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EDITOR'S NOTE:
Chris Sloggett wrote the opinion piece below on the 2nd, July on the National Secular Society website.
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VOTERS and politicians who value social cohesion and basic democratic principles should reject the trend of pandering to religious tribalism, says Chris Sloggett.
The recent events at Batley Grammar School are well-documented, but still shocking to recount. A loud group of intolerant Muslims gathered at the gates of a school demanding a teacher's dismissal because they objected to a resource he used in class. The school suspended the teacher and issued a grovelling apology. The teacher faced threats, and soon afterwards two of his colleagues were also suspended.
A local investigation has found that the resource which the teacher showed - a cartoon of Islam's prophet Muhammad - was not used with any ill intent. The teacher was nominally reinstated. But he and his colleagues can't return to work because they fear they could be attacked. Meanwhile the investigation has effectively enforced a blasphemy taboo on the school by saying the cartoon, or similar ones, shouldn't be used again.
The teacher at the centre of the row has been driven out of the area and into hiding. The mob that hounded him has got what it wanted. Other schools around the country will have taken note.
And the politicians have moved on. The Department for Education has called on parents to accept the outcome of the local investigation. The department and others have presented this as if it's some kind of reasonable compromise. But anyone who cares about teachers' freedom to do their jobs without facing intimidation and threats - on this issue or any other - should say what this is: a meek surrender to demands for censorship.
When the protests first broke out many politicians and commentators wrung their hands. Some called for calm, but the message was often that the main concern lay in the minutiae of a handful of teachers' decisions about how to present a particular lesson in one school.
The grubby Batley and Spen by-election, which limped to a close...., helped to highlight the price to be paid for this. When the issue came up during the campaign, mainstream candidates' responses smacked of fear, self-interest and short-termist thinking. They either doggedly avoided it or offered responses which were weak to the point of meaninglessness, as a piece from Batley by Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday highlighted this weekend. Meanwhile George Galloway spotted an opportunity to weaponise the issue to try to win over some reactionary Muslim voters, saying the school had "absolutely no right" to use the cartoon.
Did the politicians think their positions were right, or did they just not want to upset a perceived bloc vote? Either way, this collective wall of silence was alarmingly predictable. It's now a standard tactic to treat large swathes of voters primarily as members of various religious 'communities', and to appeal to them through the gatekeepers who claim to speak for them.
But this approach sends the message that religious identity groups can make increasingly unreasonable demands and nobody will dare to say no to them. In Batley, there seems to have been a widespread unspoken agreement that freedom of expression - the most important freedom which citizens in a democracy enjoy - could be treated as a commodity and signed away for electoral convenience.
Politicians should beware where the multi-communal game leads. If they rely on religious identity politics to shore up their support, they'll come under pressure to extend more privileges to particular religious groups. Others will organise along competing identitarian lines, or grow bewildered that politicians appear uninterested in them. The principle that we all enjoy equal citizenship and that politicians should seek to serve all of our interests will be further frayed.
There will also be fertile ground for bad actors of various stripes. The Batley and Spen campaign was marred by inter-communal tensions and intimidatory tactics, including homophobic intimidation aimed at Labour candidate Kim Leadbeater. More moderate and reasonable voices, such as a group of Muslim women who rejected the authority of a "loud minority" of Muslim men this week, faced an uphill battle to make themselves heard. Several far right candidates also spotted an opportunity to advance their agendas.
This ugly campaign should be a prompt to pause and reconsider. Indulging religious tribalism is risky and unsustainable. Voters and politicians who value social cohesion and basic democratic principles should unite against it.
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BBC REPORT
:
George Galloway has threatened to take legal action against a council in a row over font sizes on his by-election posters.
The adverts for his campaign as the Workers Party candidate in Thursday's Batley and Spen ballot were taken down.
Kirklees Council said the adverts broke election rules but Mr Galloway accused the Labour-run authority of a "blatantly partisan move".
It said the posters "did not meet the standards required".
According to the council, mandatory text, known as an imprint, identifying the source of the campaign material appears too small.
Mr Galloway said the local authority had "used taxpayer money and council staff to remove hundreds of posters" and had not returned them to his campaign headquarters.
"But it is clear there are no levels to which Labour won't stoop in this by-election." he said.
"Gone is the notion of a free and fair election".
James Giles, Mr Galloway's campaign manager, said it had instructed lawyers and reported the removal to West Yorkshire Police and the Electoral Commission.
