PETER SMITH was the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) who transformed a solid, but small and rather staid body into a serious force in education policy.
When Smith became deputy general secretary of the association in 1982 it was still called the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association (AAM), having been formed four years ealier by the merger of the Association of Assistant Mistresses and the Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools, which had each been launched in the late 19th century.
AAM was seen as an old-fashioned association for grammar school teachers, but Smith was soon to work to change that. Intellectual but also charismatic, he modernised the association, which then began to attract teachers uncomfortable with the often militant stance of the NUT during the troubled Eighties.
The thousands of new members found not only a haven from industrial action but also a body equally concerned with the details of education policy as it was with pay and conditions. Indeed, AAM believed that the dictates and actions of ministers and others in authority had as much an impact on the conditions of teachers as did pay.
In 1988 Smith became general secretary and increased dramatically the pace of change. Against some resistance among members, he took the association into the TUC and then, in 1993, led the change of name to conform with its modern approach.
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Another major success was taking a leading role in the social partnership with other unions and employers’ bodies and the Government. This allowed ATL to punch above its weight in the influence it had on policy. At the same time its membership had grown from around 75,000 in 1978 to around 160,000.
In the year leading up to his retirement, Smith oversaw a heated debate on a possible merger with the NUT and the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers. Special debates were held at the ATL conferences, and the idea was thrown out and is not currently under consideration. Smith had been pro-merger and, although disappointed, had been more concerned about encouraging debate on the subject than pushing his point of view.
Peter Anthony Smith was born in South London in 1940. He was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham School for Boys and then Brasenose College, Oxford. After working at a bank as a graduate trainee, he taught in London until 1974 when he became assistant secretary of the Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools, which later became the AAM.
Smith had enormous personal charm which made him a great networker. Although politically astute, he was not openly party political, which allowed him to make allies and friends across a wide spectrum.
He was a member of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1994-2000 and on the general council of the TUC from 2000-02. In 2003 he was appointed CBE.
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He is survived by his wife, Anne, whom he married in 1961, and by their son and daughter.
Peter Smith, CBE, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, 1988-2002, was born on June 24, 1940. He died on February 10, 2006, aged 65.