NEW NASUWT president Rashida Din thanked her English teacher today for inspiring her to succeed in the shadow of the emergence of the National Front in her native Luton.

She said it was an honour to address delegates as the union’s first Muslim president at the opening of its annual conference in Harrogate.

“We are the union of equality, diversity and breaking down barriers and that is why I stand before you today,” she said.

“Great teachers change lives, and they come along at the right moment.

“I know this, as a great teacher changed my life — inspired me. She asked me what university I was planning to go to and what I was going to study at college.

“My parents had arrived from Kashmir in the ’60s, not able to speak or write English.

“I had grown up in Luton in the 1970s to the backdrop of Enoch Powell and his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and the emergence of the National Front.

“That was not the journey I, or society, expected me to follow.

“However, to have someone to believe in you lights a spark — in my case, my English teacher, Mrs Burchett.

“I became the first of my family to go both to college and university.”

She urged the next Westminster government and those of devolved nations to reverse 14 years of chronic underfunding and invest in the workforce with world-class pay and working conditions. 

“On the horizon, the general election approaches,” she said. 

“Carpe diem — we will seize the moment to organise and hold the next government to account.

“NASUWT will stand with the entire trade union movement in campaigning to defeat the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, using all means at our disposal.”

She added the union will continue to fight for human rights and justice, “responding to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and in other nations across the globe.”