Kirklees Council said it had received a complaint about some of the posters and had asked Mr Galloway's campaign to "correct the problem" before taking them down.
Candidates could place posters on street furniture during the election campaign if the posters met certain requirements, said a council statement.
One was "all imprints on these election materials have to have a font size of at least 12".
The size was important as the source of election materials needed to be "clear and transparent", it said.
"These rules are set out in our election campaign policy which all candidates received as part of their nomination pack", the council added.
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by Paul Stott on 'SPIKED'
24th June 2021
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde on the death of Little Nell, one must have a heart of stone to read about Labour’s campaign in Batley and Spen and not laugh. With the Conservatives making headway, and George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain targeting both Muslim voters and Old Labour Brexiteers, one opinion poll has the Conservatives ahead by four per cent. Galloway has high hopes of pushing Labour into third place.
This is a constituency twice in the national headlines for the wrong reasons: the 2016 murder of its MP, Jo Cox, by a far-right extremist and the March 2021 Islamist protests outside Batley Grammar School, sparked by a teacher showing Muhammad cartoons to his students, which led to three teachers being suspended. The teacher at the centre of it all is still in hiding. Outgoing Labour MP Tracy Brabin said little of any real substance in support of the Batley teachers, handily clearing the way for her canonisation as the inaugural mayor of West Yorkshire. Her anointed replacement as MP, Kim Leadbeater, styled herself as the candidate the Tories feared. Born and bred locally, and the sister of Jo Cox, Leadbeater seemed the ideal person to protect the Red Wall from further Tory encroachment. Instead, her campaign has lurched from disaster to disaster.
A politician of the old school who works on the stump, George Galloway initially placed the conflict in Gaza centre stage. This soon rallied Muslim activists and Workers Party canvass teams. Labour then took the fateful decision that Leadbeater should fight Galloway on his preferred territory. Labour leaflets began to stress the three core issues the party thought mattered most to Muslim voters – Palestine, Kashmir and Islamophobia. The road to Westminster was to be taken via Al-Quds and Srinagar. A letter from Leadbeater to voters, carrying the words ‘From Batley and Spen for Batley and Spen’ and the Labour logo, opened with the text: ‘As Batley and Spen’s Labour MP I will be a strong voice for Palestinian human rights and statehood.’ None of this has worked. In matters of politics, voters tend to prefer the original to the copy.
There are accusations of prejudice in the constituency – that Leadbeater’s sexuality is an issue for some voters, and even that Keir Starmer’s wife being Jewish has been raised on the doorstep. Last weekend Labour descended into an unedifying bout of infighting after party briefings to the Mail on Sunday, suggesting that it was ‘haemorrhaging’ votes in the contest because of ‘what Keir has been doing on anti-Semitism’. The reaction to this claim was one of fury. The briefings were quickly denounced as ‘Islamophobia’ by the Labour Muslim network and as ‘astonishing’ by Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain. Versi praised Angela Rayner for her ‘strong leadership’ in denouncing comments from one of her own staff.
How to analyse this? In Labour’s civil war, Hackney is now furious with Hampstead. For the Corbynistas, Labour’s heartlands are less the old strongholds of South Wales or County Durham, nor the urbane intelligentsia of Bloomsbury or Hampstead. What matters are those areas that are ethnically diverse and have activist constituency Labour parties. To those more Hackney than Hartlepool, any loss in Batley and Spen, a seat which the 2011 census showed was just under 19 per cent Muslim, is inexcusable, especially at a time of mass protests in support of the Palestinians. A leadership challenge to Keir Starmer, almost certainly coalescing around his deputy Angela Rayner, is sure to follow.
There are accusations of prejudice in the constituency – that Leadbeater’s sexuality is an issue for some voters, and even that Keir Starmer’s wife being Jewish has been raised on the doorstep. Last weekend Labour descended into an unedifying bout of infighting after party briefings to the Mail on Sunday, suggesting that it was ‘haemorrhaging’ votes in the contest because of ‘what Keir has been doing on anti-Semitism’. The reaction to this claim was one of fury. The briefings were quickly denounced as ‘Islamophobia’ by the Labour Muslim network and as ‘astonishing’ by Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain. Versi praised Angela Rayner for her ‘strong leadership’ in denouncing comments from one of her own staff.
