Max Morris was a firebrand president of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), 1973-74, who was instrumental in steering the union from a conformist talking shop into a militant campaigning machine. He led industrial actions such as the successful strike for an increase in the London teachers’ allowance in the early 1970s and he also campaigned against a national shortage of pencils and books and severe staff shortages in some schools which, he cautioned, would lead to anarchy in the nation’s classrooms.

As an energetic NUT president, and a Communist Party member, he championed the comprehensive system and ran a militant campaign to force local authorities to replace grammars with comprehensive schools.

The policy brought him into direct conflict with Margaret Thatcher, then the Education Secretary, with whom he would go on to have many bruising battles. Short, stocky and with a ready stream of invective straight from the Gorbals, he denounced her “callous indifference” to the plight of teachers, but he denied that there was a “personal vendetta” towards Thatcher and praised her as a “doughty fighter”.

Morris steered the NUT to what he called “respectable militancy” but later became frustrated with Trotskyite elements trying to infiltrate the NUT, accusing them of being anti-democratic. He left the Communist Party in 1976 and said later: “The aim of the Trotskyite sect is sheer disruption of the union and of the teaching profession in the pursuit of crazy, wildcat policies which the overwhelming majority of teachers will reject with contempt.”

Morris was born in the Gorbals area of Glasgow in 1913 to impoverished Jewish parents who loved books and encouraged their son to enter political discussion. Though he championed the comprehensive school throughout his career, Morris was the product of a successful grammar school, Hutchesons’ in Glasgow, renowned for its tough discipline. He took a first-class degree in history at University College London, at which point he joined the Communist Party. He then took a teacher-training course at the Institute of Education, London University, and began teaching in Willesden, northwest London, in 1936. After the outbreak of war he served with the Royal Army Service Corps, rising to the rank of captain. From 1946 he lectured in one of the emergency teacher-training colleges set up after the war before returning to teach in Willesden in 1950.

From this point his career progression was stunted for nine years by a ban on the appointment of communist or fascist head teachers and deputy heads imposed by the Conservative-controlled Middlesex County Council. The policy was revoked in a blaze of national publicity by the incoming Labour administration in 1958 and Morris became head of Chamberlayne Wood Secondary School in Brent, northwest London, in 1962. He was appointed headmaster of Willesden High School in 1966, the same year that he won a seat on the NUT executive, at the third attempt.

Conservative councillors agitated against the appointment of “Red Max” at Willesden High School, but council leaders stood firm. Morris was known as an authoritarian headmaster who was credited with transforming the standards of the school.

Before retiring from the headship in 1978 he was mired in one final controversy over his comments against the teaching of “black studies”. His claim that the “disastrous” move would “turn schools into two-culture establishments” resulted in his being reported to the Commission for Racial Equality.

It illustrated that despite his militant campaigning on behalf of teachers’ pay and the comprehensive school system he remained a traditionalist on parenting and teaching methods. For example, he complained that ever more children started school able only to mumble “baby talk”; he spoke of the need for parents to guide their children rather than treat them as equals; and he bemoaned the drop in basic standards of spelling and grammar.

He remained active in politics as a councillor on the ruling Labour group of Haringey Borough Council, 1984- 1986, under its leader Bernie Grant.

Morris was chairman of the Socialist Education Association, 1995-98, during which time he was a fierce critic of the Government’s emerging policy of turning comprehensives into city academies. He was horrified when Willesden High School was turned into a city academy, having failed an Ofsted inspection in 1998.

His publications included The People’s Schools, 1939, From Cobbett to the Chartists, 1948, Your Children’s Future, 1953, and, with Jack Jones, An A to Z of Trade Unionism and Industrial Relations, 1982. Among his hobbies listed in Who’s Who he included “baiting the Department of Education”.

His wife, Margaret, survives him.

Max Morris, teacher and trade union leader, was born on August 15, 1913. He died on August 27, 2008, aged 95