Going to war on educators 

The British Prime Minister’s response¹ to the May 2026 stabbings in Golders Green included noticeable remarks on education. It referenced a “soon to be commissioned independent review” with an “expectation for schools and universities to take disciplinary action on anti-semitism”.

The assertion that schools and universities are particular sites of anti-semitism is part of a wider backlash against ‘woke’ educators and their allegedly malign influence on young people. Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, responding to children handing in a petition for free school meals alongside trade unionists, said “pupils should be in school, not protesting”.² Nigel Farage, following the National Education Union’s conference, labelling Reform UK as “far right”, threatened to “go to war” with educators for “indoctrinating teenagers in our schools”.³ The term “indoctrination” was repeated by Reform’s education spokesperson, Suella Braverman, claiming unions with a “dangerous transgender ideology…care more about deportations and the children of Gaza than the children of Grimsby”.⁴ 

Dismissing these comments as “culture war” sensationalism between conservatives, the far right, and their media outlets would be a mistake. The recent council elections underlined that a far-right Reform government is no longer a nightmare scenario. Their vote share, if repeated at the next general election, would see them become the largest party in parliament. Thus, we need to urgently contend with the possibility of a far-right government intent on targeting education unions and socialists in schools and universities. 

The British ruling class increasingly view schools and universities as reproductive spaces of counter-hegemonic ideas, particularly anti-racism and anti-imperialism, acting as a gateway to socialist consciousness. In Britain, the counter-extremism framework developed since the “war on terror”, including PREVENT, provides the means of suppressing political forms of organising and individuals with radical politics across the public sector. Socialists in schools and universities must be attuned to what is building up in Britain and across the globe. Particularly as the “renewed anti-racist working-class politics”⁵ and coalition needed to defeat Reform must involve young people and the radical wing of the trade unions. 

From Judeo-Bolshevism to Islamo-socialism

Arno Mayer’s Why Did the Heavens Not Darken⁶ situated “Judeo-Bolshevism” as the animus of the Nazi’s crusade across Eastern Europe and eventual Holocaust. A political ideology formed through the “stab in the back theory” in opposition to the role of German communists and leadership of the newly formed USSR – both of which contained a significant layer of Jewish leaders. 

In the present, the British media is constructing its own parallels. “Islamo-socialism”⁷ – is described as a coalition that hates Britain and wants to pollute the innocent minds of young people. In reality, what has brought socialists and sections of the Muslim community together is opposition to Britain’s role in the genocide in Gaza. What is particularly alarming for the capitalist class is the expression of this movement through the ballot box in uneven and sometimes contradictory forms through the election of independent and Green Party councillors. 

This anxiety at a political space jointly occupied by Muslims and socialists was expressed in the Gorton and Denton by-election with claims that Greens candidate Hannah Spencer wanted to simultaneously legalise drugs and had the support of “reactionary” and “patriarchal” Muslim communities.

At the heart of “Islamo-socialism” and “Judeo-Bolshevism” is the fear of working-class organisations that are independent and oppositional to the capitalist state. Whilst Islam doesn’t necessarily lend itself to anti-imperialist politics, generations of Muslims have been victims of Western wars in the Middle East and experienced decades of state-led Islamophobia.

A Reform government will leverage the threat of “Islamo-socialism” as a pretence to suppress trade unions, socialists and working-class organisations. The lacuna between a potential far-right government and the existing counter-extremism framework presents an existential threat to all those opposing racism and imperialism in schools and universities. 

PREVENT

The lives of children are shaped by capitalism and imperialism in terms of housing, education, health and borders. However, young people are cast as apolitical subjects expected to receive their “politics” through the common sense projected by newspapers, radio and social media. Any deviation from the state’s ideology is viewed as indoctrination. 

At the beginning of the decade, Climate Justice school walkouts and the Black Lives Matter movement prompted education unions to explore what is taught in school – campaigns seeking to teach about climate change and “decolonise” the curriculum. However, the last couple of years have seen an intensive “anti-woke” backlash, particularly resisting attempts to explore gender identity and the truth of British imperial history.

Reform’s plan for education⁸ pledges a “patriotic curriculum in schools” where examples of British imperialism or slavery “must be paired with the teaching of a non-European occurrence of the same to ensure balance”. It also calls for a ban on “transgender ideology”. 

This nakedly political intervention in schools would be enforced by PREVENT and OFSTED under extremism and safeguarding auspices. PREVENT, the government’s counter-extremism programme introduced in 2003, originally focused on surveilling Muslim communities as part of its “war on terror”. In 2011, it was expanded to include “government-defined extremisms”. A Reform government will undoubtedly consider anti-imperialism and trans liberation as “government-defined extremisms” – effectively banning those forms of political organising in schools. 

