The Longest Strike in History

Last Sunday I was taken to the Burston Rally by Miles Hubbard, a friend from Walpole. Miles is a trade union organiser working for Unite in our region. The village of Burston is a few miles from Diss in Norfolk.

On arrival at Burston, we had a cup of tea. I had a look at the exhibition in the little school building. It gave a brief history of events that took place in this village in the first half of the last century. It tells the story of Christian Socialist schoolteachers, Tom and Annie Higdon, their pupils and the village community all working together to bring about social change.

Tom Higdon was born in Somerset in 1869. He married Annie Katherine Schollick and the couple moved to Norfolk in 1902 to work as headmistress and assistant teacher at Wood Dalling County School. From the start they didn't get on with the school managers, mostly local farmers. The Higdons definitely identified themselves more with the interests of farm labourers than with those of landowners. Farmers took children out of school to work in the fields whenever they needed them. Tom Higdon thought child labour was a bad idea. So much so that one day he assaulted a farmer who had persistently taken boys out of school. He supported the recently-formed trades unions in Norfolk, which also got up the noses of the farmers and school managers.

The Higdons were insubordinate, a characteristic of socialists. In 1910 Tom, Annie and some farm labourers were brazen enough to stand for election to the parish council. They were all elected and the old farts were outraged. Relations became so bad that Tom and Annie were transferred. On February 1, 1911, they went to Burston.

After a couple of years at Burston, Tom again organised a group of labourers to join him in standing for election to the parish council. Surprise, surprise, they were all elected and, as it says in the information booklet, "the village establishment received its marching orders from the people". But the Rector, Reverend Charles Tucker Eland, and his farmer friends were still managers of the school.

One day, Annie lit the school fire to dry out the clothes of pupils who had walked to school in heavy rain. This action was said, by Rector Eland, to be "grossly discourteous" to the school managers, as Annie had not asked their permission to light the fire. She was also falsely accused, on another occasion, of beating two girls. The school managers demanded that the Higdons be transferred. After an enquiry by the Education Committee, the Higdons were given three months notice.

Their dismissal took effect on April Fool's Day in 1914. A day on which the sounds of children marching and singing rang around Burston's 'candlestick', or circular route round the village. Sixty-six of the school's seventy-two children had gone on strike, in protest against the treatment of the Higdons. They carried placards saying things like 'We Want Our Teachers Back' and 'We Are Out For Justice'. This wasn't an April Fool's joke, it was for real. The kids demonstrated daily until the Higdons started giving lessons on the village green.

Six children at the County School, sixty-six on the village green - something devilish going on. Parents were fined by the authorities for not sending their children to the County School, managing to pay the fines from collections made for the purpose. A tax for going on strike. The first strike school building was a redundant carpenter's shop.

A year later, the lease on the carpenter's shop was running out. A national appeal was made to raise funds for a permanent Strike School to be built. Many trade unions gave financial support. Some of the contributors are commemorated on the stones on the Strike School's front wall. The Rugby Co-Operative Society, the Wolverhampton Trades and Labour Council, The Mountain Ash Deep Dufferin Miners' Lodge, the Ipswich Branch of ASLEF, the Maesteg District Miners, the Optical Glass Workers Society, the Coventry Typographical Society, the Barcoed ILP and several others all gave generously.

On May 13, 1917 the new school was ready. Violet Potter, the leader of the children who went on strike in 1914, addressed the thousand or so people assembled on Burston village green that "With joy and thankfulness I declare this school open, to be forever a school of freedom". The Strike School functioned until 1939, the year in which Tom Higdon died. He and Annie, or Kitty as she was also known, are buried in the churchyard next to the village green and only a couple of hundred yards, if that, from the Strike School itself. The strike lasted for twenty five years, said to be the longest strike in history. On the back of the information booklet is a great drawing of a rather stubborn and probably insubordinate 'Norfolk Pig' Underneath it is the epithet "You may push me, You may shuv, But I'm hanged if I'll be druv, From Burston".

In the churchyard I first noticed the gravestones of Lilian Alice Cattermole, Peter Haden Cattermole and Ivy Ellen Cattermole. Norfolk folk, Norfolk names. Rudd, Cross, Nichols, Coe, Turner, Potter, Howlett, Last, Wilby, Stevens, Lewis and Maud Anne Coffee. Flowers on the graves of Tom and Annie today.

