Burston book cover_Burston book cover 17/08/2016 08:48 Page 1 T H E B U THE R S Written by PETA STEEL T O N BURSTON SCHOOL STRIKE S C Published in September 2 01 6 by SERTUC H O TO Congress House, Great Russell Street O 191 4 1939 London WC1B 3LS L S 020 7467 1220 [email protected] T R AN ACCOUNT OF THE FIGHT FOR PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION I K E AND TRADE UNION RIGHTS IN NORFOLK Including a brief HISTORY OF THE AGRICULTURAL WORKERS’ Additional sponsorship from UNION and THE NATIONAL UNION OF TEACHERS UNITE, NUT, RMT, and USDAW S E R T U C PUBLISHED BY SERTUC Printed by Upstream 020 7358 1344 [email protected] £2 Burston book cover_Burston book cover 17/08/2016 08:48 Page 2 CONTENTS FOREWORD THE BURSTON SCHOOL STRIKE 1914 TO 1939 1 THE AGRICULTURAL WORKERS UNION 15 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE N.U. T. 18 SCHOOL PUPILS’ STRIKES 21 EDUCATION LAW 23 THE LABOUR PARTY 27 THE FIRST WORLD WAR 31 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 35 SYLVIA PANKHURST 39 THE IRISH SITUATION 43 BRITAIN IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY 47 THE HIGDONS AND THE POTTERS 50 THE AFTERMATH OF THE BURSTON SCHOOL STRIKE 57 Burston book text to print_Burston book text to print 17/08/2016 08:51 Page 1 FOREWORD BURSTON is a Norfolk village near Diss and close to the border with Suffolk. The story of the Burston School Strike is inspiring, encouraging and a testament to the courage and determination of the children and their parents. Life was hard in rural England, exploitation was severe and the rise of the Agricultural Workers Union, along with the changing political circumstances did much to alleviate this. But this is not only a report of trade union organisation, it is also the tale of the commitment of the Higdons as educators to enriching and improving the children’s lives and increasing their chance of a better life. And finally, it is a story of solidarity, whether of Burston’s residents sharing the fines imposed upon their number by the establishment, or of the solidarity for the strike that flooded in from around the country and the world from political organisations, trade unions and individuals. This booklet is not intended to be the last word in the story, nor to compete with the many other reports and research. Rather we look at the strike in the historical and political context provided by the contemporaneous circumstances, national and international. However, I must note that this booklet did not write itself. Burston book text to print_Burston book text to print 17/08/2016 08:51 Page 2 FOREWORD The research and writing was carried out by journalist and writer PETA STEEL to whom I express my sincere gratitude for her commitment and skill. I know it will add to the knowledge and pride of workers in our Region in our past, and reinforce our commitment to ensure a better world for future generations. Megan Dobney SERTUC Regional Secretary September 2 01 6 Our previous publications celebrating the campaigning and fight of workers in our Region are The Spithead and Nore Mutinies of 1797 and The Levellers Movement . Both are available free at https://sertucresources.wordpress.com/sertuc-publications- general/ Burston book text to print_Burston book text to print 17/08/2016 08:51 Page 1 THE BURSTON SCHOOL STRIKE 191 4 TO 1939 Of the poor’s poverty the causes moot, The Parson scarcely cares to know the root. Tom Higdon THE classroom in the village school was nearly empty, outside could be heard the voices of children marching and singing as waving flags they paraded around the village green in front of the school. On Wednesday 1 April 191 4, 66 pupils of the 72 attending the Burston village school in Norfolk went out on strike. They were taking action to get their teacher Kitty Higdon reinstated following her dismissal by the school’s management committee. The strike which was to end some 25 years later is the longest to take place in this country’s history. It was to cause a wave of support that would echo not only locally but nationally and internationally. Sylvia Pankhurst, Labour leader George Lansbury, Tom Mann MP and Leo Tolstoy, the son of the Russian playwright, were to become some of the strikers’ most ardent supporters, lending their voices to the protest and raising money to help them. The strike wasn’t just about school children fighting against their teachers’ dismissal, it epitomised the battle against the injustice and the way in which agricultural workers and their families had been treated by the ruling classes, which included the church. It was 