In this piece, a member of the TEFL Workers’ Union writes on the possibility of ELT teachers to oppose war and genocide – and the BC teachers in Italy who are leading the way!
The UK has arguably been the epicentre of the Palestine solidarity campaign since the launch of Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza. Millions on demonstrations, mass arrests, even trade union leaders addressing mass demonstrations. The reaction of the state has been unprecedented with police being ordered to clamp down on freedom of speech and to trick the leaders of the campaign into arrest. Early on there were appeals from Suella Braverman to the street wing of the fascist right to mobilize against solidarity protests, appeals made when she was Home Secretary!
More recently the police were happiest giving central London over to Tommy Robinson’s increasingly deranged nationalist mysticism, endorsing violence against Muslims and the left rather than to those opposing mass murder.
Frustratingly, it has been extremely hard to bring the fight into the workplace. Workers have been sacked and told to take badges off. At my workplace, EC English in London one colleague was summoned into the office over the wearing of a Keffiyeh by a local middle manager with no command of the subject. He trotted out the tired old, antisemitic lie that all Jews would find the scarf intimidating. Campaigning in the workplace has been smothered by the draconian atmosphere in the country. We can also blame the tardiness of the trade union leaders, failing as usual to give a lead, particularly when it comes to confronting imperialism. In addition, we lack a network of militant shop floor reps and influential direct-action unions in the UK.
Since September 2025 and the Italian General Strike over Gaza and the Israeli attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla we can regard the epicentre as having shifted to Southern Europe. This is partly attributable to a healthier direct-action presence via organisations such as the USB and the USI. It is also down to links between politics and economics generalising into worker militancy more rapidly than is usually the case in Northern Europe. This is partly because of the much stronger syndicalist tradition in Italy, but not exclusively that. Despite highly problematic distortions of Stalinist domination, the Italian Communist Party was, nevertheless embedded in civil society. Families would identify with some form of left-wing radicalism from generation to generation. The Turin Factory Councils and figures like Antonio Gramsci are still, to a degree, a living memory.
It is highly encouraging then to discover that unionised TEFL workers have been on strike around slogans such as “books not guns” and “more schools, less war”. And yes, this has been in Italy, but it’s workers employed by the British Council that have taken the action.
To remind readers, British Council teachers took action in May and June against redundancies announced by the organisation. This affected staff in Rome, Milan and Naples. Eighty per cent of staff were threatened with redundancy. This could be the beginning of a huge cull leading potentially to the death of the organisation. The British Council’s chief executive, Scott McDonald has said that the entire organisation could be gone within ten years.
He explained to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in October 2025 that the organisation remained in “real financial peril”. The BC claim that this is due, in general, to debts incurred during the Pandemic, and in Italy, specifically, “due to profound changes in learner demand”. These are usually the excuses in the TEFL industry as a whole and the British Council, in particular. The reality is more complex and sheds light on the increasingly dangerous trajectory capitalism is taking us on. The British Council is the soft power wing of British imperialism. This means the provision of English language courses, art exhibitions, scientific conference sponsorships and so on. These act as a propaganda supplement to hard military power.
Clearly, from the government’s point of view, hard power must take priority. And it always has done, massively. The money received by the British Council during COVID was in the form of a commercial loan to ensure “value for the taxpayer”. Language centres have to make a “surplus” unless they are considered critical to current foreign policy objectives. Thus, the bail out had to be on commercial terms. The terms of this loan were initially kept secret, but it has been reported by The Guardian that it has an annual interest of £197 million. This has to be paid back by September of this year. Anything that could make a quick profit during COVID was utilised by the Tory government, leading to scandals concerning PPE and contracts for business mates. No way, obviously, would the upgrading of military hardware be dependent on commercial loans or the demonstration of making a “surplus”.
Now we have the attacks on the Italian teaching centres as a part of the “warfare not welfare” agenda of the current Labour government. This has intensified only in the last couple of weeks. Andy Burnham and John Healey have stabbed Starmer in the back to create an administration more to the liking of Trump and the EU hawks in NATO. They will increase military spending more in keeping with the demands of the military industrial complex, more than Starmer was promising to do, underlined by his weak equivocations over the escalation of the war into consistent bombing of Iran, feeling the pressure as he was over his enthusiasm for the genocide in Gaza. This means cutbacks on welfare, support for disabled people, the scapegoating of “work shy” youth and the closing of cultural centres that provided socially useful services, such as language courses.
It’s fair to point out that the teachers at the BC Italy are organised by CGIL rather than the smaller more militant unions central to the political general strike. This proves that politicisation can take place in more “mainstream unions”. In Italy, one suspects that slogans such as “less tanks, more schools” are easier to raise at the moment than in the UK. Apparently, they were well received by parents and students alike, with students keen to “do something” themselves, one even turning up to join the picket line. While researching this article I interviewed Diana Nanos, one of the teachers facing redundancy in Italy. She stated:
“As both a parent and a teacher, I hope the next generation grows up with books in their hands, not weapons. For me, education is the best investment we can make in the future, and I wished we lived in a world where schools were valued more than war”
It’s a message that has been central to the fightback in Italy. And that’s impressive. However, rather than simply comparing the situation in the UK unfavourably to the one in Italy we should regard it as an example to follow. The workers at that old imperial institution the BC have given us all a lead.
English language teaching is political! And teaching English gives us insight into events locally and internationally. If you’d like to write about the intersection of politics and teaching, reach out to [email protected] to make a pitch.