Above: City of York NEU’s Mike Kearney, returned from visiting educators and other trade unionists and socialists in Ukraine the day before the conference, speaking for motion 35

In a major gain for UK labour movement solidarity, the membership of half-million-strong teachers’ and school workers’ union NEU (the National Education Union) has shown conclusively it stands in support of Ukraine and its labour movement. NEU conference 2025 (14-17 April, Harrogate) decisively passed the solidarity motion submitted by eleven branches.

In 2022, 2023 and 2024 “Stop the War” type activists in the union used various methods to prevent its conference voting on Ukraine solidarity motions. In 2024, this involved blatantly undemocratic tactics of running out the clock so that even though a solidarity motion was discussed, delegates were denied a vote on it. In 2023 and 2023, the conference voted down the “Stop the War” motions – so NEU had no conference policy on Ukraine.

Now, in 2025, a big breakthrough: thanks to the determined and energetic efforts of the NEU Ukraine Solidarity Network, set up in 2023 to wage this battle while organising direct links and practical solidarity for Ukrainian school workers, this year’s NEU conference did finally get to vote. It decisively rejected two wrecking “Stop the War” type amendments to motion 35, and passed the motion by a very big majority. For motion and amendments, see below.

As the NEU network put it after the vote:

“Increasingly, they have depended solely on frustrating the will of the union’s rank and file. But there is a limit to what they can do when conference is against them – this year the organisation of the network and the strength of feeling on the ground finally pushed the bureaucratic shenanigans out of the way.

“Now we have policy, the task is to put it into practice. We will twin schools, twin districts, organise further delegations, raises funds for generators for schools, and stand alongside refugees and Ukrainian communities in our localities.

“We will listen to and promote the voices of Ukrainian educators and trades unionists.

“Keep in touch with the network to help us put this policy intro practice at every level, and in every part of the country.

“Thank you to everyone who has helped – every district, every delegate, every Ukrainian who has helped explain to those who didn’t get it.”

You can contact the NEU Ukraine Solidarity Network at neuukrainesolidarity@gmail.com

The NEU network recently formally joined Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, sending representatives to our steering committee; and we were delighted to redouble our efforts to support their fight at this year’s NEU conference.

This is a very significant victory. NEU is probably the union, certainly the big union, where campist leftism is most organised and entrenched. On the positive side, its size – with almost half a million members, it is probably the UK’s fourth biggest union – creates great possibilities. Even before this vote, the work of the NEU comrades had, in addition to building solidarity among the membership, significantly shifted the union hierarchy in that direction. Now it should be possible to further expand solidarity in this important union and workforce.

What has taken place in NEU since 2022 is a dramatic version of a more general pattern. Where policies on Ukraine are decided by open debate at union conferences, Ukraine solidarity almost always triumphs; it is where they are decided by a national executive or some other narrowed process that campist positions win out. UNISON, the UK’s biggest union, is an example: in 2022 the left-wing NEC passed a poor position and the issue was kept off UNISON National Delegation Conference agenda until 2024, when the recently formed UNISON Ukraine Solidarity group helped push it onto the agenda and won.

In NEU, as in a number of unions, it was the internationalist radical left that led the broad coalition that successfully asserted solidarity. It’s also noteworthy that the NEU conference displayed strong hostility to Western militarism and imperialism, increased military spending, Israel’s violence against the Palestinians and so on; what it rejected was the absurd and bankrupt project of annexing anti-militarism to opposing Ukraine’s war of self-defence.

NEU is the first in the series of UK union conferences running till July. And we believe it will be the first in a series of new steps forward for Ukraine solidarity.

• NEU Ukraine Solidarity Network: neuukrainesolidarity@gmail.com. More on how trade unionists can get involved to help build Ukraine solidarity through their unions here.

