Chris Searle is a poet and a teacher. This is his autobiography, spread over two books.   In the first book he writes about his greatest influence the East London Jewish poet Isaac Rosenberg. Chris, unlike Isaac, came from a lower middleclass English family, but failed the 11+ exam and went to the secondary modern school which in those days, the mid-1950s, and for most working-class children was a sealed fate for their place in society.  

For Chris it was the opposite as he met an English teacher (with no degree but a certificate) who opened his the world. “I felt that I needed no other teacher but him, that he was teaching me everything, that he was opening up a world to me that I had to dive into.”

Chris’s story is one that is intertwined with the history of one of the most radical eras in this country.  In these two memoirs he captures the history of the period running from the 1960s to the 2000s.  It is an era of revolutions and as a teacher and poet he plays a role in places as diverse as the East End of London, Trinidad, Grenada, and Mozambique. Over the years he has written or edited fifty books, set up a community publishing initiative and much more.

Eddie Frow, communist and co-founder of the WCML with Ruth used to say; there is bosses’ history and workers’ history. I would like to add that there is also children’s history. And that is theme running through these books as Chris through poetry that he gives his students, many of them poor and working class, the power to speak about their lives, their hopes, and dreams and live a freer life.

In the 1970s, in Stepney,   Chris with his students discussed how four Catholic 15-year-old boys in Belfast  had been arrested at school by the British Army and interned. Some of the students were from Irish families and some had family who were soldiers in the North of Ireland. This discussion led to this poem.

Everyone should share this sacred land

Run children, run before the bomb hits you,

Run children, run before the soldiers get you!

You think we’re unlucky, well look at them, this is misery.

Chris, in his band “Two Fingers” wrote the powerful “No Recruiting Song” which includes the verse

“For Alex, Kevin, Seamus are your schoolmates

And they have got troops against them night and day

So, give them your support and free their people

And get the soldiers out their country’s way.

In 1971 Chris was sacked after publishing a book of his student’s poems “Stepney Words”. His students went on strike and took their outrage onto the streets and into the national press. Two years later Chris was reinstated.

Chris has taken the words of Bob Marley “None but ourselves can free our minds.” and lived them and shared them with his students and the communities he has worked in. His memoirs are an inspiration to everyone today that opposes the increasingly right- wing agenda that is being forced on every aspect of society. He says;

“If life has taught me anything it has taught me this: that with struggle, perseverance, imagination and optimism, there will be a new and more just day for all of us, the ordinary and working people of our world.”

You can buy Chris’s books here https://fiveleaves.co.uk/  They are also available in Manchester Public Libraries.