Saturday 8 August, 2007: For six months teachers have squatted the sports ground on Forty Lane in Wembley, North West London, to protest against a privatised City Academy school being built on the site.
The council threatened to evict them and the sports ground leaseholders if they did not leave. So in true fighting fashion, the teachers, with some advice from Heathrow Airport Climate Camp erected tree platforms right under the noses of the authorities and took to the branches on Friday night.
Saturday saw a very loud protest on the ground and from the trees, informing local people of what it means to send your children to a City Academy.
City Academy’s, for those not in the know, are funded by wealthy business people, who get a say in what is and is not being taught.
Other City Academy’s have eradicated any sign of Darwinism and evolution from the classroom, only teaching creationism. Other Academy’s have designed the education program to suit their corporate interests, training children for jobs, not educating them, cutting out activities like art, music and other creative outlets.
One Academy, as one of the teachers told me, does has after-school activities though – a fully working Call Centre, where children as young as 11-years can learn the joys of working your proverbials off in probably the most pitiful form of employment known to the human race.
The protest lasted the weekend, the teachers enduring vicious abuse from the England fans, who descended on Wembley for the England-Israel football match. They could be heard for miles yelling, “Who’s that wanker in the tree” while throwing tomatoes and eggs at the teachers.
But the teachers endured, several giving it back and getting the last laugh when the England fans turned on the Israeli’s with the now historically recorded chant of, “Take you Islam and shove it up your ass.”
Football fan intelligence on parade.
Needless to say, many of the football fans did not grasp the fact that the teachers were trying to save the football pitches for the local children.
Academy Schools do not like play areas for their kids. The proposed Academy at Wembley has no space for play or outside activities.
But as the sun set that Saturday evening, the irony set in. There we were. Sat under the lit-up Wembley Stadium archway, following a national football game, drinking with teachers who were trying to save the last sports ground in the area from becoming breeze-block, concrete and glass. And mass profit for some private investor.
For more information or to support the campaign and oppose all City Academy’s and the rapid privatisation of the UK schooling system, see: http://www.tentcityoccupation.co.uk