Burston Strike School

They objected to the cold, insanitary conditions of the school and especially protested at the farmers taking children away to work on the land whenever they were needed.

Eventually, after a complete breakdown of relationships, the Norfolk Education Committee gave the Higdons a choice: accept dismissal or transfer to another school.

His situation, with an annual salary of £581 and a large comfortable rectory, contrasted starkly with the farm labourers and their families, living on average wages of £35 a year in squalid cottages.

However, although the rector and the farm owners had been defeated in the parish council election, they still had control of the school's managing body and were determined to use this power to victimise the Higdons.

Looking for a pretext for action, the managers accused Kitty of lighting a fire without their permission – to dry the clothes of children who had walked three miles to school in the rain.

Despite her pacifist principles, the school managers found there was "good ground for the complaints of the Barnardo foster mother" and they demanded the Higdons be transferred.

Due to illness, Kitty was unable to attend, and the legal representative appointed by the National Union of Teachers failed to call any witnesses in her defence as they were being held back for a possible slander case.

The authorities were in no mood to tolerate this defiance, and 18 parents were summonsed to court and fined for failing to ensure their children's attendance at school.

Collections outside the court paid the fines, and since the parents were sending their children to the school of their choice, the authorities were soon forced to back down.

At the end of the first year of the strike, with the lease on the old workshops due to expire, an appeal was made for funds to build a new school.

By 1917, a national appeal had reached £1,250 with donations from miners' and railway workers' unions, Trades councils, Independent Labour Party branches and Co-operative Societies.

[1] In 1949, the National Union of Agricultural Workers (NUAW) initiated the establishment of The Burston Strike School as a registered educational charity.

The self-perpetuating trustees have the legal responsibility to manage the school and try to develop it as a museum, visitor centre, educational archive and village amenity.

[6] The cast included Jasmine Fretwell as Violet Potter, Niklass van Poorvleit as Tom Higdon and Robert Clement-Evans as Rev.