Nigel Farage has traded blows with a ‘Marxist’ teachers’ leader whose trade union vowed to mobilise members to stop him becoming Prime Minister – and dubbed him a ‘Toytown Trump’.
Delegates at the annual conference of the National Education Union (NEU), which starts on Monday, will debate a motion calling for the trade union movement to ‘throw its full weight behind stopping a Reform UK government’.
The motion also calls for teachers to ‘collate and disseminate anti-racist teaching materials’ and to ‘encourage school and community-based anti-deportation campaigns’.
Separate debates will call for an ‘end to the proscription of Palestine Action’ and to support teachers who want to visit migrant camps in northern France.
On Saturday Mr Farage vowed to sweep away ‘politicised classrooms’ if he became Prime Minister and took aim at Daniel Kebede, the union’s hard-Left general secretary, saying: ‘The NEU should focus on the day job of teaching instead of trying to indoctrinate children. Daniel Kebede is an open Marxist and shouldn’t be anywhere near our education system.
‘Change is coming for the NEU – a Reform government will introduce a patriotic curriculum, no longer will teaching unions be able to politicise the classroom and talk down our country.’
But Mr Kebede hit back, saying: ‘Nigel Farage will be a disaster for Britain. We have a multi-millionaire dressed in tweed masquerading as a man of the people.
‘The reality is he would cut our schools to the bone along with the NHS and other public services. This Toytown Trump is not fit for No 10.’
Reform party leader Nigel Farage spoke on stage at the launch of the party’s local election campaign at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, London, on Saturday
The NEU is currently running a ballot of members over whether to strike over pay, workload and school funding.
Mr Farage, who holds a nine-point lead in the most recent opinion poll, has vowed to tackle ‘institutional Left-wing bias’ among the ‘Blob’ of the Civil Service, local authorities and schools if he forms the next government.
Reform officials have received increasing reports of Left-wing teachers characterising Reform supporters as ‘fascists’ in classrooms across the country.
Last year it demanded an investigation after teachers at a group of leading state schools made ‘inappropriate and slanderous’ comparisons between the party and the Nazis.
Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, complained after discovering that staff at the Orion group, which runs eight academy schools in south London, used a picture of him in teaching materials to illustrate ‘extremism’ – defined as activities which ‘reject British values’.
The materials also placed Reform to the right of Ukip and next to the BNP and the Nazis at the ‘fascism’ end of an illustration on the Left-wing/Right-wing political spectrum of beliefs.
The secondary school lessons were for pupils in Year 10.
Last week, it was revealed that council workers in Leeds were offered counselling in a ‘safe space’ to deal with the stress of a visit by the Reform UK leader.
The NEU is currently running a ballot of members over whether to strike over pay, workload and school funding Pictured: Tens of thousands of teachers marched in London in 2023 as they staged a strike over better working conditions and better pay
John Ebo, the council’s head of human resources, said: ‘No doubt you will have picked up in the news that Nigel Farage and Reform are holding an event/rally.
‘I am mindful such events impact on colleagues, and would ask that we enable safe space conversations for colleagues such as the Wellbeing network chats.’
The email was forwarded to the council’s Race Equality Staff Network, with an extra warning: ‘Be vigilant if you are in the city centre that day.’ Mr Farage called them ‘pathetic, weak people who don’t understand democracy’.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski will address the NEU conference on Monday afternoon.
