Frank Bunting:FRANK BUNTING championed the cause of the North's teachers over the past 20 years in his role as Northern secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO).
Those were years of change in education, with teachers at the sharp end. Bunting energetically fought their corner.
He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the various documents laying down teachers’ conditions of service, and pensions. And he had no fear in taking on senior civil servants, management or politicians.
His commitment meant helping hundreds of individual teachers in disciplinary and grievance processes. They sometimes included members of other unions, who felt they were not getting the necessary representation – which they got when they turned to Bunting.
The INTO was traditionally perceived as a Catholic union, representing Catholic teachers in Catholic schools. Bunting broke out of that because of the INTO’s effectiveness as a union and his non-sectarian approach. The union recruited significant numbers of teachers from Protestant backgrounds in controlled (Protestant) schools.
Ending academic selection in the North was one of Bunting’s big causes. It came from his personal experience, as a child from a working-class family who failed the 11+ and subsequently graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast.
Politically, he was an old-style socialist republican who rejected the armed campaign.
His republicanism sought the unity of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. In his own union, he gave their head to political radicals. As chairman of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trades Union, he helped rejuvenate Belfast’s May Day march and opened it up so socialist groups could march under their own banners.
Sartorially, he had a flamboyant style. Where possible, he wore a hat with a red feather and a bow tie.
Brendan Morgan, a casework secretary in another teachers’ union, the National Association of Schoolmasters – Union of Women Teachers, said Bunting’s great quality was being approachable: “You were always able to meet with him and discuss a problem. He was always very helpful.”
Frank (Francis) Bunting was born on March 19th, 1950, in Earlscourt Street off Belfast’s Falls Road, the third of five children and the first son, to Frank Bunting and his wife Brigid, née Kelly. Frank (snr) was a barman and a noted piper on the uilleann pipes and bagpipes.
He was educated at St Finian’s Primary School, St Mary’s Christian Brothers Grammar School, and Queen’s University and was a student there through the political upheavals from 1968 to 1971. Bunting was also active in student protests.
He joined the Republican Clubs (later the Workers’ Party) but subsequently parted company with them.
Bunting worked as a secondary school teacher in west Belfast through the most intense period of the Troubles in the 1970s. Then he moved to work for the Irish Congress of Trades Unions as education officer.
He is survived by his daughter Eve, sons Sam, Jude and Luke, wife Mary, partner Mary Cahillane, sisters Briege, Mary and Gretta and brother Aidan.
Frank Bunting: Born March 19th, 1950; died August 27th, 2011.