EXCLUSIVE: Teachers’ union accused of skewing survey to ignore antisemitism on the far left

The survey’s timing – published 14 months after it was carried out – was held up by one Jewish union member as an attempt to enhance the reputation of Wrack, who was a staunch defender of Jeremy Corbyn during Labour’s antisemitism crisis.

“I think it’s a very cynical attempt on the union’s part to get Jewish members to vote for Matt Wrack,” the member said. “It almost feels like we’re being gaslit.”

The stated purpose of the survey was to build a picture of Jewish members’ experiences of antisemitism in schools and colleges.

However a JC investigation, drawing on the actual survey questions as well as conversations with multiple Jewish teachers – who requested anonymity – reveals that the survey was shaped in a way to highlight incidents which read as far-right, while ignoring repeated reports from Jewish teachers about Israel-related antisemitism, which typically comes from the left.

The survey, compiled by NASUWT’s equalities team, contained eight questions, each with multiple choice answers.

Only one question asked specifically about the “form” of antisemitism they had witnessed or experienced in the past year, offering the following seven options (teachers were told to select all that applied): “Jokes/banter”; “Insults/taunts”; “Dissemination of antisemitic literature”; “Exclusion because of faith/Jewish heritage”; “Exclusion because of your/someone’s perceived faith/Jewish heritage”; “Swastika graffiti” and “Nazi-related comment”.

While two options were related to right-wing antisemitism, there was no specific option for antisemitism associated with anti-Israel-related sentiments that Jewish teachers say they regularly encounter. The survey made it thus more difficult for Jewish teachers to register their experiences with anti-Zionist and Israel-related hate.

One of the teachers the JC spoke to said they had been invited by a member of NASUWT’s equalities team to review the survey before it was circulated, and that while some of their feedback had been taken in, their points about Israel-related antisemitism were ignored.

“I said, amongst the options that they had for forms of antisemitism that people had encountered in schools that it would be worth adding something like ‘swastika graffiti’ and ‘Nazi imagery’, because that comes up a lot in schools.

“But I also made a point of explaining that a lot of people are having lots of antisemitism linked to Israel and anti-Zionism, like having ‘Free Palestine’ shouted at them – and that suggestion was completely ignored.”

Asked if they had questioned the team about why some of their suggestions were taken in while others were not, the teacher said: “I didn’t, to be honest, because I just wasn’t surprised. I always assumed that they were going to ignore that suggestion.”

On releasing the survey, over a year after it was conducted, the union’s press release mentioned “swastika graffiti” and “Nazi-related comments” at schools, and the accompanying statement, signed by Wrack, spoke about the “dangerous rhetoric from far-right movements”. There was no mention of Israel-related hate.

When asked if they had any thoughts on why the union had decided to finally release the survey after holding it back for so long, one teacher said: “I think this is all to coincide with the fact that there’s this ballot that’s open because of the legal challenge that was mounted against Matt Wrack being general secretary.”

Wrack was appointed general secretary of NASUWT in April after failing to secure re-election at the Fire Brigades Union, which he led for 20 years.

In a union conference in 2016, he referred to the “so-called antisemitism in the Labour Party” which he said was “about an attack on the left, and it is about an attempt to undermine Jeremy Corbyn”. Two years later, he attacked the decision by pro-Corbyn faction Momentum to withdraw support for Pete Willsman after he was recorded saying that Jewish “Trump fanatics” were making false claims of antisemitism in the party and denied the problem was widespread.

Just days after Wrack’s appointment was announced, a group of Jewish NASUWT members wrote an open letter expressing their “dismay”.

“Antisemitism in the UK has been at record levels over the past 18 months. As teachers, many of us have experienced this first hand at our place of work, seeing Jewish children experience antisemitism as well as experiencing it ourselves as staff,” they wrote.

“It is imperative that we have confidence in our union to defend our rights under these circumstances. This is now under threat given the new general secretary’s history of denying and downplaying antisemitism.”

Shortly after Wrack was announced as general secretary, the union faced a legal challenge and was eventually forced to reopen nominations for the post. In May it was announced that Neil Butler, a NASUWT official, had passed the threshold required to be a candidate, and that there would be a new election between 19 June and 23 July.

A number of the teachers the JC spoke to had attended a roundtable meeting with representatives from the union to discuss their concerns about rising antisemitism in the summer of 2024, and told us that they felt their concerns about left-wing antisemitism were shut down.

The meeting was led by Brian Klug, Honorary Fellow in Social Philosophy, Campion Hall, University of Oxford, who himself has been accused of downplaying Israel-related antisemitism.

In 2007, he was part of a group of British Jews who founded Independent Jewish Voices, an organisation that has said it seeks to “counter-balance... the uncritical support for Israeli policies by established bodies such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews”.

Klug was also one of the authors of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, created to challenge the widely used definition of antisemitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).The Jerusalem Declaration, for instance, leaves out significant examples of Israel-related Jew-hatred (it removes IHRA’s warning against comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, saying: “Even if contentious, it is not antisemitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases”). Shortly after it was released, the CST’s Dave Rich called the document “deeply flawed” and said it risked “setting back the fight against antisemitism”.

Speaking about the meeting led by Klug, one of the teachers said: “When they then gave us the opportunity to talk more about our own experiences of antisemitism in schools, we were all talking about left-wing antisemitism – explaining how it’s linked to anti-Zionism, and that it’s not just criticism of Israel, it’s overstepping and all of that.

“We were talking about that at length, but they tried to get us to avoid the topic.”

Responding to the allegations, Klug said: “I did indeed chair the meeting. My memory of the occasion is a little hazy, as it was over a year ago [but] I don’t recall the exact words I used, but I’m quite sure that I would have meant political differences over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“In my work in this area over the last 25 years or so, I have sought to clarify the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and criticism that is antisemitic. I have never downplayed the latter, nor would I ever do so.”

When asked for comment on the substance of the survey and the timing of its release, the NASUWT press office replied: “Like the vast majority of our member surveys, NASUWT’s survey on antisemitism experienced by Jewish teachers in schools was conducted by an in-house team. Its release is part of a wider programme of media work highlighting abuse faced by teachers in schools.

“We are not able to comment on matters pertaining to members or the general secretary election.”

Responding to the allegations, Wrack wrote: “I have been an active anti-racist since being a teenager and I am a committed opponent of all forms of racism including antisemitism.

“I took up my role as acting general secretary of NASUWT in April of this year. I was contacted directly by a member of the union asking for an update on the work the union had undertaken on antisemitism and reporting some of the racist incidents the member was aware of.

“I have never ignored such matters and never will. I therefore asked for the details of the union’s previous work on the issue. After receiving these details, I took the decision to report the matter to the secretary of state. I stand by my actions which were entirely appropriate. Indeed, had I failed to act I would face legitimate questions about why I chose to ignore reports of racism faced by NASUWT teachers or others in schools.”