Back on the village green I worked my way round the stalls on a fine and sunny Sunday morning. I photographed a young man who had a face like the face of Che Guevara printed on his t-shirt, manning the Solidarity with Venezuela stall, the front of which was draped with the Venezuelan flag with its yellow, dark blue and red horizontal stripes with eight white stars. I thought about buying the book 'Understanding the Venezuelan Revolution'. One day. An Amnesty stall, a Socialist Bookshop stall, from which I bought John Pilger's latest 'Freedom Next Time', The Anglian Pensioner, Unite, Stop the Fascist BNP, the Womens' International League for Peace and Freedom, the CND, Norwich Stop the War Coalition, Respect 'Don't Attack Iran', the Cuba Solidarity Campaign 'Get Your Free Che Tattoo Here', the British Communist Party selling Lenin's 'Socialism and War' for £1.20, the word 'Sixpence' printed clearly on its front cover, 'Essays in Insurrection' by Edmund and Ruth Frow, the Morning Star with its headline 'Prison Officers: We Wont Back Down', the Socialist History Society with its books like 'Kier Hardie in West Ham' and 'Marx, Engels and the Irish', the National Pensioners' Convention, Eastern Region, the Dereham and District Branch of the Labour Party selling raffle tickets for a ridiculously large teddy bear, a stall full of badges, old and new, bearing slogans like 'Nationalise Water Now' and 'Hands Off the ILEA', for those who wanted to wear their hearts on their sleeves, the Norwich Humanist Association stall where I overheard a young man rabbitting on about Jehovah's Witnesses to the stallholder, the Socialist Worker with a poster of Bush and big letters proclaiming him as 'The World's No. 1 Terrorist'. Also larger groups of people around the face-painting, loads of fun being had on the 'Cool Bouncers' bouncy castle, big queues for burgers and beer. A small stage with rows of chairs arranged in front of it and the customary difficulty with electrics for the sound system. Such a classic when the technology stumps the anxious organisers!

A folky band called The Red Flags played first - two mandolins, guitar and vocals, fiddle and accordion. Their opening number 'Be Reasonable - Demand The Impossible Now' was about re-housing homeless people in Buckingham Palace and nicking all the cops. Half way through their set, the banner parade returned to the village green, having gone round the candlestick. Colourful textiles, printed and appliqued, in the great tradition of the union banner. The Cambridgeshire NUT 'Unity Is Strength', Thompsons solicitors banner 'Justice For Working People', the T and G Workers Ipswich Branch said 'One Big Union', Hammersmith and Fulham Trades Union showed a hammer, a chain and an anvil, Trunch District Agricultural and Allied Trade Group had a picture of two shire horses pulling a plough and a small ploughman.

Straw hats, red faces with white hair, a few Afro and Indian people, quite a few old ones' ladies with long grey hair, about 50 50 male and female. A nice version of Dylan's 'The Man In Me' on the sound system preceded Tony Benn. Tony talked about the Diggers' saying that the earth is 'a common treasury for all'; the Tolpuddle Martyrs being sent to Australia where, apparently, you are no longer not required to have a criminal record to be allowed entry. He quoted Norfolk's Tom Paine's 'My country is the world, my religion to do good', pointing out its current relevance. He mentioned one of his former constituents saying "I see the Russians have put a man into space; is there any chance of a better bus service in Bristol?" Tony Benn is 83 now.

Billy Bragg, the big-nosed bard of Barking, was next. He's got a way with words, too. His first song started "I've had relations, With girls from many nations, I've made passes, At girls from all social classes". A great song about the Diggers, too, called 'The World Turned Upside Down'. It contains the words "The sin of property we do disdain", which got me thinking about our ten acres. Billy explained, between songs, that he had been politicised mainly by attending the Rock Against Racism concert in Hackney in 1978. Another song went "Take the money from Trident, And spend it on the NHS" and "I don't believe we can get rid of the axis of evil, By putting smart bombs in the hands of dumb people". He also described this country as being "up the arsehole of the United States of America". I told you he had a way with words.

Last but not least Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union. Bob made an uncompromising speech in which he said "All private schools should be abolished" and "In my view, as well, private hospitals should also be banned". Quite exciting, his delivery passionate, his voice from the East End. The sort of oratory that you don't hear very often from present-day politicians. He told us how one night the LEB man came to his house. "Mr. Crow" he says, "I'm floggin' gas. Can I interest you?". Next night, the gas man knocked at his door. "Mr. Crow", he says, "I'm floggin' electricity. Do you want some?" The night after that a bloke from Thames Water turned up, also floggin' electricity. Bob's voice rose to a crescendo - "When I was at school, I was taught that water and electricity don't mix. Well, when there's big profits involved, apparently they do!" He complained about the way the Labour government had carried on the Tory ideas about public/private finance and questioned whether or not trades unions should continue supporting Labour. "I'm not prepared to give money to a Labour Party that goes out and mugs you in the middle of the night", he bellowed. "And I'll tell yer what, I got more in common with a Chinese coolie than I 'ave with a stockbroker in Liverpool". Stirring, rabble-rousing stuff that was heartily applauded by the folk on the village green.

Milling around at the end of the day, I introduced myself to the man I had seen carrying the Hammersmith and Fulham banner. I asked if he knew our politically active friends from Hammersmith, Louanne and Chris Tranchell. It turned out that he was attending a meeting with Louanne the next day and knew them very well. Alwyn Simpson, the banner carrier, had recently started some work helping a school in the Gambia so was very interested in our Health Images work and also asked me to design a logo for the ERASE Foundation that he has founded. ERASE stands for 'Ending Reliance and Supporting Empowerment'.

All in all, a rather inspiring and refreshing sort of day for me.The only negative aspect was that the beer tent ran out of Adnam's before the end of the rally. Thankfully, nothing's perfect.