BURY’S SCHOOL Organisation Committee (SOC) has voted down the
council’s decision to close Broad Oak High School by 3:1. This partial
reprieve referred the issue to the Schools Adjudicator. Later they voted
down a proposal to close Prestwich Arts College by 3:0. A clean sheet
for the school’s side means the proposal falls – the school stays open!
Paul Gerrard, Bury SOS campaign, personal capacity. SOS
candidate Unsworth Ward
Parents and pupils in the packed public gallery greeted the news with
rapturous applause. And next morning the council withdrew the closure
notice for Broad Oak too!
This stunning double victory is a blow to Bury’s Labour council and a
vindication of months of campaigning. Council chief executive Mark
Sanders asked local papers to stop publishing so many of our letters in
the week before the SOC!
But the Advertiser, which printed 27 letters against closure to eight
in favour (mostly Labour councillors and party members), exposed the
censorship attempt.
Health minister Ivan Lewis, MP for Bury South, is closely identified
with the schools closures programme and is now severely embarrassed.
Parents want good, local comprehensives in every community and will have
no truck with closures, cuts or the marketisation of education.
The campaign was successful partly because it was so united. But we
also won because we never let the pressure on the council drop.
Campaigners have learned so much. We can rely on none of the existing
parties in our campaign to resist closures.
Labour has lost any right to claim the loyalty of its traditional
supporters. We need a new party based on the trade unions and committed
to a platform of no cuts and no privatisation!
Bury CNWP
A CAMPAIGN for a New Workers Party (CNWP) meeting was held recently
with some activists from Bury’s "Save Our Schools" Campaign (SOS), which
was built from the ground up by teachers, parents and students (see
article left).
CNWP National Secretary Roger Bannister raised the campaign’s basic
ideas and why we feel it is a necessary step, considering the Labour
Party’s descent into a party of big business, war and privatisation. The
SOS activists present were particularly impressed by Roger’s emphasis on
the Campaign’s loose, federal structure.
The Labour Party may feel that it still has strong support in
Manchester but the growth of campaigns like Bury SOS show that this
support is dying away. Working-class people are looking for an
alternative – an alternative we in the CNWP aim to help provide.
