SCHOOL STRIKE FOR A HOLIDAY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LIII, Issue LIII, 10 November 1919, Page 4

SCHOOL STRIKE FOR A HOLIDAY

‘MUST LIKE. FATHER.” Because they got only two days’ leave for Bank Holiday (August 4), while their fathers are having a week’s rest, the boys of tfie UppeT, forms of the Braintree {Essex) ChurchElementary School .went on strike when the school reopened, -marching out of the class rooms shouting: n We’ll have a week & holiday like father!” All the" wotk» at Braintree are dosed for a week, and the council school is clpsed for six weeks, but the children of the Church school, according to precedent, have three weeks’ holiday at the pe*a-pickmg time and again three weeks at the harvest. * The headmaster of the school. Mr C. Fitts, is away at Cambridge. The girls and younger boys remained in school, but all efforts by the assistant teachers to get* the big boys "back to their lessons failed. They field a demonstration in the street outside the school, and then marched singing to the river, where they paddied and fished during the morning. After dinner there was a noisy demonstration outside the school. I areuital discipline'had operated l in xtumy cases, and half the boy strikers returned to •. school, ■ amidst the boos, of those who remained out. The procession, very -much depleted, formed up -again for the river, with cries oi “We won’t go to school this week. Subsequently the strikers entered the school after vainly trying to. import* a condition that, there should be no waning. When the cane was produced one boy snatched it and broke it. Then he darted pat of school and, leaped over the wall into the street. Others followed, and in the struggle desks were overturned. The boys met at dinner time and made speeches denouncing the use of the cane. Grouped round a flag, on which was written “Wo want a weeks holiday ” they were photographed, and then gave three cheers for the- strike. Afterwards all' except six marched into school, and the gate was secure-, ly bolted to prevent escapes. Stern measures are to be invoked against those boy strikers who will not go back to school because of th© ,cane.