AARON KIELY provides a student’s eyewitness account of police brutality at the tuition fees demonstration in Parliament Square last week. First, I have to state that I am a member of Labour Party, a candidate in the upcoming local elections, a Committee member of the NUS Black Students’ Campaign and an elected representative of...
Uniform ruling
BEN TURLEY reports on the implications of a House of Lords’ ruling in the school uniform court case In my article, ‘Beggars Belief’, in the last edition of Democratic Socialist, I reported on the Court of Appeal case of Begum v Denbridge High School. The court decided that the school had infringed the right...
A more generous attitude of mind
The education bill is a wasted opportunity, say its critics. MATTHEW BROWN looks at a comprehensive alternative It ought to be the thing that unites us. Comprehensive education seems such a straight-forwardly progressive idea that you’d think it’d be the one area of policy the left could agree on. The notion that all children...
The Travellers’ tales
Gypsies have become the object of increasingly racist, anti-immigration demonology over the last few years. As MATTHEW BROWN reports, they have been the one of the most victimised groups in society for centuries. It could be any day in modern London. A tube pulls into King’s Cross underground station. The doors slide open and...
Towering success
The east end of London used to be one the BNP’s electoral targets. MATTHEW BROWN reports on how the policies and priorities of one local borough has improved community relations. Juneha Chowdhury is nearing the end of her first year as a newly qualified teacher. It hasn’t been easy but, at 27, she’s finally...
The threat of a good example
MATTHEW BROWN reports from Lowick, where teachers, pupils and parents have battled local and national government to set up the country’s first community co-operative school. In her book Reclaim the State (see Barry Winter’s review), Hilary Wainwright describes a number of ‘experiments in popular democracy’ from different parts of the world, attempts by local people...
Lowick school forced to close
Matthew Brown reports on the demise of the country’s only co-operative school Lowick New School, the tiny Lake District primary which became the first co-operative school in the country last year, has been forced to close. After a three-year fight against closure and a year of striving to survive without state support, the 16-pupil...