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Burston Strike Rally 2009
The Burston Strike Rally 2009
Sunday 6th September 2009 11am Church Green Burston
‘Activists ensure a Million Voices Campaign is heard at Burston Rally.’
There’s been a lot of interest in UNISON’s Million voices for Change campaign. We’re clean out of balloons and bags and squeegie things”!
That was the verdict of Noel Glover, Eastern Regional Organiser with the union’s Norfolk & Suffolk team at the end of a very busy day at the annual Burston Strike School Rally in September
.
The annual event marks the walkout by pupils of the Norfolk village school in 1914, when their teachers, Kitty and Tom Higdon, were sacked for their socialist and trade union views.
With support from the trade union movement, the Higdons and parents set up a strike school that virtually every child in the village attended until it closed in 1939 – making it the longest strike in history.
Noel said: “The principles of the Higdons are the same principles that we are here promoting as UNISON members today – changing people’s perception of public services, putting people before profit. People have signed up here to become members and existing members are interested in getting active. It’s been worth coming. Noel who lives in Burston says the legacy of the strike lives on, with local people helping to maintain the building, now a museum to the strike. A lot of villagers who are not in unions come to the rally, they all come every year and visit the stalls, listen to the bands – and hear the speeches.”
The theme of this year’s rally was celebrating 50 years of the Cuban revolution, so Noel’s neighbours, part of a thousand-strong crowd, sampled both salsa and solidarity as speakers called for an end of the US blockade.
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Related Documents
- Burston Strike Rally 2009 (PDF, 558Kb)