Back To School

No coverage of yesterday's centenary Burston Strike School Rally, although the strike did last until 1939, so there is time yet.

And like the Durham Miners' Gala, well over 10 times larger than all of the Orange Parades put together, and like the Tolpuddle Festival the weekend after that, most people have never heard of it.

Has there ever been so much as a BBC Two or BBC Four documentary on the Tolpuddle Martyrs or the Burston Strike School?

Tolpuddle and Burston are small places that are difficult to reach from London or almost anywhere else. But that does not stop the London media when it comes to anywhere outside this country.

They probably think that Durham is the same, rather than a cathedral city, county town and university town on the East Coast Main Line. Yes, honestly. You can sit down in King's Cross and not stand up until you arrive in Durham. It takes three hours. But it can take three hours to travel across London.

It is not a matter of agreeing with what of these events stand for, or with the cause either of the Tolpuddle Martyrs or of the Burston Strike School. But we all know why this deliberate approach is adopted.

The old mining areas boggle the minds of the county set's metropolitan cousins. If they had to think of Dorset or Norfolk as a Radical hotbed, then their heads might very well explode. Far easier to pretend that none of this exists, whether as history or as contemporary politics.