Strike: Schoolboys defied the cane
In recent times we have become used to school pupils going on strike, but more than a century ago, schoolboys in Llanelli, Wales, were already at it, as BBC Wales reported in October 2021.
In 1911, about 30 pupils from Bigyn School walked out in protest at the unjustified caning of a fellow boy. Although the Llanelli strike was quelled within a day, it spawned similar protests in 62 towns and cities across Britain and Ireland.
Historian Russell Grigg
recounted the disturbance in a 2003 article for The Local Historian
journal. He told BBC Wales,
strikes among adults were commonplace in the local coalfields and the railways
at the time
On 5 September 1911, the
boys marched and sang their way through the streets of Llanelli, waving
placards and calling on the pupils of other schools to join them – New Dock,
Lakefield and Old Road schools came out in solidarity.
En route, they stopped at
Park Street Chapel and held animated discussions on what to do next.
Mr Grigg says it would have
taken great courage for children to go on strike in 1911
While some of the children
were out for a laugh, a politically aware hardcore was more determined to
pursue their cause.
A flavour of the mood
survives in the melodramatic words of one pupil who went on to lead the strike
in Newport: “Comrades, my bleeding country calls me, the time has come. Someone
must die for the cause.”
Having made their point,
the Bigyn boys returned to school up the hill.
Yet Mr Grigg said it should
not be underestimated how much courage it must have taken those 30 pupils to
walk out.
“Corporal punishment
worked, wrongly, on two levels: Firstly, the physical pain of being hit, but
more significantly the fear of receiving a beating,” he explained.
“For those 30 boys to march
out of their class, either the problems they were facing were so severe that
they'd overwhelmed the consequences of a thrashing, or else the prospect of the
social isolation they'd have received from their classmates was more terrifying
than any caning the teachers could impose.”
In Wales at least, the
strike was written off as little more than children acting out the industrial
disputes of their parents during the Llanelli railway strike and ensuing riots.
However, Mr Grigg said he
believed there was evidence to suggest the pupil strikes were a protest in their own right.
“You only have to look at
the range of complaints the children had, and the number of cities it spread
to, to realise that this was far more than just copycat,” he said.
“From Cork to the East End
– with issues ranging from corporal punishment, the length of the school day,
holidays and the price of books – this was a genuine sense of injustice.”
Spread through word of mouth and newspaper reports, thousands of pupils protested in a month of
disturbances.
In Dublin, children pelted
teachers and parents with rotten cabbages, while in London youths with
sharpened sticks pillaged the streets.
Mr Grigg said the strikes
highlighted the challenges and tensions in the school system.
“Education was far more
fragmented between local authorities than it is today, so it's impossible to
give one answer to what effect the strikes had,” said Mr Grigg.
“But corporal punishment
remained a source of tension between teachers and pupils. While the local
authorities made it clear that girls and infants were not to be hit, and
reminded schools that corporal punishment should only be used as a last resort,
in practice, abuses continued.”
Mr Grigg explained: “One thing
that worried the authorities was that the school system was turning out boys
who were too physically unfit to fight [in the Army], something that had been
noticed when recruiting for the Boer War at the turn of the century.
“This is why there was a greater
emphasis on physical training and military-style drill exercises in school. It
was thought that this would instil much-needed self-discipline. Corporal
punishment was part of this culture of character formation, seen by many
teachers as a means of maintaining classroom order and not likely to do much
harm in the long run.”
Picture credit
(An
earlier school strike in London – 1889): unknown
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