The day the parents had enough.
I arrived outside the Royal High Court in Central London early. The streets deserted apart from the few souls lumbering, uncaffeniated to their places of work, the industrious and brightly coloured waste collectors and a small group of red-shirted SEND protestors gathering outside this oppressive place of law. The early bird of fellow campaigners soon fed me coffee, conversation, and power. We were gathering to begin a day of both protest and support, protest against the abhorrent, knee jerk, ill-thought-out SEND cuts to education, and support to the families intent on taking the Government to court.
The day was a usual grey London dawn, as grey as the impenetrable concrete that surrounded and towered above us. We were a sea of red in our campaigning shirts, a huddle of passion and frustration that was being added to minute by minute as others joined us to swell our numbers.
This particular hub of protest & court proceedings both felt like a final stand and a turning point for our children's education. The sea of red shirts was growing as other frustrated parents, educators and campaigners arrived to give the assembling media a cornucopia of determined faces to interview. The atmosphere was both electric and palpable, the noise of chants and reasoned, calm, intelligent parental voices hypnotic to all passers-by. By mid-morning, the Strand was alive with people.
As the bustle and traffic grew noisily in equal measure, the parents ascended the brutal steps of the court to a deafening cheer from all of us. As they disappeared through the mammoth doors all our will & love and children's futures went with them.
By this time, the media gave us carte blanche to address the camera, to look deep into the abyss of the lens and inform the late risers and the parents off to school, of our reasons for being here. For my turn, addressing the Minister for Education, the chest of long-denied political frustration burst open and I spoke to a rather ruffled, almost startled minister about the sheer coldness and cruelty actioned upon our children by a system denying them the most basic of life's gifts; an education. Flustered and sat like a shocked sunbather facing a wall of parental wave power coming at him, he failed to convince, failed to adequately respond. Silence and diversion from Politcal types are the walls we, as parent carers, as children and families butt our heads against constantly.
Our children deserve support & education. To deny them this, to act in a political, childish game of avoidable, outrageous austerity is disguising a shard of ice in the heart of the system. To even begin to defend a court action from parents just wanting equality and support tells you all you need to know. They argue they have no money, but the magic money tree flowers politically when the party life is at stake. Lives and futures are at stake, now. We live in a knee-jerk, ableist, political climate where decisions have a finite lifetime. To make these incredible families walk into the oppressive halls of the High Court to begin a caveat against unfair practices, to see these powerful, but weary parents take on a system often rallied against us is avoidable and cowardly.
We wait now on the decision of the court. This is a decision that will have ramifications across the country. If we, if the families are successful, a crack in the wall of the ignorance will spread like a ripple across a pond, the ripple effect will split the wall and justice for our children will rightly and humanly finally be done.