Ei-iE

Nigel de Gruchy, former General Secretary of British education union NASUWT, passed away on Saturday 29 November. The global education union movement mourns and remembers a tireless champion for educators’ rights and one of the union leaders that spearheaded the creation of Education International.

Nigel was born in 1943 in the Channel Island of Jersey, then under Nazi occupation. He was educated at De La Salle College and graduated from Reading University in 1965. He briefly taught in Spain and France before returning to the UK in 1969 to teach economics at St Joseph’s Academy in the Inner London Education Authority.

In London Nigel became a trade union activist. He rose rapidly through the ranks of NASUWT before being elected Deputy General Secretary in 1983 and General Secretary in 1990, a position he would hold until 2002. In 2002-2003, Nigel served as President of the Trades Union Congress. He then retired from trade union politics, leaving behind a career that reshaped trade unions and industrial relations in the UK and abroad.

The union leader who put teachers first

In ground-breaking industrial campaigns, Nigel spoke for NASUWT and its members, demanding an end to the excessive workload driving teachers out of the profession, and helping to forge the conditions for the creation of an historic national agreement between unions, employers, and the Labour Government.

His campaigning on pupil behaviour culminated in a victory in the High Court and secured the legal right of all teachers to refuse to teach violent pupils.

His communication skills, insights, and ability to get to the heart of issues made him a well-known figure across the country in the 1990s and helped fuel the public debate on education. He chose pupil-friendly means of protest, utilising the tactic of action short of strike action to win industrial disputes without disrupting children’s education.

Throughout his life and career, Nigel believed that it was imperative for workers to stand in solidarity to demand fairness. He applied this principle in the UK but also across borders.

One of the architects of Education International

In addition to his union activism in the UK, Nigel convinced his union to support a merger of two international teachers’ organisations that would lead to the creation of Education International. At the constitutional congress in 1993 he became a member of the EI Executive Board and served on the Board until 2004.

“Nigel was instrumental in helping build our International in those early years”, stated Fred van Leeuwen, Education International General Secretary Emeritus. “Through EI and NASUWT, Nigel’s work and memory will live on."

Recognised as the voice of education workers at the global level, the organisation he helped create now brings together over 375 unions and represents over 33 million teachers and education support personnel across 180 countries and territories.