I was living in Ham, close to Richmond, Surrey, in England. I must have been about 12. I went to school at a comprehensive, Greycourts it was called. The pupils were a mixture of middle class kids from the local semi-detached suburbs and and very rough, working class children from the “estates”. After the war, the government had rehoused families from the bombed out docklands all over the country, probably to water down their collective bolshieness. These kids spat a lot, supported London teams like Chelsea, Millwall, Spurs. There was a lot of bullying.

In the grounds of the school there were several portacabins bolted together as a temporary setting for the Swedish School. The Swedish children learned and existed here with no contact with the English pupils at the comprehensive.

One day they had left, moved on to better accommodation. The cabins were empty. One lunchtime playtime all the pupils were outside, milling around the portacabins, looking through the windows, which were quite high up. Suddenly someone threw a stone through a window and it exploded into pieces. Another followed suit, another and another and a frenzy took place. Every window was bricked. I might even have taken part, I think almost everyone did. Teachers ran out and ineffectually tried to stop us. Every time they ran around one side, the kids increased the bombardment from the other.

At some point every window was a mess of shards and there was nothing left to stone. So we all stopped and moved along. There must have been about 200 of us. I don’t think the teachers managed to pin anything on any particular student. They just stood there aimlessly, having just witnessed ten minutes of unmotivated rage from their pupils ending just as quietly as it had started.