Adam Butler

More than 50 teachers had launched the campaign to save the schools threatened with the axe. Teachers from Dunlamber Boys' and Somerdale Boys' Secondary Schools protesting outside the Belfast Education and Library Board office in February 1982. In a statement issued to the News Letter the teachers stated: “There is not a single educational reason to justify the decision to close either of these schools. It will effectively destroy an exercise of parental choice of schools in north Belfast. It will handicap an progress towards a properly planned rationalisation of resources in north Belfast for the next twenty years.” The staff at Somerdale school had blocked the Crumlin Road for 30 minutes during their lunchtime before joining their Dunlambert colleagues in a delegation to the board headquarters in Academy Street. Picture: News Letter archives

IN PICTURES: More old photographs from the News Letter photograph archives (1982... Home