Jane from the play. (Photo: Pamla Toler) 1 betieve that it is only from this basis that interest will be aroused The bock: Children's Strikes an 1911 by Duve Manson (History Worlhop Pamphlet No 9 -30p)
The play: Fall in and Follow Me by Dive Marson & Billy Colville Halt Moon Theatre, Alie St London El.
In the year in which one of the most significant mobilisations in Europe since 1968 was by school students in France against the militarist laws, It is refreshing to discover that Britain has had its own mass mobilisations in schools from which experience we can draw today. The fascinating details of the mass strikes and demonstrations by working-class youth in September, 1911, in at least 62 towns, long since forgotten by the labour movement (and no doubt thankfully supp ressed by the bourgeois educational establishmont) have been resurrected and compiled by an ex-docker, Dave Marson, in this recently published parmptilet.
Bascd on the incidents chronicied in this publication, the Hak Moon Theatre Group from the Fast End has also produced a sbort play, Fall in and Follow Me (the title of the most popular marching song of the jubilant striking students). This production admirably dramatises the incidents surrounding the mobilisations in London, using six school-bays (whose acting and ad-libbing is a joy to watch) to personily the striking masses. 1911 was the year of the first wave of maas indastrial struggles, around the issues of unionisation of sections of unskilled workers and better wages and conditions. These grew in scope, mil itancy and organisation right up until 1914 when the working-class was disarmed and its united strength dissipated by the national chauvinist and collaborationist policies of its Social Democratic leaders on the issue of support for the imperialist war. It was also the yeur in which two striking miners were shot dead by troops in the streets of Llanelli.
Against this background, at the end of a freakishly hot summer, thousands of school-students, learning from the experienee and example of their parents. threw themselves into the cauldron of the classtruggle und took to the streets. To begin with the pamphlet describes and the play vividly demonstrates the awful deadness and repression of school-tife, as the achoolmasters attempted to instil into their charges the Victorian "virtues" of passivity, honesty, respect for authority and above all cleanliness and discip line — "Wash behind the ears if you want to defend the Empire" they are tokt.
We see the change from sullen acceptance of this situation, to an open fight against it, around the slogans of Shorter School How and No More Cane, thouch other students elsewhere had far more elaborate programmes, including Steam Heating Appenius in Schoolr (frequently unhcated), Free Pencil and Rubbers and Pay ment for Schoolchildren the last two of these SPECIA OFFERS from Red Books Women Worses in Elsteir A Harbooks by Leonora Lloyd NEW PAMPHLETS from Red Books *Ganes s of Trotskyisn' by Max Shachtman 20p |+5p p&pl ovarde a History of the Fl-Part 1° Education for Socialists Series 17р 1+5р paip Cass with order to Red Books 24 Bondary Roat Londen NwR only just re-discoverei, such as Tlying pickets" and rolling-columns of school-children through town-centres, which were able, partly by their sheer exuberance and confidence, to suck in and win over ever growing sections of students. Those who 'scabbed' on the struggle and continued to attend, met hails of abuse and often more concrete objects, and had at times to be escorted to and from schoul by parents or the local police.
Of course the consciousness and militancy of the students on a national scale, was uneven came out only for a few hours, some for days. Some were easily driven hack into school by the beadmaster, others stoned the school-staff and had to have their pickets broken up by dozens of police, specially brought in. In many places schools were attacked and their windows smasbed. While students in some towas spent their time picketting, demonstrating and generally attempting to organise the struggle, others simply used the unexpected free time to go swimming in the river. In a small number of loc alities, Birkenhead for example, the parents at Icast tacitly supported their sons, though on the whole they were antagonistic to the idea, tearing the loss of the much-prized attendance-medais, which were often necessary to get jobs. Mothers in particular feared the future loss of another pittance of a wage-packet and the presence of another non-earning body to feed, and were most decisive in bludgeoning their offspring back to school.
It is in the beautifully acted, extremely telling scenes within the working-class home of one of the young strikers that the pluy scores over the book in vividly showing the confused and contradictory consciousness of the people involved and the foroes acting on them, through the nuc lear family. We see the class-conscious docker kick out his elder son who has enlisted in the army, recogosing it as the arm of the ruling. class's state, but then beat up his wife for compiaining that she can't keep them fed when he's on atrike, thus intensifying her resentment against the organised working-class and driving her further into isolation.
The scene portrays quite clearly how the isolation and double oppression of women, in the fam lly, actually drive them into the arens of reac tion, as they attempt to defend what for them is the preferable, if miserable, status quo, rather than rely on the seemingly uncontrollable and dubious outcome of a strike. Such oppression and self-definition begins curly - this is underlined by the fact that girls took tittle part in the strikes, except in Scotland.
There are amusing, if pointed, soenes too. The teacher fearing the loss of his authority, goes to the educational supply shop, which contains only a showcase full of canes. The shopkeeper asks hi cusually, like someone enquiring after another's health, "Do you have tiots T" and pro ceeds to describe the riot-quelling properties of one of his "special' products. The portruyal of the teacher, by Tony Meyer, is particularly noteworthy — we see the classical vaciliation of the liberal, from what he imagines to be protressive tolerance, to attempted repression under pressure and then faced by an unfavourable balance of forces, the capitulation: Caning is too hard — we must find a more amenuble method of keeping control. With our English moderation and niceness, l'm sure we'll find a way:
Partly because of the isolation of schoolstudents and their lack of any means of subsistence, and also the pressures arising from the family situation we have described, the strikes were broken. However part of the responsibility for this must lie with the revolutionary socialists and sodicalists of that time, and the trade union leaderships, who refused to take this mass upsurge of "the kids" at all seriously or En give it leadership or support, We can learn our lessons from this. If the revolutionary organisation is going to take seriously its duty to 'organise the spontaneity of the musses and intervene amongst all strata of the oppressed, then it must take any future incidents or upsurges in schools and the potential for such move. ments still exists) very seriously and uttempt to lead them. The winning of sections of workers to revolutionary politics, before they actually beome part of the work force and come under the sway of traditional social democratic ideology could be a tremendous factor in the growll of a revolutionary leadership of the working class Carl Gardner