Motion 35: Solidarity with Ukraine [PASSED]

Proposer: Isle of Wight
Seconder: Liverpool

Conference supports:
1. The Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination
2. The right to a peaceful education for Ukrainian children
3. The efforts of educationalists in Ukraine to continue to provide an education service in dangerous conditions
4. Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory
5. The right of Ukraine to self-defence and to resist Putin’s occupation including the right to seek arms to defend itself
6. Russian anti-war protesters
7. Cancelling Ukraine’s foreign debt.

Conference opposes:
i. Russia’s invasion and Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons
ii. The destruction of hundreds of schools, colleges and cultural buildings by Russian artillery
iii. The mass torture, murder, looting, sexual assaults and other war crimes by Russian troops in Ukraine
iv. The deliberate targeting by Russia of civilians and Ukrainian energy and other infrastructure
v. The environmental threat posed by Russia to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and massive land mining of Ukrainian territories
vi. Russia’s dislocation of world food production
vii. The imposition of a Russian school curriculum in occupied areas and the intimidation and sacking of Ukrainian teachers and suppression of Ukrainian unions
viii. The mass abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian forces.

Conference further supports:
a. The Ukrainian trade union movement’s steadfast backing of Ukraine’s war of self-defence
b. Ukrainian union campaigns to defend workers’ rights and living standards
c. Ukrainian and Russian refugees and their right to come and live in the UK
d. The release of imprisoned anti-war activists in Russia

Conference notes the potential impact of the invasion on children in our schools, particularly refugees and those of Ukrainian or eastern European heritage.

Conference instructs the executive to:
I. Send messages offering solidarity and practical support to the Trades Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine (TUESWU) and the Free Trade Union of Education and Science of Ukraine (VPONU)
II. Support districts making direct links with trades unionists in Ukraine
III. Support schools in forging direct links with Ukrainian schools
IV. Call on all school employers to ensure suitable guidance is in place for staff managing children’s distress and/or difficult conversations arising from the above.

Amendment 35.1 [DEFEATED]

Proposer: North Somerset
Seconder: Cambridgeshire

Delete everything above “Conference notes the potential…”, and replace with:
“Conference believes:
1. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a brutal act of imperialism which has cost countless lives and destroyed much of Ukraine, including schools and educational settings
2. Russian forces should leave Ukraine; Ukrainian people should be allowed to determine their own future
3. Trump’s attempted imposition of a settlement via a deal with Russia is an imperialist carve up. It will not bring peace or justice
4. Trump’s attempt to grab Ukrainian minerals, reconstruction contracts and impose Versailles type reparations payments is simple imperialism
5. Ordinary people have no interest in war or supporting any of the rival imperialisms
6. We should oppose British government plans to boost military spending and possibly send British troops to Ukraine which would make war more, not less, likely in future and further devastate public services in Britain
7. We should oppose cuts in public services to fund more military spending. We deplore the planned cuts to overseas aid to fund more weapons. Our motto should be “books not bombs, welfare not warfare.”

Add to conference instructs:
V. Support campaigns against military spending, sending British troops to Ukraine and public spending cuts.

Amendment 35.2 [DEFEATED – this vote specifically was recorded, with the amendment being defeated 63.37 to 36.63%]

Proposer: Croydon
Seconder: Northumberland

Replace point 5 in conference supports with:
5. The right of Ukraine to self-defence and to resist Putin’s occupation

Add to conference opposes:
ix. Calls for the UK to deploy troops in Ukraine, which could prolong military conflict and undermine efforts to reach a ceasefire
x. Proposed cuts to the annual international aid budget, reducing it from 0.5 per cent of GDP to merely 0.3 per cent, and cuts of up to 11 per cent to ‘unprotected’ government departments, to fund huge increases in military spending.

Replace point a in conference further supports with:
a. Diplomatic efforts to achieve a negotiated ceasefire and an end to war in Ukraine

[Note: policy against cuts to welfare, and to the international aid budget, against higher overall UK military spending, etc, was passed in other conference motions]

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