Labour Party-affiliated Socialist Education Association, serving as chairman, 1995-98. He fought off an intensive campaign by supporters of Tony Blair to replace him with a New Labour apparatchik given the task of moving the organisation away from its socialist roots. He remained active in the SEA well into his nineties, ensuring that it remained a pro-comprehensive, anti-academies thorn in New Labour's side. Of this period in his life, he said: "I think I'm becoming more left-wing as I grow older. In the current situation I honestly think so."

If he became increasingly left-wing as time went on, he did also develop a kind of nostalgia for the right-wing disciplinarian upbringing he received at his school in Glasgow at Hutcheson's, a direct grant school. He remembers the then rector as "a dyed in the wool Tory". He said, "I used to get beaten every day of my life, the leather belt. But the school had marvellous examination results. It was utterly disciplined and, quite frankly, I don't dislike it in retrospect. I very much enjoyed my Latin and my Greek."

His achievements, though, for most of his contemporaries, will be inextricably linked with turning the NUT into a more aggressive, campaigning union – a contribution which won him respect from all shades of opinion within the union.

Christine Blower, the union's acting general secretary, as a supporter in past years of the ultra-left Campaign for a Democratic and Fighting Union would not have been considered to be on the same side of the union as Morris. However, she was fulsome in her praise of him. "Max was, in his day, a leading figure on the education stage," she said. "It is to his leadership that the NUT owes its ongoing campaign to win comprehensive education for all children. In the many years since his presidency, Morris remained a campaigner for a good local school for every child. He will be much missed by the very many NUT members and others to whom he was known as a cogent and at times flamboyant campaigner."

His family have asked that any donations in his memory should be made to the Teacher Support Network: www.teachersupport.info

Richard Garner

Max Morris, teacher, trade unionist and councillor: born Glasgow 15 August 1913; headteacher, Chamberlayne Wood Secondary School, London 1962-67; headteacher, Willesden High School, London 1967-78; President, National Union of Schoolteachers 1973-74; married 1961 Margaret Saunders; died Menton, France 27 August 2008.