4 years ago, the late, great socialist icon that is Tony Benn addressed the Burston Rally in rural Norfolk. The rally is an annual event to commemorate “the longest strike in history”, where Tom and Annie Higdon defied the local authorities to open a ‘strike school’, after being sacked for agitating for better study and work conditions. They stood alongside 66 of their 72 students and their parents, and hand in hand with the community against their unfair dismissal – and they won. And at that year’s rally, Tony drew one vital lesson from that past struggle for those facing the inhuman austerity cuts of this decade — “Tie your ropes together.”
In the face of an unelected Tory regime, hell-bent on slashing disability benefits, privatising our education system, and in the process of razing our National Health Service to the ground, the multitude must stand united against this bare-faced tyranny. We may be affected differently to the separate cuts within each of our lives, but if we are to overcome them, and to build a society of dignity and freedom for all, we must recognise the common ideology that underpins each austerity measure.
On Sunday night, over one-hundred parents, teachers, students and community activists packed the St Alban’s Church Hall to discuss the plight of another Norfolk School in the here-and-now.
The Norwich Radical 