Marching to Trafalgar Square, 17th May 1972
On the 4th May 1972 about 200 boys aged between 11 and 16, put down their pencils and rulers at Quinton Kynaston School in the Finchley Road near St John’s Wood in North London, in a protest over unpleasant school dinners, caning, and the conformity of school uniforms. They swarmed over the school wall and not knowing really what to do next, decided to all go home.
The headmaster, Mr Everest-Phillips protested to the press:
“They have a choice of meals and incidents of caning have been negligible. I have only used it three times since last September. School uniform in summer consists of only a blazer.”
Steve 'Ginger' Finch
A few days later 18 year old Steve ‘Ginger’ Finch a pupil from Rutherford School in Marylebone organised a small group of pupils from his school and nearby Sarah Siddons Girls’ School. The rally of about 60 school children met initially at Paddington Green but then started out on an eight mile march to enlist support from other schools.
A school girl from Paddington and Maida Vale High School joining the demo.
The pupil power demonstration was called by the rebel Schools’ Action Union, of which self-confessed Marxist Ginger Finch was a member, who were mainly against caning, detention, uniforms and ‘headmaster dictatorships’. Eventually 800 pupils had joined the demonstration and Finch was arrested, charged with using insulting behaviour and obstruction.
Prime Minister Edward Heath decided to take no risks, remember this was only four years after students in Paris had brought down the French Government, and ordered MI5 and Special Branch to monitor the schoolchildren revolutionaries. Mr Heath asked Margaret Thatcher, then the Education Secretary to compile a report which warned:
“Some boys and girls are already beginning to develop political attitudes in an immature way…”
A march of 10,000 pupils was organised by the Schools’ Action Union and the National Union of School Students for the 17th May. The Government wanted to take no chances but were struggling to find out the exact nature and route of the march. A Conservative MP called David Lane forwarded a report based on the accounts of a group of girl ‘spies’ who had infiltrated a meeting.
“The leaders spoke with Cockney accents and spoke illogically. It seemed there were a number of middle-class kids who were dressing badly to look working-class.”
The march on the 17th May became the high point of a few weeks of pupil radical power.
Boys having a crafty fag at Hyde Park, 17th May 1972
Girls having a crafty fag at Hyde Park
With the absence of Ginger Finch (after his arrest a few days previously) and no real leadership, the event started with confusion with half of the pupils marching to Hyde Park and half marching along the South Bank to County Hall chanting “attack the pigs,” and “we want a riot.”
Speakers' corner, 17th May 1972
The final mini riot at Trafalgar Square
The protesters had planned to hand a letter of protest to County hall, home of the Inner London Education Authority commonly known as the ILEA, but after arriving at their destination they realised the letter had been lost. In fact no one really knew who had the letter in the first place. The protesters subsequently marched on to Trafalgar Square where the demonstration eventually fizzled out.
Sir Philip Allen, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office said that although the march turned out totally disorganised, it shouldn’t detract from its significance “as a symptom of subversive influence”. However, and rather disappointingly really, the era of pupil-power was over almost before it had begun. The looming oil crisis and proper grown-up militancy became more important than whether school dinners were edible and school uniforms caused everyone to look the same.
Of all the original aims of the militant school-children from 1972, only the banning of corporal punishment in British schools has universally been achieved. Not at home though of course.
School Girl from Holland Park, May 1972
Mott The Hoople – Original Mixed-Up Kid
Tags: demonstration, kids, protest, riot, school, students, teenagers
This is a welcome reminder of a wonderful moment in British social history – but is woefully inaccurate. Like Steve Finch, I was a member of the national committee of the Schools Action Union. Several different demonstrations of the time have been mixed up together. Steve Finch was arrested at an earlier demo than the London one, which was highly successful, never mind the “national” one, which was a bit of a failure. The SAU was indeed infiltrated at the time, but by a sole Daily Mail bloke. The National Union of School Students had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with this, they were (as Time Out noted) the Middle Class equivalent of the SAU.
The most important social result of this was that at the last demo before the London-wide one, several kids had tickets for Top of the Pops. They went along after the demo, and gave Alice Cooper the clenched fist “power” salute as he sang “Schools Out”. I helped pay for their tube tickets to get there! Rod Stewart noted this and started giving clenched fist dalutes to the kids later in the show. Within weeks every rock singer was giving this salute (now adapted into the devil salute, with two fingers extended).
Steve French was a good mate but was never the power behind SAU, there wasn’t one. A girl called Loulla Ephimou and a number of other members of North London’s Greek community, people like me, idealistic teachers and so on were members long before Steve was approached by younger kids at his own school to organise a strike. But he was ace, where are we all now? I started a “Schools Action Union” facebook group to try to bring us back together in our middle age – but no-one else has joined.
Lord, I remember writing a story at school about England being taken over by schoolchildren which involved them storming 10 Downing Street and persuading Ted Heath to hand over power (in a nice, non-violent way) . It must have been inspired by this but I’d forgotten all about it.