How to analyse this? In Labour’s civil war, Hackney is now furious with Hampstead. For the Corbynistas, Labour’s heartlands are less the old strongholds of South Wales or County Durham, nor the urbane intelligentsia of Bloomsbury or Hampstead. What matters are those areas that are ethnically diverse and have activist constituency Labour parties. To those more Hackney than Hartlepool, any loss in Batley and Spen, a seat which the 2011 census showed was just under 19 per cent Muslim, is inexcusable, especially at a time of mass protests in support of the Palestinians. A leadership challenge to Keir Starmer, almost certainly coalescing around his deputy Angela Rayner, is sure to follow.
The Starmerites and the Corbynistas are both receiving a harsh political lesson. They haven ridden the tiger of identity politics together, and each happily abandoned the Batley religious-studies teachers in order to secure the party’s electoral base. They are now finding identity politics is beset with dangerous paradoxes.
Political parties, especially those on the left, once sought to deliver primarily on economic aspirations, while also recognising the importance of the nation state and its endurance. The identitarian left, on the rise in the Labour Party since at least the 1980s, has deliberately downplayed economic questions and ostentatiously rejected any concept of the national, in favour of the idea that all lifestyles and cultures are equal.
For liberal democracies to function, however, it is often necessary to politely but firmly say ‘No’ to interest groups. That is what should have happened at the gates of Batley Grammar. That it did not is now catching up with the Labour Party.
Paul Stott is a writer and commentator. Follow him on Twitter: @MrPaulStott
ACADEMICS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM
6th June 2021 Dennis Hayes News
The decision to lift the suspension of the Batley Grammar School teacher does not necessarily mean he can safely return to work. As the second half term begins, we do not know if he will return. Whatever happens, he will have to live under constant fear. His possible return is not helped by the wording of the decision, which is a victory for mob rule, intolerance and contains a recommendation that the teacher and the school self-censor and the avoid giving offence in class in the future. The independent inquiry convened by the school found that the teacher and his colleagues did not show the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a lesson on blasphemy with the ‘intention to cause offence’. But the school felt it had to make an abject apology, recognising that ‘using the image did cause deep offence to a number of students, parents and members of our school community. The Trust deeply regrets the distress this has caused’. (Executive Summary).
This is not the end of what we could call the UK’s Charlie Hebdo moment as some may hope. What happened at Batley Grammar School is a triumph for those who do not merely shout “That’s offensive!” but physically intimidate students and teachers while making demands for disciplinary action or the sacking of those they believe have caused offence. Mob rule by Islamists and others will be encouraged by this decision and by the cowardice of teachers and teacher unions to stand up for the freedom to teach.
The Charlie Hebdo moment began with a mob
Thursday 25 March 2021 was the day when the UK began to experience its ‘Charlie Hebdo’ moment. A mob gathered outside Batley Grammar School in Yorkshire to demand the sacking of an RS teacher who had apparently shown students the cartoons of Muhammed that had appeared in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. This was during a lesson on blasphemy. It seems perfectly reasonable to illustrate ‘blasphemy’ with reference to these cartoons that incensed Islamists to slaughter 12 of the writers, editors and cartoonists at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris on 7 January 2015. What is happening in the UK is less violent but equally frightening.
A Muslim Charity calling itself ‘Purpose of Life’ had written to the school head teacher demanding that the RE teacher – who they named – be sacked. It appeared to be behind the protests at the school gates. They were offended that the Prophet Muhammed had been depicted and saw it as blasphemy. They did not care that there is no blasphemy law in Yorkshire (or the UK) and that criticism and satire about any religion is allowed. They did not care about freedom of speech!
The weak head teacher, Gary Kibble, caved in immediately and had a statement read out unreservedly apologising for what had happened. He said that the use of the cartoons was ‘completely inappropriate’ and would not happen again. The teacher was suspended pending an investigation.
If Mr Kibble thought that an abject capitulation to a mob would resolve matters, he was incredibly naïve. The next day another mob of mostly Muslim men, unconnected with the school, turned up outside and vowed to stay there until the teacher was sacked. The consistently weak Mr Kibble closed the school.
There were death threats against the teacher, whose name and address were known. He went into hiding with his family in the early morning of Friday 26 March, possibly under the direction and protection of the police.
This tragic situation resembled the persecution of the French teacher of history and geography, Samuel Paty, who was beheaded by Islamists in October 2020 for allegedly showing his class the Charlie Hebdo cartoons to illustrate his country’s commitment to freedom of speech and expression. The letter from parents and Muslim groups that preceded the murder of Paty has a parallel in the early response to the lesson by the RS teacher. In France, a fatwa was issued condemning Paty. There was no need for a fatwa in Batley. The head teacher had internalised the fatwa in his thinking.
