Palestine solidarity proudly on display at National Education Union conference

Notes from Harrogate

by Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

Many of the UK’s major trade unions are affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Some have been proactive in practical solidarity, for example the Fire Brigades Union. The FBU has donated fire engines to help save lives in Palestine. The latest has been impounded by the Israeli authorities.

Most active in its work on behalf of the people of Palestine is the National Education Union – the largest trade union in Europe representing teaching and other staff in schools and colleges. The current chair of PSC is long-standing NEU executive member Louise Regan who has led numerous delegations of union members to Palestine. It is no surprise that the NEU is regularly targeted by pro-Israel zealots such as former Jewish Chronicle editor, now columnist, Stephen Pollard. He timed his latest broadside against Regan and the union’s general secretary Daniel Kebede to coincide with its annual conference held this year in Harrogate, Yorkshire from April 13 to 17.

Refusing to be intimidated, the 1500+ delegates overwhelmingly supported solidarity motions:

• calling for an end to the UK’s arms trade with Israel,
• supporting the campaign for local government pension schemes to divest from companies complicit in violations of human rights and international law,
• condemning repressive British state action threatening democratic rights and attempting to criminalise solidarity with the Palestinian people,
• continuing active union support for solidarity demonstrations at national and local level, and
• developing resources to help members raise awareness about Palestine. (This is an area where JVL is determined to support NEU members in combating the dominance of the Zionist narrative in the curriculum and in the culture of many school leaderships.)

As dedicated teachers and teaching assistants debated the dire impact on the lives of the children and communities they serve, of the government’s disastrous policies and funding decisions, speaker after speaker noted the irony of spending cuts decimating support for the most needy young learners, slashed welfare and disability benefits harming disadvantaged families and communities and encroaching privatisation going hand in hand with unsustainable workload and stress, while the government commits billions to arms spending, perpetuates war in Europe,  maintains its unforgiveable support for Israel’s genocide and capitulates to the far right on immigration.

A number of slogans expressed the views of most delegates: Books not Bombs, Welfare not Warfare, Glue-sticks not Guns!

It was noticeable that no representative of the UK’s ostensibly Labour government attended the conference, either to speak to delegates or to listen to the wide-ranging, expert contributions from dedicated educators of the nation’s children. (The NEU is not affiliated to Labour or any other political party).

A noteworthy new development was NEU support for a campaign to challenge the collaboration of places of education with arms companies and weapons manufacturers – an initiative consistent with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s StopArmingIsrael and divestment campaigns. DisarmEducation.org notes that BAE Systems, Rolls Royce and Lockheed Martin are among companies spending  millions every year sponsoring school events, funding competitions, doing careers roadshow etc. The campaign group says:

students and young people should not be exposed to the production of war and violence should not be normalised through education.

Palestine was the issue at a number of fringe meetings, the biggest of which, organised by PSC, was addressed by Louise Regan, NEU President Sarah Kilpatrick, Saed Erziqat, General Secretary of the General Union of Palestinian Teachers, Lebanese school principal and representative of the Public Primary School Teachers League, Manal Hdaife, and Leanne Mohamad. As noted in this article from Middle East Eye:

When she was 15, Mohamad won the regional final of the prestigious Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge for a speech about the suffering of Palestinians. In her speech, Mohamad told an audience of 1,200 that the “time had come to stop the suffering of innocent children” in Palestine. Speakers Trust, the London-based body behind the competition, then removed the video of her entry from its website, prompting an outcry.

At the time in 2016, she was mercilessly trolled for speaking as a Palestinian – an experience which has utterly failed to silence her. Read her speech to the fringe meeting below.

Address to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign fringe meeting at the National Education Union conference in Harrogate, Yorkshire, on April 15, 2025

By Leanne Mohamad

19 months ago, I believe the world was changed forever.

A genocide began. A horrid, relentless, painful, silent, inconvenient genocide.

Gaza has been a nightmare. For all of us. It represents all that is distasteful about the so-called rules based order. It is a graveyard. Not just for children. But a graveyard of an order, a liberal world order that has run its course. Gaza is the culmination of the excesses of this order. In fact, it is its logical outcome.
This American-led order was created on the embers of colonialism, exploitation and slavery.  And this cruel, inhumane, GENOCIDAL outcome is no more than the last death pains of an order lost in its own hubris.

The world in which we live is not an equal one, and we can all see this if we care to look. A genocide is taking place, yet the great and good of the Western world remain silent.
Actually, they are not silent; they give the most horrific weapons of war to prosecute their crimes but then talk of opening up humanitarian corridors or lightly reprimand Netanyahu, as if he is a wayward teenager. They are aiding and abetting a genocide but continue to claim the moral high ground.
Because their charade of a system depends on a liberal facade.

If you talk as if you care, then how can you be involved in genocide?

How naive we were

For us Palestinians, this is the last stage of European settler colonialism.

In the past, we believed that if there was access to the internet and digital media in 1948 like today, Palestinians could live-stream the Nakba in real-time, and the international community would have intervened to prevent it. That my grandparents would not be refugees, they would still be living in their home in Palestine. How naive we were.

Because it’s never been about a lack of evidence. It’s about the very refusal to see us Palestinians as human beings.

We are now in a critical moment. Netanyahu has declared the resumption of the genocide in Gaza as “just the beginning”.
At least 1563 Palestinians – journalists, humanitarian workers, medical staff, women, men, children – have been killed since Israel resumed its bombardment on March 18th of homes, hospitals and makeshift shelters across the entirety of the Gaza strip.

Rather than abide by the second phase of the ceasefire and prepare to withdraw from Gaza, Israel’s leaders are once again demonstrating to the world the decades-old intent of this settler-colonial project: the most Palestinian land with the fewest Palestinians possible.

Hypocritical, obsolete, brutal

We have been forced to learn and reconcile with so many uncomfortable truths over the past year.

That there is a liberal, rules-based order – but it is only a stick to beat others with and to be applied selectively. Hypocritical, obsolete, brutal.

That the Western media is FREE. Free to lie, deceive and unconditionally back a genocidal regime.

That there is a hierarchy of humanity and a myth of universal human rights. That the West supposedly detests the killing of civilians, unless those civilians happen to be born in Palestine or Lebanon or hold another faith. Then they are not civilians worthy of life. Muslim mothers don’t feel pain. Muslim children aren’t terrified of bombs. They don’t cry like westerners cry.

That they care about international law, but will sanction anyone trying to defy their settler colonial friends and their killing machines.

We have grown a lot in this past year. We have become aware of the intrinsic inequalities of a system that hates justice and a people that love hypocrisy.

But our movement is one that will not be suppressed.

The dead, the fallen, the slaughtered need us to keep going. To raise our voices. We cannot give up. We have to keep organising . We have to make sure all our efforts are in line with stopping this genocide.