Holland Park Comprehensive was where the real hippy subversives were. I did a summer school in English there once and was shocked that they called their teachers by their first names! I’m sure they were all on drugs too.
Steve Wilson, is this the Top of the Pops ep? Can’t see any fists, wish I could!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWx9eyqf7Sk&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_of_School_Students
I’ve got a film researcher friend who looked for the relevant TOTP at the BBC and the one with Rod and Alice appearing on the same programme has been wiped. They’ve got a best of the year episode but that’s it.
My school Dyson Perrins in Malvern Worcs had a mini riot in 1975/6 protesting against the teachers locking us out of the school at lunch time.
The teachers were locking us out as they were also on some kind of strike.
Most of the school (probably 1000 pupils) charged out and ran around the roads near to the school and then went home.
I remenber the teacher going crazy to find the organisers.
Every body who joined in got detention. I didn’t as I never joined the riot due to being in detention at the time.
I started at Holland Park in 1972 and my brother was at Quinton Kynnaston. I was part of this protest and I remember having no idea what it was about! Holland Park was quite the school. There was at least one class where the teacher left the room for the whole period and left us to do whatever we wanted. I mean there wasn’t even any pretense of giving us something to do. There was a lot of dope smoking and alot of Chelsea moneyed folks kids.
Thanks so much for the wonderful pics and the memories.
Good to see the photographs but the public side of the SAU was always on a loser. The clandestine side, though smaller in scale, was *much* more effective.
The SAU cell at St. Dunstan’s College (SDC) in Catford ran a 2-year covert operation of espionage and sabotage against the school establishment in general and R. R. Pedley, the HM, in particular. Actions by cell members – notably the 1970 Speech Day operation – destroyed Pedley’s standing within his own profession, which added much to the stress that brought his death in 1973 – two years after the cell members left.
There is also some circumstantial evidence consistent with the view that Philip Cooper, Head of Music at SDC, (d. 29/10/71) was poisoned by an unknown pupil who had access to the technical assets that the SDC SAU cell had collected (among them keys to every door and cupboard in the school).
If the SDC SAU cell had focussed on public demos, we would soon have been crushed. Acting covertly was much more successful – so much so that our security was never broken throughout our operations.
Pedley was one of the most vicious of all public school heads. Helping him to an early death by destroying his professional reputation was one of the SAUs greatest but least-known achievements. As for Cooper, since he was a predatory sado-masochistic paedophile, if it was an SDC SAU cell member who took him out, that trumps anything else that the SAU ever did.
As it was the security of the cell was never broken
I was at Rutherford School at the time and remember the school strike well
The slipper sucked, the uniform was shit and uncomfortable and the teachers tried their best, but the kids in those days were kept in control for all the wrong reasons. I was once there when an entire house was slippered. Yeah, good idea. The few teachers who gave a shit were worth turning up for.
I was a teacher at Rutherford and I remember the strike happening. Two things in particular first the shock of many teachers that such a thing could happen the sense of loss of control that a significant number of boys refusing to do what was siad and going off the premises; then the process of restoring order when the headteacher (Mr Lanham I think) went round the year groups to convince them that authority was now restored but they were sympathised with. I have never forgotten the boy (who was he?) who got up with every eye on him and quite rightly pointed out they would not have been listened to if they hadn’t acted. Many of us opposed the cane but we knew the slipper was used I think mainly by the PE and woodwork staff.
I remember hiding on a roof in the back streets in St Johns wood.
We stormed out from Quinton Kynaston School, one of the kid’s Christian Rabbi pushed the ice cream van over,
We heard a police car coming so we climbed up onto a roof and sat there for a while. when we thought it was all clear we climbed down. A copper crabbed me, my two school mates took off, I was marched back to school.
About 1 month later I was sitting in a class room, during lunch break, playing cards with some other kids. (it was raining out side) A teacher walked in and said “put those cards away and get out of this room” I thought it was another kid mucking about so I said, under my breath, “piss off” I didn’t realise the teacher was right behind me. He pulled me off my chair by crabbing my hair and pulling me back wards towards the door. As we passed a wooden stool I grabbed it and swung it over my shoulder and hit the teacher on the head and then I ran out of school all the way home to Primrose hill. I didn’t go back to school for another week. finally Mum and Dad found out what had happened. The letter sent to my parents said that I had hit a teacher with a chair. the teacher was taken to hospital and was given stitches to his head. therefore you son has been expelled.
“IT WAS SELF DEFENSE”.
The only school that would take me was Haverstock Hill in Chalkfarm.
After that I didn’t hear any more about the protest until recently.
It was nice to read that we had the cain abolished.
Sincerely,
Geoffrey Phillips
PS, David London do you remember this?
aaah this looks cool, no-one seems to want a riot at school now. I guess we’ve got better teachers, or maybe it’s that instead of a cane we get expelled at the drop of a hat.