The irony, Dan, is that bussing was once used in Southall to PREVENT integration.In the 1960s a white residents association was set up, in part, to stop racial mixing. This meant that until 1979 substantial numbers of Indian kids were bussed out to places like Northfields (because no school class was allowed to have more than one third Asian pupils).In the early 1990s I worked with a young Indian woman who recounted to me her first experience of bussing and how, at the age of five (on her first day of school) the coach brought her back to Southall but her mother was waiting at the wrong stop. It took hours to reunite her with her tearful parents.Despite this discrimination she went to university (and, last I heard, ended up in Canada where she got married).In 1994, after Labour regained control of Ealing Council, the name of "Blair Peach School" was reinstated. We in the ANL (together with the governors) produced a commemorative book to mark the event - and I got this woman to write an article for it about her earliest experiences in Southall. Let me know if you'd like to read it and I'll e-mail you a copy.
Robin Taylor ● 5792d