Parents could be the deciding factor in the teachers’ strikes

If teachers keep telling their story, then they could win the battle for the hearts and minds of the public, writes Ed Dorrell

Parents are, in short, predisposed to believe teachers when they explain how stressful their job is (PA Wire)

Industrial disputes are, more often than not, battles for the support of the wider population – those who are not directly involved. Both sides know that if the Court of Public Opinion finds against them, then usually their cause is no longer sustainable. Capitulation follows.

This was true of even the most famous union campaigns. All the way back in the 1980s, for example, once the National Union of Mineworkers’ general secretary Arthur Scargill had become a public hate figure, Margaret Thatcher knew she was onto a winner.

And so the National Education Union – whose members provide an essential, national public service, just as those feeding coal power stations did 30 years ago – needs to beware, as it prosecutes its campaign of school closures in a bid to win better conditions for teachers, that it will be the non-combatants who will decide the outcome.