1 Burston book text to print_Burston book text to print 17/08/2016 08:51 Page 2 THE BURSTON SCHOOL STRIKE a fight to get a more equal life for people who had been kept subject to the whims and vagaries of the landlords and wealthy farmers. In many ways it was a rebellion against a form of life that still echoed the attitudes of the middle ages, with workers and their families tied to the strings of those who employed them. The lives of the children in that area were as much attached to the needs and requirements of the farmers and landlords as those of their parents. Although the 1902 Parliamentary Education Bill offered education to working class children, ‘education’ meant they were not expected to receive more than basic instruction, an education to make them fit for the lives they were already living and were expected to live. In the case of the children living in the agricultural areas, they were still expected to put working on the fields before the need to get an education. The appointments of Annie Higdon (known as Kitty) as headmistress and her husband Tom as an assistant teacher were to change the lives of the pupils and their parents in Burston. The Higdons arrived at the school on 31 January 19 11 following a dispute with the Norfolk Education Committee over the way in which they had run their previous school, Wood Dalling County, where they had sided with the farm labourers and fought to improve the cold, insanitary conditions of the school. They had protested at the way in which farmers had illegally prevented children attending school by taking them out of the classroom to work on the land when they needed them. The school management had been made up of the parson and local farmers and landowners, the row between them and the Higdons had led to a total breakdown in relations leading to the Education Committee giving them the 2 Burston book text to print_Burston book text to print 17/08/2016 08:51 Page 3 THE BURSTON SCHOOL STRIKE choice of either accepting dismissal or moving to another local school. By the time they left conditions at the school had been vastly improved, and a local branch of the Agricultural Workers Union had been set up by Tom Higdon. First appearances taken by the Higdons of a pretty village made up of pink-washed cottages were revealed to be wrong; hidden behind this bucolic vista were dilapidated cottages which were little more than squalid buildings with holes in the roofs and damp dark rooms. These were tithe cottages owned by the workers’ employers who could sack them from their jobs and throw them out of their homes. At the same time they were still required to pay rents. A government report of 1867 had criticised the supply of cottages and stated that they were ‘in very bad order, small and overcrowded ’. Nothing much had been done to improve them. It was not surprising that the newly formed Agricultural Workers Union saw the area as being ripe for recruitment. At that stage there were no Labourers’ Union branches anywhere in the area with the result that wages were low. Conditions at Burston School were as bad, if not worse than those at Wood Dalling. Higdon himself was to describe the school premises as being: “ill-lighted, ill-drained, badly heated and wretchedly ventilated ”. The Higdons had no doubt, as Tom claimed, that they had to try and improve things: “thus there was much radical wrong, which for conscience sake, as well as for all practical and healthful reasons, must needs be faced ”. The Higdons, with Tom acting again as a local organiser for the Agricultural Workers, once more allied themselves with the landworkers, and were soon locked in conflict with the newly arrived 3 Burston book text to print_Burston book text to print 17/08/2016 08:51 Page 4 THE BURSTON SCHOOL STRIKE rector, the Reverend Charles Tucker Eland, who had been appointed chairman of the School Managing Body. Many of the Church’s previous powers had been lost to the parish council, and Eland was determined to recover them. He looked on himself as having the rank of an estate owner demanding deference and recognition for his position which he saw as leading the local community. His own lifestyle with a large annual salary of £5 81 and the provision of a comfortable rectory bore little in common with those of the farm labourers and their families who barely existed on an average wage of £35 a year; most of them surviving by planting their own vegetables on strips of ‘glebe land’ rented out to them. The Rev Eland who owned 54 acres of glebe land, part of his parson’s ‘living’, was one of the foremost owners.