I don't know how many other free schools are in a similar position. The madness of the fight to improve education for inner-city kids has reached a point where National Union of Teachers and Socialist Workers Party members would prefer to see a school building sold to a capitalist developer, rather than see a free school succeed. They constantly campaign against us, and even now that we are wandering homeless, trying to find a building measuring at least 7,000 square metres in inner London, they continue to hound us in cyberspace. Why on earth they would want to prevent inner-city children from having a choice is beyond my comprehension. The huge shortage of places in this area should be enough of an argument to persuade any sensible person that another school is needed.

With Stephen Twigg as the new Shadow Education Secretary, some are predicting a softening of Labour's hostility to free schools. But even if he persuades his party, can he influence the councillors and officers in Labour-run authorities? Some of them are convinced that the only school worth having is one that is under local authority control; that parents, whatever their class, race or privilege, should not have choice, and be forced to send their child to the local school. Somehow these people cannot see how such rules only benefit the middle classes, who have the know-how and the means to move house and live next to their school of choice. The family on the local estate has no choice, and in areas like Lambeth where there is a place shortage, they are either forced to home-school or burden their child with an hour or longer journey to school.

People who oppose us believe they are doing what is right for society. They believe they can engineer an equality-for-all utopia. This makes our fight all the more difficult. C.S. Lewis put it well: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

There is no discussion, no hope to persuade them of their folly. They fight on, certain in the belief that preventing the poor from having school choice is right. So our struggle continues. We will not give up. We believe that London's inner-city children deserve better.