The silence of the teacher unions
As happened in the case of Samuel Paty, the teacher unions were silent. A teacher was driven into hiding in fear of his life and they said nothing. They could not bring themselves to defend a fellow teacher for fear of being called ‘Islamophobic’. They were as cowardly as the head teacher and a disgrace to the profession and failures to what could be a brilliant moment for free thinking and debate.
The heroes of the moment
The real heroes of the UK’s Charlie Hebdo moment were the Batley Grammar School students. They launched a petition on Change.org to demand their teacher be reinstated. Within hours it had over 10,000 signatures and at the time of writing has over 71,400 signatures.
Putting the teacher unions to shame a union branch of bin-men kicked up a stink about the suspended by putting forward a motion from their trade union branch to Shamefully, the National Education Union, the largest teacher union, tried to get them to withdraw it.
AFAF, the Free Speech Union, and several individuals, wrote to the head teacher and demanded that the RE teacher be reinstated immediately and allowed to return to work. They received no response.
The fatwa determines future practice
Not only the head teacher and the teacher unions but the barrister leading the ‘independent’ inquiry have internalised the fatwa. The executive summary of the enquiry states:
“The Trust will not avoid addressing challenging subject matter in its classrooms, but it is committed to ensuring that offence is not caused and that this is always done with care and sensitivity, enabling students to build empathy, mutual respect and understanding” [italics added].
No one has the right not to be offended and if a curriculum is designed to avoid offending anyone then it will be no more than a political tract.
If fear of the mob determines what we are free to teach and silences trade unions, then freedom in education will be under threat from future mobs. It is not good enough to hope the UK’s Charlie Hebdo moment will simply go away. Cowardly capitulation can only encourage more Islamist, and other, offended mobs.
The Batley and Spen parliamentary by-election is a chance for all candidates to speak up for free speech. The UK’s Charlie Hebdo moment is far from over. #JesuisBatleyGSteacher.
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The Tories will be hoping to take a seat held by Labour since 1997
By Alexandra Rogers on YORKSHIRE LIVE website - 1 JUN 2021
When the Tories talk about how tough the Batley by election is going to be for the party to win, it probably isn't solely a lesson in expectations management - for once.
Batley and Spen is a highly unpredictable contest for the Conservatives, as pollsters and psephologists know despite its erroneous categorisation as a "Red Wall" seat that now forms the Tories' stomping ground.
One such expert is James Johnson, a private pollster at JL Partners who, as a former adviser to Theresa May while she was prime minister, knows all about how the party will target Batley and Spen.
Mr Johnson describes the West Yorkshire constituency as "Red Wall 2.0 - that next tier of Labour held seats... that could go Conservative".
What separates Batley from Hartlepool, where the Tories pulled of a resounding victory earlier this month, is that the Brexit party vote share in the 2019 general election was low by comparison.
In Hartlepool, it accounted for 25 per cent of the vote share. Naturally, what happened in that by election was votes transferred from the Brexit party to the Conservatives to allow the party to cross the finish line.
"One of the reasons Batley didn't fall in 2019 and is 2.0 rather than 1.0 is because it doesn't have quite as a high a Brexit party vote share, it has more people from different ethnic groups rather than people from white British backgrounds, and it is in an area that is more suspicious perhaps of the Conservatives," Mr Johnson explains.
It's in the second tier which is a much harder challenge for the Conservatives."
National issues such as the success of the vaccine rollout and the appeal of Boris Johnson will undoubtedly help the Tories, but Mr Johnson's message to the party if they want to win is "get local".
"Everything will be informed by research on the ground," he says.
"In Hartlepool, you saw such a focus on jobs in the area and on Ben Houchen, because their research was telling them that they would like more jobs in the area and that people liked Ben Houchen.
"The Tories will emphasise jobs and investment, there will be reference to the vaccine rollout and we'll probably see this message about voting for change - really positioning the Conservatives as the change candidate to residents who feel like Labour have represented them for a long time but not done much for them."
The 'get local' message might have been missed by the Tories, who have selected Ryan Stephenson, a Leeds councillor and chair of the West Yorkshire Conservatives as its candidate.
Some may believe the importance of having a local candidate has been exaggerated, but Mr Johnson is not one of them.
"The unspoken rule for successful by-elections is you are helped enormously by having a local candidate," he says.
"And that was actually one of the problems for both parties in Hartlepool. There was a lot of kick back that neither candidate was not from the area - the Labour candidate was seen as second-hand goods from Stockton and the Conservative candidate was from North Yorkshire.
