Memories of tough East End school still move audiences

SITTING in a Northampton hotel, the morning after his rousing appearance on the stage of the town’s Royal and Derngate Theatre at the triumphant opening of To Sir, With Love, author ER Braithwaite is looking understandably shell-shocked.

After all, it is not every 
101-year-old who can cause a standing ovation simply by showing his face in public. Seldom has the traditional cry from the audience of “Author! Author!” been so pleasingly and dramatically answered.

“It was a nice experience,” says Braithwaite with a smile. “But I needed to be reminded of so much, which is a function of age, I suppose. Normally I don’t think about my time in the East End and watching the play last night, the events it describes all seem a bit unreal to me now. In fact, I had to strain myself to imagine myself in that situation.”

It must be a bizarre experience to see events from your distant past recreated on a stage and find yourself lionised by a theatre full of strangers. Braithwaite comes across as a modest man, uneasy in the limelight, whose instinct is to downplay his story and his achievements. He insists that his exploits in the classroom were entirely random, caused by his inability to find the work for which he was qualified.

“I chanced upon education; it was like an accident that happened to me. Those kids in the East End made a great impression on me. They seemed so infused with life.”

Nearly seven decades after his unexpected debut in the teaching profession, Braithwaite has vivid memories of the slow and painful process involved in connecting with his ill-disciplined charges. As a rookie, he had to find a way of dealing with a classroom full of socially-deprived problem pupils. “I connected with them purely out of my own wish to survive!” he explains.

“It struck me one day that the children didn’t have any respect for themselves and this was why they had no respect for other people and I seized upon that idea. I challenged them to respect themselves. I don’t know if I changed any lives or not but something did happen between them and me, which was quite gratifying. I didn’t keep in touch with my former pupils. I had gone to the school to do a particular job and I felt that I’d completed my work with them. I’d be walking to work and people would come up to me and say “Hi ya, Sir!” There came a point when I was “Sir” to the parents as well as to their children.”

As we see in the play, Rick, for all his initial doubts, comes to accept many of the Headmaster’s liberal, child-centred ideas about education. This accurately reflects the particular personality of the man, says Braithwaite. “He was as inspirational as he appears in the play and he meant more to the children than they realised. He inserted himself into their lives. I’d be teaching and the door would open and there was his face. He’d say “Good job!” and then he’d vanish. On reflection, I can see now that he was well before his time, far ahead of other people in education.”

Braithwaite’s years in the East End occupied a short period of his long life in teaching, yet arguably these achievements have been overshadowed by the impact of To Sir, With Love. Not that modest Braithwaite minds.

To Sir, With Love, Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, Nov 5 to 9. Tickets 01274 432000.

Book, play and film of teaching days

To Sir, With Love, based on ER Braithwaite’s time teaching, was published in 1959.

It was published after he left the school he describes in the book.

“It’s hard to say when it began,” he says.” I thought about writing a book but being a lazy person, I didn’t start to work on it until I sat down one day and I started remembering things and writing them down.”

In 1967 it was adapted 
as a movie, starring Sidney Poitier.

“When I saw the film, I was not impressed. Something had been lost in the transition from book to film.”