In 2014, a statutory duty was placed on schools to promote “British values” as defined by PREVENT, including respect for “law and order”. Only a year later, a further statutory duty was placed on public sector bodies to monitor and report instances of “extremism”. PREVENT, in essence, forces every worker in schools, universities, and hospitals into monitoring ‘counter extremism’ activities – sowing seeds of suspicion amongst workers and students in schools. This has resulted in a series of racially aggravated incidents, including a 4-year-old Muslim being referred to Prevent over a game of Fortnite⁹, a vulnerable 11-year-old struggling with homework¹⁰ and another for mistakenly believing he said ‘arms’ instead of “alms to the oppressed”,¹¹ an Arabic word for charity. An incident in a Bristol school points towards a worrying convergence between PREVENT and OFSTED, where school trade union members protested a visit from Damian Egan MP and Vice-Chair of Labour Friends of Israel.¹² The school, following an intervention from the Prime Minister, was forced into a snap OFSTED inspection and threatened with a referral to PREVENT. 

The hysteria about “Islamo-socialism” and the prospect of a Reform government will result in the expansion of PREVENT into political organising. This is already happening – communism, socialism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion are on the PREVENT list of warning signs. This, alongside “feelings of grievance, a desire for political change, a need for belonging” is listed as “engagement factors” on PREVENT training materials. Environmental¹³ and animal rights activists have been targeted with education firmly in the cross-hairs, with a Tory MP urging teachers using the term “white privilege” to be reported as extremists.¹⁴ 

I was the lead union and multi-academy representative in a previous school and was preparing to ballot for strike action over serious health and safety concerns. Unknown to me, I had my trade union, political and personal life monitored for six months. I was called into a meeting, five weeks before the due date of my daughter. The Headteacher put a letter in front of me, accusing me of “producing and sharing extremist material”, “undermining British values” and “breaching political impartiality”. I was told to expect contact from a PREVENT officer and potentially referred to the Teaching Regulation Agency – a body with the power to ban me from teaching entirely. 

My employer’s suspicions were allegedly aroused through emails addressing union members as “comrades”, which was described as “sounding Soviet”. In interviews, senior leaders described trade union organising at local and national level as “grooming” activity, a meeting I had organised calling to “abolish landlords and bosses” were considered as inciting violence, an obituary for a comrade who had fought ISIS was described as “glorifying guns”, the Black Panther Party was called a “vigilante” group and support for Cuba was deemed “anti-British”. A video retweet of a black man being brutalised with the caption “abolish the police” and my involvement in the “No Police in Schools” campaign, which sought the removal of school-based police officers, were also used as examples of “undermining British values” and “law and order”.

This news was a tremendous shock and put an immediate brake on our school union campaign – the accusations seemed so outlandish that going public would have increased the likelihood  I would have been sacked. I also had to make the difficult decision not to tell my wife, with a history of miscarriages, to protect her and our unborn baby from the stress. 

A few months later, I was called into a second meeting, accused of “breaching political impartiality” by publicly expressing solidarity with an Arab student wearing a face mask with the Palestinian flag and sharing with students that I had been on a demonstration against Israel’s evictions of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah. I was asked to consider the “impact on Jewish students” – a clear conflation of Judaism and Israel – and made to feel that defending human rights and opposing ethnic cleansing had no place in a school. I feel it should be noted that the same school had no issue holding a fundraiser for Ukraine solidarity a couple of years later. 

Each day that should have been spent savouring becoming a father, I expected a knock on the door from PREVENT, a ban from teaching and losing our house. However, I still went into that workplace every day for six months to lead the members in my school branch before eventually settling with the employer. It was finally over, but I had to accept that our health and safety campaign failed without forcing any concessions, and I was forced out of the workplace, unable to say goodbye to colleagues and students that I had worked with for five years. However, the experience of being a communist isolated and targeted drove me to join a Marxist organisation, rs21. I also got a hammer and sickle tattooed on my forearm, as a reminder to never be cowed from wearing your politics on your sleeve. 

This personal and traumatic experience of PREVENT highlights that socialists engaged in political forms of organising can already be targeted as a part of an employer’s range of union-busting tactics. A Reform government and a hardening climate against “woke” educators will see my experience replicated more widely.

With that in mind, effective organising in schools and universities must reveal to educators their role in the reproduction of capitalism – the existence of private schools, domination of universities and professions by the capitalist class, the gutting of university-led teacher training, children coming to school hungry and increases in defence spending whilst education withers on the vine. 