"If we're in a situation where one candidate is local and one candidate isn't, that is a real advantage to whoever has got that local candidate."
Labour too faces a battle to retain Batley and Spen, where its majority has declined to number just 3,525 votes going into this election. Their difficulties could well translate into success for the Tories.
The Conservatives face one main threat in Mr Halloran, while the Labour party faces several: the Liberal Democrats, the Green party and of course, leftwing firebrand and party exile George Galloway.
"If Labour are losing votes to the Lib Dems of Greens, who had a good showing in the locals, or if Labour are losing votes to a a George Galloway candidacy, then that is going to be difficult for Labour," Mr Johnson says.
"Even if a Lib Dem or Green candidate isn't particularly good, or out there or visible, their very presence on the ballot paper does take away votes - we saw this in the 2019 general election where actually, some of the Lib Dems weren't actually campaigning that much."
Regarding George Galloway, Mr Johnson says: "Lots of people are very fed up.
"A big reason why people voted Conservative in Hartlepool was because they were fed up with the status quo and wanted a change.
"It is very easy to see George Galloway becoming that person for people who don't like Labour but don't want to vote Conservative. Although he didn't do particularly well in Scotland where he last stood, he is noisy, he is on the ground and he also puts a lot of effort in - he doesn't just sit back and pop up and do a few visits, he really goes for it.
"And he doesn't need to take that many votes from Labour to cause a problem. It really could be just a matter of a couple of thousand of votes and you would see it coming perilously close for Labour."
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Posted: Thu, 27 May 2021 by Stephen Evans on the National Secular Society website
As an investigation into the Batley Grammar affair concludes, Stephen Evans says we should recognise the censorious precedent it has set.
Earlier this year a number of teachers were suspended after an image of the prophet Muhammad was used in a lesson to initiate a discussion about blasphemy at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire.
Pupils were forced out of school as angry protesters gathered at the gates demanding action against one of the teachers for 'offending' "the whole Muslim community". Some protesters accused him of stirring up anti-Muslim hatred.
The school's head teacher apologised "unequivocally" and sought to placate the protestors by saying the use of the image was "totally inappropriate". Meanwhile, one teacher and his family were forced into hiding after receiving threats.
An independent investigation launched by the academy trust behind the school has now concluded. It's found that the image was used for an "educational purpose" to benefit students and was not used with the intention of causing offence. The suspensions have been lifted – and rightly so.
Everyone's primary concern should be for the safety and wellbeing of the teacher at the centre of this and his family. We should hope they can now move on and rebuild their lives. I would be surprised if the teacher returns to the school.
But we should also recognise that the investigators have given the protesters what they craved by imposing a de facto blasphemy code on the school.
The executive summary of the investigation says: "It is not necessary for staff to use the material in question to deliver the learning outcomes on the subject of blasphemy; or any such images of the type used… in any trust RS lessons, or any other lessons."
Nobody claimed it was "necessary". But if you're teaching about blasphemy and freedom of expression, you may reasonably think the most effective way of exploring this subject involves using images that have caused controversy. You may also think that if you don't show them, pupils will look them up on the internet anyway, and the best environment for this learning is a teacher facilitated discussion. Teachers appreciate the diversity of their students and can foster civility to ensure students learn about sensitive topics in authentic, sensitive, engaging and meaningful ways.
On a fundamental point, the outcome of this investigation represents a capitulation to the mob. The reason this school and others won't use such resources again is not because they aren't educationally justified, but because they don't want to cause offence. Not because they aren't conducive to learning, but because of the threat of disruption and violence. This is how a de facto blasphemy law works.
Right from the start, the National Secular Society urged the government to take the lead on this issue. We warned that treating it as little more than a local dispute would leave the investigation more vulnerable to pressure from assertive, intolerant religious voices.
And that has now happened. The outcome of the investigation has been influenced by unreasonable religious demands and intimidation and threats from religious extremists.
In many ways, the trust's response is a clever fudge. It endeavours to conciliate between the various parties by offering them all something, while selling out on liberal, secularist principles. It says it's committed to "ensuring offence is not caused". This is a route to censorship that sets a very dangerous precedent.
And the outcome of this local investigation will inevitably affect teachers' ability to do their jobs across the country. One trainee teacher at Manchester Metropolitan University who expressed concern over the weak response to the Batley Grammar affair and said he would be willing to use images of religious figures in class has already been called to a 'fitness to practise' meeting.
