By Dallas Rodgers
MELBOURNE - The year-long struggle over Richmond Secondary College appears to have entered its most critical phase. Despite its public agreement to re-establish a coeducational facility in the area, the Kennett government has so far failed to provide any details of where it will be sited or what courses it will offer, and has actively discouraged those attempting to enrol.
With the academic year about to start, time is running out. Campaign activists are considering whether to reimpose pickets on the old RSC site to force the government to honour its promises.
Richmond Secondary College was shut down in late 1992 as part of the massive wave of school closures and education cutbacks carried out by the Liberal government. Activists occupied the school for over a year, demanding the provision of coeducational facilities in the suburb.
The occupiers were evicted in dawn raids on December 7 as the government moved to prepare the site for the new, exclusive Melbourne Girls College. This followed the issuing of writs for up to $1 million against key campaign leaders.
After the forcible eviction, union support was gathered and an official Victorian Trades Hall Council-backed picket line was imposed on the site in order to prevent construction work from proceeding for the elite girls school.
On December 13 - known around Richmond as "Bloody Monday" - up to 150 supporters of RSC were on the picket line. As throughout the campaign, the Friends of RSC (FORSC) called for passive resistance. However, the police responded with a brutal baton charge, bringing to mind for many a Third World dictatorship.
Five people were arrested and many injured, including three people hospitalised. Those arrested were refused medical attention until after they had completed their dealings with police, including in some cases the imposition of bail conditions preventing demonstrators going within 1000 metres of the picket site.
The cop thuggery and the negative media coverage led to increased support for the campaign. The following morning more than 200 supporters picketed, and the police were again forced to remove them. This time, however, they didn't use their batons: each person on the gate was dragged off by several officers, one at a time. It took them some 30 or 40 minutes to clear the gate.
The protesters' tactics worked well, and it was the way the struggle continued for over a week. Obviously feeling the pressure of placing more than 200 police at the school site each morning, the government was forced to the negotiating table.
An agreement was reached between Trades Hall Council, FORSC and the government providing for a new coeducational facility in Richmond. Playing his customary role of trying to eliminate all real struggles against Kennett, THC leader John Halfpenny forced FORSC to agree to a deal which was very light on specifics by telling them that THC would no longer endorse the picket. Despite considerable misgivings, FORSC felt it had little choice but to accept.
Once the agreement was signed, the pickets were removed and work on the new Melbourne Girls College went ahead urgently. Full-page advertisements were placed in leading newspapers. Photos of white Anglo-Saxon females wearing broad-brimmed hats and white gloves made clear the elite character of the new institution.
It is understood that a building in Richmond purchased by the Department of School Education will be used as a boarding house. This will make Melbourne Girls College the only state-run school in Australia with boarding facilities!
Meanwhile the Kennett government has done next to nothing to live up to the agreement. The DSE has a hot line for queries in relation to the projected new coeducational school. However, those who finally got through were told a number of different stories. One suggestion from this hot line was that the school would offer only maths and English and that students would have to travel to the proposed mother school (in another suburb) for the remainder of their subjects!
In fact, with the school year about to begin, this host school hasn't even been announced. A large number of questions have yet to be addressed by the DSE, and it is becoming more and more apparent that the department is in no way serious about meeting the agreement.
One rumoured site is the old caretaker's cottage of the Richmond Girls School, which would be grossly inadequate. Unfortunately, the government's inaction and its failure to provide a suitable site don't equate to a breach of the agreement in technical terms. The agreement states that the pickets will be lifted and a coeducational annexe "commensurate with the needs of the community" established in Richmond. (The annexe would be linked to an existing but so far unspecified school in a nearby suburb.)
This doesn't require the government to do anything to actually set up the school. FORSC has been forced to establish an office in the main street in Richmond and go searching for prospective students. In a short period of doorknocking and letterboxing more than 150 written expressions of interest were obtained, with just half the suburb covered.
The key question facing the campaign is where to go from here: in particular, should the picket be reimposed on the old RSC site?
A big problem is attitude of the THC and the Victorian Secondary Teachers Association. They have made it clear that they won't support the reimposition of picket lines until a clear breach of the agreement has occurred. However, the fact that the government has done basically nothing and is obviously setting the annexe up for failure and that this isn't seen as a breach of the deal is an indication of the do-nothing, ALP politics of THC secretary Halfpenny and VSTA leader Brian Henderson.
It would appear that if Kennett has his way, the school year is going to start late for the students of the Richmond coeducational annexe - if at all.