A little known strike that lasted no more than three days is worth remembering. It was the school pupils strike of 1911 and started in Llanelli in Wales on the 5th September 1911, when 30 pupils protested against the caning of a pupil by walking out of Bigyn School. It very rapidly spread to 60 towns across the country. According to the Daily Mirror of the day, one boy stated that “our fathers strike – why shouldn't we?”
Another report from The Times stated; that at one school in Deptford, pupils “organised a demonstration outside the school, and amused the neighbourhood by shouting ‘We are on strike’.” The students chalked demands on the pavement: the abolition of home lessons and the cane, and an extra half-holiday in the week. Many carried “ammunition”: stones and other missiles.
Another report from The Times stated; that at one school in Deptford, pupils “organised a demonstration outside the school, and amused the neighbourhood by shouting ‘We are on strike’.” The students chalked demands on the pavement: the abolition of home lessons and the cane, and an extra half-holiday in the week. Many carried “ammunition”: stones and other missiles.
CHILDREN'S STRIKE
Larry Goldstone recounting a revolt of Manchester
schoolchildren, September 1911, in a letter to Stephen Humphries
When I was a lad of ten I used to work after school
hours as a lather boy in my elder brother's barber's shop. Now, the
barber's shop was a real meeting place for men and sometimes they'd
have a big laugh talking about the school strike that they had in
their school days.
My elder brother was a very popular young man, real
extrovert, and it was him who was the ringleader of the strike at
Southall Street school.
You see, the teachers at that time, without any
doubt, were sadists. They ruled with fear. They firmly believed in
the adage that kids were to be seen and not heard. All they needed
was the least excuse and they'd cane you without mercy.
Now when the boys went on strike, they demanded the
abolition of the cane, and they also wanted a shilling a week to be
paid to the monitors, because they were just used as lackeys. On the
big day they met outside the school, over three hundred of them, and
they marched to a field opposite the gaol walls of Strangeways. Then
they marched along the main road, and threw some stones at the school
windows. The strike lasted for three days, but eventually they gave
up and returned to school, and all the classes were lined up to
witness the punishment of the ringleaders.
My brother said they were held over a desk by their
outstretched hands and caned on their bottoms. Now, one of the
brothers put a plate inside his trousers, and the blow of the cane
broke the plate into pieces, badly cutting the lad's bottom. But they
come unstuck with my brother. When it came to his turn, he took the
teacher by surprise, wrenched the cane from his grasp and started
hitting him with it, then he ran out of the school and home.
In the evening, when father came home from work, my
brother told him about the canings, and the next morning he went up
the school with him. He told the headmaster he didn't approve of the
beatings that were carried out at the school, because a lot of the
parents were angry when their children told them about the
punishments. And he gave the headmaster a strict warning that if
anyone dared apply any punishment to his son Jack, then he would go
up and mete out far worse to the one responsible. If his lad did
anything that required punishment, they were to send a note and he
would deal with his son by his own disciplinary methods.
