18.07.1996

Dundee against school closures: Preparing for battles ahead

Mary Ward spoke to Evie Cummins and Lizzie Dolan, two prominent activists in Dundee’s Community Against School Closures (CASC) campaign

Why did you get involved in CASC and what political involvement did you have before?

LD: I had no political links with any organisation. I got involved with CASC because my daughter was at one of the affected schools and she was determined she was going to no other school.

EC: I have three children at the same school and I didn’t want my children travelling miles to another school.

What kind of things did you do as part of the campaign?

LD: Lots of people in the community were against the schools being shut so we started a petition against the council. We’ve been to all the district council meetings and disrupted them by trying to stop them making a final decision on the closures.

EC : We organised a successful community march. We also took part in two occupations of the schools. For the first occupation, about 20 of us actually occupied the Linlathan school hall until midnight. The police were called in. They accused us of disrupting the childrens’ education. But as we saw it, their education was already being disrupted by the closure of the school. The police attempted to intimidate us by suggesting that if we did not move then ‘arrangements would be made for our children elsewhere’!

LD: In the second occupation, we barricaded ourselves in. When the police arrived they took crowbars and hammers to the doors. I got a knock on the head as they broke the door down and threw us out.

How did you feel about the fact that you could have been charged?

EC: It would have been worth it. We were fighting for something we believed in.

What did your local Labour councillors do?

LD: Pat Barr, she’s just not interested; She sold Linlathan out for her deputy lord provost’s wee chain that she’ll get to wear now and again. We wanted her to fight to keep the school open after her spending £2.3 million on it. We know there’s a deal been done some place and they are not interested in what the community or anyone else wants.

EC: Councillors could not give a damn if it is children, OAPs, the homeless - as long as there is money going into their pockets. They forget where they come from. Now that she’s got money and a name, she’s turning against her own people. I just think it stinks.

There were accusations, particularly from the Labour Party, that the campaign was hi-jacked by political groups: CPGB, Scottish Militant Labour and the Revolutionary Communist Group in particular.

LD: Well to be honest, if it wasn’t for yourselves or Harvey [SML member] joining us, we would have given up ages ago. You gave us the power to keep going. A lot of the parents wanted to sit back and let us do the fighting without joining us. If the political groups had backed off there would have been less parents involved and we would have given up.

EC: Without them we would not have had a fight because we did not know the ins and outs and the best way to fight. I thought the groups were very nice and friendly and not the people they are made out to be by media.

LD: We had heard of the Militant because of the Timex coverage and we thought they would be just troublemakers.

Why do you think the Dundee campaign was not as successful as the Glasgow one?

EC: Some of the Dundee schools weren’t willing to unite. The Glasgow schools all united together. Some people did not get involved because of the publicity we were getting with having communists and Militant involved. We thought that the teachers would have come out and supported us with the school being shut. They never did. They were more or less against us.

LD: When we barricaded the gates at Linlathan High school one of the teachers came out with his crowbar.

What now then - your school is shut?

LD: It’s not the end of the cuts. We know for definite there will be more school closures next year. They are also cutting home helps and pensioners’ centres.

EC: We should keep going because there is another round of closures on the way next year. We need to get more people involved in it. We need to campaign straight from when we hear rumours about a school being closed.

LD: I will get involved with the Scottish Socialist Alliance because it involves everyone and I don’t want to be labelled with just one group.

EC: I will go along to the SSA and I may join one of the political parties. We would both like to thank all the groups for their help and support throughout the campaign.