Celebrating The Stepney School Strike

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Broadcaster Alan Dein introduces a celebration this Sunday afternoon at Queen Mary University in Mile End, remembering the Stepney School Strike of 1971

‘It was such an extraordinary event. I’ve wanted to do a painting of it for such a long time – and now I’ve done it!,’ admitted Dan Jones, artist and former community worker, speaking of his newly completed banner commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Stepney School Strike.

It is the latest painting in a lifetime’s work, depicting the day-to-day lives of Eastenders, past and present. What began as a small picture in acrylic is now a canvas larger than a school blackboard. Yet this is the ideal size to portray hundreds of striking school children and a familiar scale for an artist who has created many beautifully painted banners that have been carried through the East End streets, now hung in galleries, archives and – famously – at the TUC Headquarters.

When Nadia Valman & I visited Dan in Cable St for sneak preview of his painting before it is unveiled publicly this Sunday at the People’s Palace, he revealed his motivation for portraying the celebrated school strike which has a personal meaning for him.

‘The teacher Chris Searle is a friend,’ he told us, ‘this is the story of a gifted writer and remarkable bloke being sacked. He got up the noses of the school governors – at what was then ‘Sir John Cass’ – for publishing a book of his students’ poems, but he was a popular teacher. The kids were furious and eight hundred teenagers marched to Trafalgar Sq protesting and demanding that Chris got his job back.’

Dan Jones did not use archive photographs as a reference, nor did he have access to any portraits of the kids. His approach was to work from imagination and draw inspiration from friends who were there at the time.

‘I’ve painted in about two hundred of the eight hundred schoolchildren who refused to go through the school gates,’ Dan explained. ‘It conveys the positive power of young people. Organised by playground gossip, effectively the whole school said this is an outrage. I wanted to get images of determination and fight. I feel proud to be doing it. There are smiles, banners, some of the poems themselves, I’ve squeezed them in – and you’ll see a portrait of Chris Searle, that’s most probably the only correct part of the painting!’

Like Dan Jones’ other paintings of crowds and public gatherings, there is a wonderful sense of the atmosphere created by people brought together in a fleeting moment for a cause that will change them forever.

Fifty years on, Chris Searle, original Stepney poets and strikers, together with academics, community activists and poets are gathering at Queen Mary University this Sunday 14th November to discuss the legacy of Stepney Words and the school strike.

Now known as ‘Stepney All Saints,’ the school has invited Chris Searle and some of his class of 1971 to collaborate with a group of current pupils in poetry workshops, and film of these sessions will be screened.

‘There were remarkable people in that group of striking kids,’ concluded Dan Jones, ‘it’s a lovely end to the story that fifty years on the sacked teacher has been welcomed back and has taught again at the very school he was sacked from. To be welcomed back as an honoured friend – it’s completely bonkers, and lovely!’

Click here to book for STEPNEY WORDS FIFTY YEARS ON, 2-6:15pm Sunday 14th November 2021

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