“‘Mrs Thatcher is a bloody dictator’ said a 12-year-old in my hearing. Where is such politicisation and abusive language learned by kids?”
Quote: Mary Kenny, Daily Mail, 4 September 1984.
Photograph: Dave Sinclair, from the album School Student Strike ’85, SSS6.
The 1980s was a turbulent decade marked with socio-economic changes that affected important parts of the population. This resulted in large social upheaval and unrest, and several unions, from miners to teachers, took strike action. Children from struggling working class families were among the most severely hit groups were also part of this politicisation. Although children’s political participation was no surprise, especially in the UK where school children have had a strong tradition of strikes, several conservative newspapers were sceptical about children’s reactions.
This was particularly visible in the news coverage of the 1985 school strike against the Youth Training Scheme (YTS). The YTS was originally designed to be a voluntary apprenticeship scheme for 16 and 17 year old school leavers, but in 1985, the government decided to make the YTS compulsory. This would mean that 16-17 year olds would either have to work with low pay and without a long term work guarantee, or if they refused, they would lose their unemployment benefits. In April 1985, tens of thousands of pupils from England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland united and took to the streets to oppose the scheme.
Although children and young people were at the centre of the dispute, this did not mean that their opposition and political reaction would be taken seriously. For instance, reporting the strike for the Daily Mail, Clive Edwards was convinced that children could have “no idea what they were demonstrating about” and it could only be “the Militant-backed Youth Trade Union Rights campaign and extremists” who manipulated “children to be like the miners and the teachers.”
Another report from the Daily Mail dismissed the strike as “childish anarchy carried out by pupils who wanted to skip lessons,” and concluded that “they’re all having a bit of fun. It is not a political act – it’s shapeless and leaderless” quoting the deputy head of a Liverpool school. Note that the word strike is written in quotation marks in this report, to indicate sarcasm. This sort of word play was one of the many examples to devalue children’s political participation. Children were presented to be ignorant, manipulated, playing truant, having fun, skipping classes, and not capable of forming political opinions even when it was about their own experiences.
Despite this tongue-in-cheek approach of newspapers, however, the strike resulted in the postponement of the scheme by a few years. On their thirtieth anniversary, the large demonstrations in Liverpool were commemorated by a photography exhibition, as well as a recreation display at the Liverpool biennial. To this day, children who have participated in the strike continue to share their memories in social media forums.
Quoted news:
Mary Kenny. “The peril of treating your child like an equal.” Daily Mail, 4 September 1984.
Clive Edwards. “Militant squads call out children on school strike.” Daily Mail, 19 April 1985.
“Children in school ‘strike’ arrested.” Daily Mail, 20 April 1985.
More on the 1984 school strikes:
Steve Cunningham and Michael Lavalette. Schools Out! The Hidden History of Britain’s School Strikes. London: Bookmarks, 2016.
Koki Tanaka’s 2016 Liverpool Biennial commission.
Photo set of the Liverpool strike, captured by photographer Dave Sinclair.
Video of the school strike in London on BBC News.
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