Teachers have been given the message that they should censor themselves. And that message could be relevant on any other number of sensitive subjects where well-organised and vocal groups could take offence.
When the incident first happened the Department for Education said it was "never acceptable to threaten or intimidate teachers", adding that schools are "free to include a full range of issues, ideas and materials in their curriculum". With fundamental principles at stake, the government should now launch its own investigation into the handling of the affair and consider how we got ourselves into the position where religious extremists have a veto on which resources teachers can use in the classroom.
But instead the DfE has simply said "parents, families and the local community" should "recognise the findings of the investigation" and "welcome and support" the trust's plan to "strengthen its oversight of the curriculum".
Everyone will understandably want to move on from this now. But before we do, we should recognise that an Islamic blasphemy code has been quietly imposed. Teachers' and pupils' freedoms have been sacrificed to appease offence takers.
The outcome of the Batley affair is another damaging chip away at the fundamental right to free expression and inquiry.
Additional note - Friday 28 May
The NSS has today written to the DfE about this. The letter urged the department to investigate the handling of the protests outside Batley Grammar School.
It added that the investigation should consider the wider context of religious fundamentalism being imposed on schools through protests and intimidation, and ask what can be done to protect and support schools in such situations.
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The candidates must stand up for the local teacher who has been hounded into hiding by Islamists.
by Paul Stott on the Spiked website
13th May 2021
How soon we forget. A schoolteacher and his young family are living away from their home in Batley, Yorkshire. It is entirely possible they are under armed guard. They have been in hiding for over six weeks after receiving threats from religious zealots. All because the teacher reportedly showed a cartoon of Muhammad in the course of his teaching.
The teacher is also under investigation by his employer, and he knows that the process is potentially stacked against him. The school’s headmaster has publicly criticised his actions, and the campaigners who demanded his sacking have requested to be part of the team conducting the inquiry. His trade union, the National Education Union, is known to have funded a local Islamic charity, Purpose of Life, which has circulated the teacher’s name and has even accused him of ‘terrorism’. Should the investigation fail to result in his dismissal, it will undoubtedly be denounced as a whitewash and an example of institutional ‘Islamophobia’. The mob will likely return to the schoolgates. The teachers and pupils of Batley Grammar School deserve better.
In last week’s local elections, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, Tracy Brabin, was elected as the first mayor of West Yorkshire. While some MPs insist they can juggle serving as an MP and a mayor (such as Dan Jarvis, Labour MP for Barnsley Central and mayor of the Sheffield City Region), Brabin is expected to step down as an MP, triggering a by-election.
Batley and Spen is another traditionally Labour-voting Red Wall seat which is looking vulnerable to a Tory challenge. Labour’s majority in Batley and Spen fell from 8,691 in 2017 to 3,525 in 2019. The even-worse news for arch-Remainer Sir Keir Starmer is that Batley and Spen voted 59.3 per cent to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.
Tracy Brabin won Batley and Spen in a by-election in October 2016, following the murder of the Labour incumbent, Jo Cox, by far-right terrorist Thomas Mair. He shouted ‘Britain first!’ while shooting and stabbing her. A passer-by, Bernard Kenny, was also stabbed. He received the George Medal for attempting to save Cox’s life. When a by-election was called to elect a new MP, the main parties did not contest it out of respect for Cox, allowing Labour a clear run.
The ugly threat of violence has since returned to Batley and Spen, and will surely hang over the 2021 by-election. This time the aggressors are not from the far right, but from an Islamist scene that has an even greater propensity for violence than Britain’s neo-Nazis. In 2016, the main parties stood as one against the violence of the far right. In this by-election, they again need to step up. Each candidate needs to declare loudly and clearly that what is happening at Batley Grammar is unacceptable.
In a liberal democracy, schoolteachers must be free to teach children about contentious issues. That includes showing caricatures and images that some find offensive. A core function of education is preparing children for the real world, not protecting them from it. Education policy cannot be surrendered to any mob that can get enough people together at the school gates. If education can be influenced like this, what is the point of holding by-elections, or of political parties developing policies, if we simply go along with whoever shouts the loudest?
The Batley Grammar School teacher needs to be able to return to his home and to his day job. Every candidate who stands in Batley needs to be asked how they will ensure this happens, and how this country can ensure such an outrage is never repeated again. Liberal democracy endured after an attack by a fascist in 2016. It should not roll over and accept defeat by Islamists in 2021.
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