THERE had been school strikes before in 1889 and 1911 — but none quite like this. Whereas the earlier disputes had collapsed within days and left few ripples in the collective consciousness of the inhabitants of Roxburgh, London, or Llanelli, the pupils’ strike at Burston ran from 1914 to 1939 and captured — both then and now — the collective imagination of the British labour movement.  

It was the longest and perhaps the most idiosyncratic dispute in our history, bringing to the fore the agency of young people, challenges to deference and rural hierarchies, questions of land ownership and the clash between visions of education as a force for social control or for self-realisation.  

On a human level, it pitched Kitty Higdon and her husband Tom — conscientious teachers and Christian socialists living in a harsh, functionalist and conservative age — against the established order.