Save Our Schools, report 29th January 2009
Over 250 parents protested outside the Glasgow city council’s full meeting today (29th Jan), in one of the noisiest, most colourful, intensely angry eruptions for years.
The numbers there, the range of schools represented from the four corners of the city, and the fury of their opposition to the primary and nursery closures proposed by Labour had intensified even compared to a week ago.
People’s anger deepened further at Labour’s lockout of the public from the council meeting. When opposition councillors tried to get tickets for the public gallery, to invite protesters from their areas in to listen to the debate, they found Labour had grabbed the lot – to keep the gallery empty of the public – to stop voters listening to the outrageous proposals from Labour councillors many of them had elected.
A few samples of parents’ and grandparents’ comments at the demo:-
“This affects from 4-year-olds to pensioners. I take my grand-wean to school to let my daughter out to work. If the proposals go ahead, I would have to walk from my scheme to my daughter’s and then to a third scheme where the school would be. I don’t know whether I’d be fit to do that next year.
“They want the likes of my daughter to work, but they are driving people towards being idle.”
“The Council have just launched the Children’s Charter – but they are breaking every clause in it with these closures.”
“Our school has kids speaking 16 different languages. They have integrated, after parents were uprooted from their home countries. Now the kids are to be uprooted again.
“I have never been political, but this is bringing the anger up in me.”
“I voted Labour for 30 years; I was a socialist Labour man. Now I wouldn’t spit in their face – it would be a waste of my good saliva.”
In the space of a week since parents were notified of the closures - and teachers only found out through these parents - there has been a vast outpouring of crowds to local public meetings. The smallest had 100 at it, several other 200.
Schools have staged protest pickets outside school gates.
Some of them are taking the kids out of school for an hour to highlight the threat to their future education and development.
A group of parents chained themselves to the City Chambers this afternoon of the council meeting!
All the latent talents of organisation, artwork, banner-making and sheer hard graft of raising thousands of petitions has been unleashed – a mere week into the battle.
The city-wide Save Our Schools campaign meeting on 28th thrashed out ways to unite people against ALL closures, by calling across the board for classes of no more than 20; for investment in local, accessible schools, not long, dangerous journeys, with territorial problems to boot; and for a city-wide Saturday demo to unite and strengthen the parents, kids and communities, and to broadcast the case to tens of thousands of shoppers.
Addressing the huge, noisy demo at the council meeting on 29th, Richie Venton of the SSP and city-wide Save Our Schools campaign denounced the Labour councillors to rounds of applause.
“There’s no excuse for their proposals. Far from there being too few kids for the nursery places available, there are not enough nursery places to match parents’ needs.
“Many are driven to putting their kids in private nurseries, which have jacked up prices at 4 times the rate of inflation.
“Far from closing primaries and sacking staff, the council should be cutting classes to 20 or less and improving our children’s education.
“This movement of parents, carers and communities CAN stop EVERY closure, so long as we remain united.
“Don’t let them divide and conquer! Unity is our strength!
“That’s why we have called a city-wide demo to unite parents, kids, communities – to light a bonfire beneath the backsides of the Labour butchers. Build a mass demo on Saturday 14th February – show the councillors and the public we are determined to stop this St Valentine’s Day Massacre of our schools, and communities.”