To the 30-year records and the political climate in the early 1970s, when many of today’s teachers in their revolutionary fervour wore beads, kaftans and long hair and sought to smash the system. Now it’s pensions that concern them.
We are indebted to the Sunday Post of June 25, 1975, for recalling a distant time. Such was the seriousness of it, a Scottish Education Department official was deputed to bring a report before Willie Ross, Labour’s Scottish Secretary.
“The Sunday Post has information of at least two schools in the south of Glasgow where there are avowed Marxists on the staff,” it asserts. “The same holds for some technical colleges.”
“Pupils themselves speak of one Marxist teacher as ‘such a nice man who seems to put everything across fairly’. That, naturally, is part of the technique.” The Post continues: “Some of the objectives of the agitators are to discredit the family as an institution.
“Emphasise the need to raise children away from the influence of parents.
“Discredit religion as a ‘crutch’.
“Eliminate any moral or religious teaching for schools.
“Create the impression violence is a legitimate means of solving economic, political and social problems.”
So where are the old Trots now? Probably past presidents of the EIS, that bastion of revolution, provided it’s within a 35-hour week and not in the holidays.