KitNotes

At the party last night, Robin came and I was reminded that I hadn’t put this up here.

On 7 September, Tony Blair and Education Secretary Alan Johnson visited Quintin Kynaston school in north London to announce the first wave of 28 “trust schools” run by business, charitable and religious organisations - of which QK will be one of two in London. They were met by a demonstration, supported by Unison and NUT locally and School Students Against the War, and composed mainly of students from the school, expressing opposition to government policy on trust schools, privatisation and the wars in Iraq and Lebanon.The initiator of this demonstration, QK classroom assistant Robin Sivapalan, has now been suspended from his job for “insubordination” and “breaching confidentiality” by informing people of Blair’s visit.The attempt to victimise Robin is an attack on freedom of speech and the right to protest. We are not prepared to see public service trade unionists silenced when they dare to express opposition to government policy.

We the undersigned call on the management of Quintin Kynaston to immediately reinstate Robin Sivapalan and drop all disciplinary charges against him.

* To sign email sacha@workersliberty.org. A list of signatories can be found here.

… however, no mention of this at the Socialist Party website. From their article, you’d have thought they’d done all the hard work. But they didn’t. Shame on you, comrades.