The National Union of Public Employees & a culture of learning

This article was written for the Association of NUPE Former Staff and appeared in their Summer 2025 newsletter. I felt genuinely honoured to write it and there is no exageration in what I've writtten. There was only a limited space and there's much more to tell.

NUPE, NALGO, and COHSE merged in 1993 to form UNISON.

When I joined UNISON in the early 2000s, the names NUPE, NALGO and COHSE felt like acronyms from the past. Not that it mattered - the welcome I received from the folks in the East Midlands regional office was so warm that their origins hardly seemed important.

But now, twenty years on, as I write a book on the history of trade unions and lifelong learning, no union has piqued my curiosity more than the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE). Only now am I beginning to understand the different cultures that each union brought to UNISON. NUPE seems unique - not just among the ‘partner unions’ but within the whole trade union movement.

I came to UNISON as Regional Learning Organiser in the East Midlands, a role I still hold. Initially paid by the Government’s Union Learning Fund (ULF), UNISON­­—unlike the other unions—made the early decision to take us on to the permanent payroll. Across the unions, the ULF sparked a wave of activity: learning centres, workplace courses, and negotiations with employers became the norm. But when the funding in England ended in 2020, it all seemed to collapse. What had seemed like concrete foundations turned out to be papier-mâché. Most unions let their project workers go or reassigned them. UNISON didn’t.

When the funding ended, I questioned whether lifelong learning had ever truly been part of union identity. That question sparked the book—a way to explore the history, reflect on recent efforts, and consider what comes next. UNISON, I realised, continued beyond the ULF because it went into the ULF with a pre-existing culture of learning. Lifelong learning was part of its DNA—an ethos I believe has its roots in NUPE stretching right back to the Warwick Review of the 1970s[1]

Interviewing former NUPE colleagues, I’ve been genuinely astonished by the consistent culture they described. I’m sure NUPE had its flaws, but it fostered an unusually supportive environment. Jim Cornelius, an Organiser in London, set up a training organisation

Certificate presented to Rodney Bickerstaffe to celebrate presenting 1000 Return to Learn certificates

(Workbase) that delivered basic skills well beyond London, and management seemed to think that was absolutely fine. Jim Sutherland launched an entire programme, Return to Learn, which cost a considerable sum, yet General Secretary, Rodney Bickerstaffe, was there to present many of the certificates. Angela Gerrard, an Organiser in Yorkshire, simply saw it as part of her role to negotiate with employers to run programmes in the workplace. Those were just a few of the many examples where NUPE organisers were given free rein to develop ideas which had the member at its core - members that were often the lowest paid within the Public Services.

The freedom within NUPE seems to have come from the very top. The WEA’s Pete Caldwell, who worked with Jim to establish Return to Learn, points to Rodney Bickerstaffe as key to this work,

“Bick wasn’t an educator, but he saw people as human beings - with aspirations and the ability to change and develop, with a wider sense of the world of what they wanted to do and offer, rather than simply someone who could just help the union.”

NUPE's Report into its progress since the Warwick Review in 1974. National Women's Officer, June Rahman (Right)

The Warwick review sought to reshape the union as truly member-led and address the stark gender imbalance. From there came a Women’s Officer, then a National Education Officer and later, Regional Education Organisers. Lifelong Learning was seen as an essential tool in fighting for what the union believed in. June Rahman, National Women’s Officer, summed this up when describing the role education played in encouraging women into activity,

“We had to fight them (the men) with education.  One of the many problems was a lack of confidence. The women felt embarrassed in meetings and thought the men would laugh if they spoke up.  But take them on a few courses and…..wow!”

In the end, over 10,000 NUPE/UNISON members took part in Return to Learn, most were women and the lowest paid. I recently met a woman who joined Return to Learn some years ago. In a hospital canteen, she told me—excitedly—that she’d just been on strike. ‘I’d never have done that before,’ she said. But put her on a course and... wow!

[1] 'The Warwick Review' was the name given to a review of the union in 1974, and led by Bob Fryer. It was a radical review of the union and had a profound impact leading to a greater democratisation of the unions and addressed, head-on, the gender imbalance within the union.