Schools Out News Release

23 March 2008

NUT conference votes to send a delegation to confront homophobia in Jamaica

The National Union of Teachers LGBT Committee won a major victory today when Conference agreed to send a delegation of teachers to support anti-homophobia groups in Jamaica. It also voted to have a meeting with the General Secretary Steve Sinnott to discuss the situation in countries where LGBT people are in constant danger; and to demand that the Union work with other international equality groups to remind them of their obligations to LGBT people.

Opening the debate, NUT Executive member Tim Lucas told the Conference that an Iranian minister demanded that gays in his country "be hanged", that homophobic crimes were rife in Iraq since Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani decreed that homosexuals be killed in "the worst, most severe way possible" and that the Ugandan Government was determined to stamp out these unnatural habits". These countries must fulfil their obligations to the LGBT community as part of their commitment to the Universal Declaration to Human Rights. Seconding the motion, LGBT working party vice-chair Claire Jenkins said that Human Rights Watch recorded repeated systematic murder and torture of LGBT people in Jamaica, often with the support of the police.

One speaker opposed the motion "with great regret". Lambeth member Ray Siritkon commented that paragraph 4, in naming some violating nations, re-invoked the "civilising mission of the British Empire", which would be wrong when there is still so much homophobia within the UK. His views were attacked by Nottingham's Tom Utterainer, who showed that there was homophobia on the left too, and spoke of recent comments by George Galloway as symbolic of the "Brown-shirt wing of the anti-war movement". Using his right of reply, Tim Lucas reminded conference that the motion acknowledged there was homophobia and transphobia in the UK and used the words "such as" before mentioning Poland, Iraq, Iran and Israel.

The motion was largely carried. This means that the NUT send a delegation of teachers to work with groups such as J-Flag to support them in educating people about LGBT issues. Schools Out’s Tony Fenwick said, "This is a landmark decision and will have an impact where it matters: in schools. If we can get the message across to the children of Jamaica we are investing in the future generations."

Ends

Note to editors

The NUT has a long established annual conference on LGBT issues. Under a new initiative, equalities conferences now have the facility to submit motions direct to the union’s national conference, which devotes a Session of business to discussing Equalities motions.

Full text of the motion

Conference condemns all discrimination and violence against lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transpeople in all countries including the UK. In particular, Conference is concerned that in some nations institutions of the state are responsible for or collude in the oppression, violence and murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

Conference asks the International Sub-Committee, as a matter of urgency to enable a delegation of out LGBT teachers to visit Jamaica to meet with the teachers' unions and Conference asks the Executive to convene a special meeting of the LGBT Working Party as soon as possible to meet with the General Secretary and members of the Executive to further discuss the situation in Jamaica and other countries such as Poland, Iraq, Iran and Israel where homophobic acts and violence exist and are increasing.

Conference instructs the Executive to campaign within the TUC, ETUCE and Educational International to ensure that their affiliates are reminded of the obligations regarding equality to which they have signed up. Conference instructs the Executive to make LGBT equality worldwide a priority within its international work.

Conference endorses the Declaration of Montreal adopted at the International LGBT Conference there in 2006 and instructs the Executive to commend it to the Government and to seek its support in bringing the Declaration to the attention of the institutions of the European Community and the United Nations for action.

Proposed by the LGBT Teachers Conference