Chris Searle

Chris Searle (born 1944) is a British educationalist, poet, anti-racist activist and socialist.

Life

Chris Searle was born in Romford, Essex, in 1944. A young cricketer for England, and a graduate of Leeds University, he became a schoolteacher and has taught in the Caribbean and was also involved in the Stepney School strike of 1971^[1] in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Dismissed when he published a book of his pupils' poems, he was re-instated after his pupils went on strike in protest. He has written widely on cricket, language, jazz, race and social justice, and has taught in Canada, England, Tobago, Mozambique and Grenada. His 1973 work The Forsaken Lover: White Words and Black People won the Martin Luther King Prize. He has been associated with the Institute of Race Relations since the 1970s and is on the editorial board of Race & Class. He writes a weekly column on jazz for the Morning Star.

According to John Berger: "At his best Searle's compassion, anger and sense of historical morality as a storyteller are reminiscent of the early Gorki. I can see no other writer in Britain with whom to compare him."^[2]

Selected writings / editorial work

• Stepney Words (editor) (1971)
• Firewords (editor)(1971)
• Elders: a collection of poems by elder citizens (editor) (1972)
• The Forsaken Lover: White Words and Black People (Law Book Co of Australasia, 1973)
• Poilu: a novel (1973)
• This New Season: Our Class, Our Schools, Our World (1973)
• Mainland (1973)
• Ferndale Fires: a children's story (1974)
• Classrooms of Resistance (Writers and Readers, 1975)
• The Black Man of Shadwell: four stories (1976)
• The World in a Classroom (1977)
• Beyond the Skin: How Mozambique is defeating racism (1979)
• Grenada: "Let those who labour hold the reins". Interview with Bernard Coard (1979)
• Red Earth: Poems (1980)
• Tales of Mozambique (with Chaz Davies and Ruhi Hamid) (1980)
• Bricklight: Poems from the Labour Movement in East London (editor) (1980)
• Grenada: Education Is a Must! (with Maurice Bishop) (1981)
• ‘Is Freedom We Making’: The New Democracy in Grenada (editor) (1981)
• We're Building the New School! Diary of a Teacher in Mozambique (Zed Books, 1981)
• Sunflower of Hope: Poems from the Mozambican Revolution (editor) (Allison and Busby, 1982)
• Grenada Is Not Alone (editor) (1982)
• In the Spirit of Butler: trade unionism in free Grenada (editor) (1982)
• In the Mainstream of the Revolution (editor) (1982)
• To Construct From Morning: making the people’s budget in Grenada (editor) (1982)
• Common Ground (1983)
• Grenada: The Struggle against Destabilization (1983)
• Wheel Around the World (editor) (1983)
• Words Unchained: Language and Revolution in Grenada (1984)
• In Nobody’s Backyard: Maurice Bishop’s speeches 1979–1983 (editor) (Zed Books, 1984)
• Calalloo: Stories from Grenada (editor) (1984)
• Our City (editor) (1984)
• All Our Words (1986)
• Poems for Peace by Sheffield Schoolchildren (editor) (1987)
• Children of Steel: A Sheffield Anthology (editor) (1988)
• Racism and the Press in Thatcher's Britain (with Nancy Murray) (Institute of Race Relations, 1989)
• Your Daily Dose: Racism and the Sun (1989)
• Grenada Morning: a memoir of the revo (Karia Press, 1989)
• One for Blair - tribute to Blair Peach (editor) (1989)
• Remember Hillsborough: a memorial anthology (edited with Steve Chew) (1990)
• Freedom Children: a tribute in poetry to the children of South Africa from the children of Sheffield (editor) (1990)
• A Blindfold Removed: Ethiopia's Struggle for Literacy (1991)
• Outcast England: How schools exclude black children (with Jenny Bourne and Lee Bridges) (1994)
• Living Community, Living School: Essays on education in British inner cities (1997)
• Changing Literacies (with Colin Lankshear, James Paul Gee and Michele Knobel) (1997)
• None But Our Words: Critical Literacy in Classroom and Community (1998).
• Pitch of Life: Writings on Cricket (Parrs Wood Press, 2001)
• An Exclusive Education: Race, Class and Exclusion in British Schools (2002)
• Lightning of Your Eyes: new and selected poems (Smokestack Books, 2006)
• Cosmopolis Toronto (editor) (2007)
• Tell It Like It Is: How our schools fail black children (with Bernard Coard and others (2007)
• Forward Groove: Jazz and the Real World from Louis Armstrong to Gilad Atzman (Northway Publications, 2008)
• Toronto Generations (editor) (2008)
• Mandela, Manchester (editor) (2009)
• Doodlebug Boy (2011)
• Red Groove (Five Leaves Publications, 2013)
• Footprints: Poems by Peter Blackman (Smokestack Books, editor)(2013)

References

External links

• Chris Searle: The Great Includer, October 2009. Special issue of Race and Class, a festschrift on his 65th birthday.
• "The Stepney School Strike of 1971", Spitalfields life, 16 August 2011.
• Fran Abrams, "Sacked radical head doomed to repeat the lessons of history", The Independent, 31 December 1995
• "Former head chronicles a passion for jazz and justice" (interview), Sheffield Telegraph, 14 November 2008.