The ability to move workers towards a wider socialist consciousness is crucial in developing an activist layer that can not only defeat Reform but also build a socialist opposition. Disarm Education¹⁵, the self-organised anti-militarist group, is an example of this, leading on organising against the British state in schools, including the role played by its armed forces and military-industrial complex. This is particularly salient in education, where the government plans to increase the presence of arms companies and the military, including STEM provision and the expansion of its Cadet programme.¹⁶ Trade union organising must involve these explicitly political components. PREVENT is a direct threat to rank and file and trade union organising on these terms. 

PREVENT’s effects on self-censorship and treatment of communities and movements as suspects have an overall disciplining effect. In schools and universities, it forces workers to avoid explicitly political activity and into overly economistic forms of organising: only engaging with – important but limited – union activity to improve their jobs’ pay and working conditions. This is important defensive work, but ultimately incapable of forging the activist layer and organisation needed to “abolish the social relations”¹⁷ that determine our exploitation in the workplace and beyond. 

Defeating Reform 

Following the local elections, Reform controls a significant number of councils, including responsibility for local authority schools. UNISON has led the way, launching disputes with Reform councils explicitly highlighting its political nature.¹⁸ Ahead of the general election, unions need to do everything to develop popular anti-racism and popularise the cost of war as one driven by imperialism rather than migrants. This must be led by broad rank and file organisations capable of connecting anti-racist and workplace and community struggles.

The parallel development of a socialist organisation independent of the state is going to be crucial. Sections of the left, particularly those based in NGOs, have developed a reliance on state and tertiary sector funding for projects and space. ¹⁹A Reform government would clamp down on the ability of “politically extreme” groups to access these resources. We’ve got to spend this period turning towards an “organisation of the left” rather than a network built on personal connections if we want to build viable institutions independent of the state and its funding. 

The capitalist class and the political right would see an uber-Thatcherite Reform government as an increasingly disciplining force on the working class in a brutal and bordered system.  Considering their loyalty to the capitalist system that is growing the far-right, we cannot rely on the trade union bureaucracy to lead resistance. What is needed is socialist politics that are independent and hostile to the state.

If Reform manages to go into government, it will target radical sections of the trade unions with the eventual aim of dismantling them altogether – including restricting all forms of “political” organising such as anti-racism, anti-imperialism and trans liberation. These aspects of organising are crucial in linking together external struggles inside education and developing a socialist consciousness that extends the activity of educators beyond just the workplace, and transforming them into agitators that can point to their students an actual political alternative.  

All those capable of political activity in the workplace will be targeted to smash the activist layer desperately needed to counter Reform. However, resistance will not be uniform – sections of the trade union bureaucracy hostile to rank-and-file organising and associated with industries involved in imperialism and border regimes will be open to working with Reform if it means “winning for members”. Yet, a social partnership with Reform would be akin to the trade union movement signing its own death warrant. 

The struggle against Reform in trade unions must involve two distinct but connected organisational strategies. The development of rank-and-file trade unionism that is independent of its bureaucracy, i.e. a national network of its militant layer with the ability to push unions into radical positions. This layer of workplace leaders would be able to draw on the union’s resources and official structures, but would be able to act independently and against its own bureaucracy if needed. 

Alongside this should be the existence of a socialist organisation that explicitly attempts to cohere anti-capitalist trade unionists into a single grouping. This would allow for a more coherent socialist strategy in the workers’ movement that we have at the moment – best exemplified in the 2023 strike wave, which had three competing rank and file initiatives emerging out of Marxist groups, and greater resistance to examples of political victimisation that I faced. 

The combination of rank-and-file and socialist organisation would allow the possibility of winning over Reform supporters in the workplace and community. The long term goal of a socialist rank and file would not allow the bureaucracy the opportunity to sell out to Reform.  

It is not too late. Trade unions and those particularly in schools and universities need to grasp the scale of the challenge. Refreshingly, the National Education Union²⁰ is playing a leadership role, labelling Reform as “far right”, has already organised the group Educators Against The Far Right and called a public meeting on what Reform councils mean for the trade union movement. 

It’s up to other trade unions to follow its lead. Rather than threatening the National Education Union with expulsion from the Trades Union Congress over its campaign to recruit non-unionised members, they should see Reform’s breakthrough in the recent local elections as a wake-up call to collectively “organise the unorganised”, work towards industrial unionism and focus energies on our class enemies. 

For those of us in the socialist movement, the twin failures of most comrades not being in a Marxist organisation and communism not being on the ballot box represent two chronic and increasingly unforgivable failures. The Your Party debacle was a humbling reflection on the strength of organised Marxism and its ability to offer leadership to the movements emerging from the Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialist movement. Therefore, any credible long-term strategy to build a socialist organisation, advance Marxist politics into a mass political force capable of radicalising workers and defending our presence in schools and universities must include the desire to challenge how organised Marxism reproduces itself. 

