I had a feeling he was out for me but didn't know to what extent

TEACHER SPEAKS OUT AFTER LOSING HER JOB FOR BEING A UNION REP WHO STOOD UP TO PRIMARY SCHOOL'S HEAD

- NEAL KEELING

WHEN the Salford home Margaret Pearson had lived in for 40 years was being cleared after her death a discovery was made.

"She had old double cellars and we were moving a mattress. As we did there were all these chalked sums and sentences and writing on the wall and it was by me," her daughter, Carmen WoodHope recalls later.

"My brothers and sisters remember me sitting them on crates in the cellar and teaching them. It was always something that was in me."

Carmen was born to teach. "I love being around young children and passing on that knowledge - no use in having all this stuff in your head if it is not going anywhere," she says. "I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a teacher and neither can my siblings."

That clear ambition was achieved. But in a case that has appalled M.E.N. readers, Carmen would lose her job, her home and almost lose her professional reputation just for standing up for union members in a Greater Manchester school.

The headteacher, Michael Earnshaw, not only ensured she lost her job - but then wrote damaging references which could have stopped her from working at all, a Manchester employment tribunal, brought against Salford council and the governors of Friars Primary School concluded. It was all because she was the union rep.

That would be troubling anywhere in modern Britain. But it's especially troubling that this happened in Salford - a Labour party-run city that prides itself on its contribution to the wider labour movement which fought for workers' rights over centuries - in a school that is still part of the council's local education authority.