21/04/08 Riot Vans, Police and Arrests as my school's pupils hold their strike.

Last Friday, everyone at my school found out that 8 teachers were being made redundant in September.
And even that Friday, people started going mental - realising the best teachers were leaving, realising that their courses wouldn't be finished.

It was decided that we would strike Monday - refuse to do work and go onto the yard.

So Monday came around. Assemblies were held in the hope that it would deteriorate any trouble. But as soon as they were over the kids started to flood out onto the yard.
And it did start out quite peaceful. Signing petitions, writing banners, chanting. I went down there and ended up being barricaded in, if i wanted to go back to work I was a 'scab'. But with our exams in 20 days, there wasn't much Year 11- the oldest pupils- could do.

But then they painted "strike" on the gym wall.
And, it began to turn into a riot.

They ran up to I block. Barricaded the Head teacher in her room and set off the fire alarm. People got out of hand. The police were called. And as the pupils started to march out of the school, the riot vans came.
They were threatened with taser guns - that apparently got used. And 3 children (2 girls aged 15 and a boy aged 13) were arrested.

Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r2j66JlRK8&feature=related
you can see the line of police.

We were making breaking news. And news vans parked outside our school. It calmed down - we've had bad press before and we didn't need it again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7358662.stm
http://www.thisisgwent.co.uk/mostpopular.var.2212757.0.breaking_news_three_arrests_at_protest_school.php?s=s
http://www.thisisgwent.co.uk/mostpopular.var.2212281.0.breaking_news_police_called_in_at_protest_school.php?s=s

That evening we made local televised news - and this morning a 3 page newspaper spread.

But we got what we wanted - redundancies have been withdrawn.
And for once, the world's beginning to listen to the kids.

Do you think this is a set forward?
Was a riot the way to go about this?
I'd really like to hear your views on it.