Thanks to Rob Marsden for sending this in. Rob describes himself as “Hands Off Tamworth Schools candidate for Stoneydelph Division and the only Respect member in the village.”

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Well, we are getting talked about a lot in Tamworth at the moment. By ‘we’ I mean the Hands Off Tamworth Schools campaign which has been making quite a lot of noise in a quiet town for some nine months.

We intend ratchet up the racket now that we have a full slate of six candidates standing in the forthcoming county elections.

Let me fill you in:

Last summer plans were announced by Labour controlled Staffordshire County Council to close one of our five secondary schools, to privatise another as an Academy and to remove the Sixth Forms from all the others creating a Sixth Form Academy in their place.

After an initial flurry of letters to the papers, me and a couple of other like- minded parents set up a campaign.

We quickly collected 1200 signatures on a petition, started putting out leaflets, building up a core of activists and supporters and we began to mobilise people to attend the Council’s consultation meetings.

After 450 people turned up at a stormy meeting at QEMS- the school faced with closure which my son attends- the County Council representatives narrowly avoided being lynched.

We then mobilised a 200 strong demo through town- days before Christmas- in a town where there had never been any political activity before and where demos were unheard of. The council beat a hasty retreat. QEMS was reprieved but they announced that they would still abolish all the Sixth Forms and push ahead with the Academy.

We have continued to pile pressure on the County Council and now we are hoping to make a major splash in the County elections on June 4^th This will take place against a backdrop of the NASUWT (majority teaching union in Tamworth) and the NUT taking action in all five schools against the proposed Academy sponsor – an anti-union outfit by the name of Landau-Forte- and the threat to jobs implicit in loss of Sixth Forms.

Last weeks free paper, the Tamworth Times- circulation 30,000- had a banner headline on the front page proclaiming POWER TO THE PEOPLE which was all about our election campaign, quoting me and our press releases in support of the teachers.
We do expect to do well in the campaign and the other parties are running scared. We are tapping into a groundswell of anger about a remote council messing with our kids’ education and with teachers pay and conditions. I have yet to meet anyone locally who thinks that privatisation is a good idea – especially when it comes to schools.

The Tories had sought to make capital from the schools issue- despite the fact that they are 110% in favour of turning not just high schools but also primary schools, old peoples’ homes and branches of Kwik Fit into Academies. So, they aren’t too happy that we are standing and preventing them from capitalising on our hard work.

A sitting Labour councillor and County Council cabinet member responsible for voting through Academies plan has already fled to contest a safer seat across town (there really is no hiding place, Carol!).

And their election leaflets don’t even mention the ‘A’ word. Instead (and I swear I am not making this up) Labours policy on their main leaflet is to “provide the best possible education in Staffordshire.”

How do they pledge to do this? By reducing the price of school meals and by “replacing plastic school meals trays with ceramic crockery produced in North Staffordshire”. Hoorah!

I wonder if the Socialist firebrands on Staffordshire County Council will try to impose this bold policy on the Academy too or will Forte Towers be allowed to source its crockery elsewhere?

There is not a single word about what they really intend to do in Tamworth.

Having been so sweet last week, it is very likely that this week the local paper is to carry a piece “exposing” me as a socialist and a Respect member. They are acting on a tip-off from an “anonymous source”. They have also tried to accuse me of being in the full-time pay of the GMB, UNITE, NASUWT and NUT- slightly less glamorous than being an agent of Wall Street, Hitler and the Mikado, I suppose, and just as difficult to make stick on account of it being a load of nonsense!

Tamworth is an early declarer in most elections so we should have cameras at the count. Depending how well we do, you might just see us appearing on a telly near you with our pink t-shirts and rosettes.