Marxists face a series of historic and interconnected tasks – merging struggles and movements, developing socialist consciousness and organisation, popularising anti-militarism and anti-racism. The looming spectre of a Reform government brings these ever closer to focus. 

Reform are coming, and only we can save ourselves. 

1.  Prime minister’s remarks at no10 tackling antisemitism forum: 5 May 2026 GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-remarks-at-no10-tackling-antisemitism-forum-5-may-2026 [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
2.   Hamilton, C. (2025) Badenoch says ‘children should be in school not protesting’, BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07v27dj80ro [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
3.  Shearing, H. and Wheeler, B. (2025) Nigel Farage clashes with teaching union over ‘Far right’ claim, BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/creqvy9g84xo [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
4.  “Last week the National Education Union passed a motion that urges its 500,000 teacher members to campaign against Reform in the classroom. this is not education. it is indoctrination. and it’s against the law”: Suella Braverman MP  Facebook. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/SuellaBravermanOfficial/videos/last-week-the-national-education-union-passed-a-motion-that-urges-its-500000-tea/27161714373415597/ [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
5.  Holmes, H. (2026) Disorienting times, Prometheus Magazine. Available at: https://prometheus-mag.com/2025/12/16/disorienting-times/ [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
6.  Mayer, Arno. 2024. Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The “Final Solution” in History (Verso Books) ↩︎
7.  How the Left’s embrace of Islam is changing UK (no date) The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/14/left-wing-embrace-of-islam-changing-uk/ [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
8.  Reporter, S.W. (2026) Reform UK manifesto 2024: The Schools Policies, Schools Week. Available at: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/reform-uk-manifesto-2024-all-schools-policies/ [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
9.  Muslim boy, 4, was referred to Prevent over game of Fortnite (2021) The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jan/31/muslim-boy-4-was-referred-to-prevent-over-game-of-fortnite [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
10.  Anger over referral of vulnerable boy, 11, to counter-radicalisation scheme (2022) The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/26/anger-over-referral-of-vulnerable-boy-11-to-counter-radicalisation-scheme [Accessed: 20 May 2026] ↩︎
11.  Taylor, Diane. 2021. “Boy, 11, Referred to Prevent for Wanting to Give ‘Alms to the Oppressed,’” The Guardian, 27 June,  <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/27/boy-11-referred-to-prevent-for-wanting-to-give-alms-to-the-oppressed&gt; [Accessed May 20, 2026] ↩︎
12.  Grierson, Jamie. 2026. “Ofsted Finds No Political Bias at Bristol School Criticised for Cancelling MP’s Visit,” The Guardian, 28 January <https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/jan/28/ofsted-brunel-academy-bristol-report-damien-egan-visit&gt; [Accessed May 20, 2026] ↩︎
13.  Grierson, Jamie. 2020. “Extinction Rebellion Guidance Raises Fresh Concerns over Prevent,” The Guardian, 12 January <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/12/extinction-rebellion-guidance-raises-fresh-concerns-over-prevent&gt; [Accessed May 20, 2026] ↩︎
14.  Taylor, Harry. 2021. “Tory MP Says Using Term ‘White Privilege’ Should Be Reported as Extremism,” The Guardian, 9 October <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/09/tory-mp-says-using-term-white-privilege-should-be-reported-as-extremism&gt; [Accessed May 20, 2026] ↩︎
15.  ​​https://www.disarmeducation.org/ [Accessed May 24, 2026] ↩︎
16.  Chechi-Ribeiro, Vik. 2025. “Merge the Movements,” Prometheus Magazine, Prometheus, 24 October <https://prometheus-mag.com/2025/10/24/merge-the-movements/&gt; [Accessed May 23, 2026] ↩︎
17.  Notes from Below. 2026. “Editorial: ‘But They Struck in Sympathy,’” Notes From Below, 13 March <https://notesfrombelow.org/article/editorial-but-they-struck-in-sympathy&gt; [Accessed May 20, 2026] ↩︎
18.  Callum Parkinson, Preston. 2026. “Lancashire Reform Backtracks on Care Cuts after Trade Union Campaign,” Revolutionary Communist Party, 3 February <https://communist.red/lancashire-reform-backtracks-on-care-cuts-after-trade-union-campaign/&gt; [Accessed May 20, 2026] ↩︎
19.  Holmes, Harry. 2024. “Revenge of the Network Left,” Prometheus Magazine, Prometheus, 19 September <https://prometheus-mag.com/2024/09/19/revenge-of-the-network-left/&gt; [Accessed May 20, 2026] ↩︎
20.  Cullen, Martin. 2026. “UNISON Statement on National Education Union Behaviour,” UNISON National, 7 March <https://www.unison.org.uk/news/article/2026/03/unison-statement-on-national-education-union/&gt; [Accessed May 20, 2026] ↩︎