Justice for the Halesowen 4

Hello everybody. Very busy day today, so no time to chat. But here are some pictures from Saturday's demonstration outside Halesowen College, deep in the Black Country. The college management decided that they wanted to get rid of the mathematics teachers, most of whom are solid union activists and supporters. So they dreamed up imaginary achievement targets for the students, then sacked the staff for not achieving them. The management won't talk to the union, or to ACAS, or anybody else.

So we held a demonstration outside the college, which has hosting an Open Day. All very peaceful, though determined. We got lots of support from passers-by, colleagues and students. People came from Chesterfield, Bristol, London and all sorts of places across the country to support Dave Muritu and his colleagues. The BBC claimed a turnout of 30: judge for yourself from my pictures.

The speeches were good (and short), the samosas were spicy. The only disappointment was the socialist newspaper sellers. They're a constant feature of union demonstrations and I'm a bit of a connoisseur. At last year's UCU Congress, I counted 27 different socialist newspapers, all calling for Socialist Unity (which always means 'read my paper, join my party: the rest are all splitters). This time, all we got was Socialist Worker (the SWP took the morning off from attacking its own members as 'creeping feminists' to support the action), Socialist Appeal and The Socialist. Everyone knows the way to achieve power is to sell each other hectoring newspapers…

Click to enlarge, see the rest here.

A notorious Red caught planning an act of Revolutionary violence

Beards have been mandatory on the left since Karl Marx. 

Bow ties and deerstalkers are very now on the left.