Cowardly Council
White Feather Award
A campaign by two Muslim governors to give Islam a greater presence in a state school (New Monument primary, Woking) played a key part in forcing a successful head (Erica Connor) from her job, the High Court found recently. The court was told that over two years, the governors campaigned to make the school more Islamic . . . one tried to stir up disaffection in the community against the school and the other was verbally abusive in school meetings. The first 5 years that Mrs Connor was in charge of the schoool had seen good relations with the local Muslim community and improved results, the situation changed, the judge said, when the 2 men were elected to the school board in 2003.” Finding that “SCC had failed in its duty to protect her and to intervene . . .” he considered that “the Council had shown excessive tolerance of the 2 governors, who had an agenda to increase the role of the Muslim religion in the school, and had lost sight of the adverse effects of such conduct on the school.” This agenda, combined with SCC’s “failure to protect her had led her to suffer serious depression.” She was awarded £400,000 damages.
Surrey County Council should show a bit of backbone in dealing with the activities of vociferous and disruptive minorities. With the inevitable legal costs their cowardice in this case has already cost Surrey tax payers and the education budget well over £0.5 million as well as the destruction of Mrs Connor’s career. What are they frightened of ?
White Feather Award
Our second “White Feather ” this month goes to Sir Paul Stephenson in his new job as Metropolitan Police Commissioner. As reported in the Times of 8 May, he has agreed to limit the use of stop-and-search powers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 because minority groups (e.g.Muslim Safety Forum) with no responsibility for protecting the public, claimed that it was discriminating against minorities. Connected to this cowardly obsession with the opinions of completely unrepresentative minority groups, particularly Islamic ones, was the police refusal to stop the insulting demonstration in Luton against the soldiers of the Royal Anglian Regiment returning from service in Afghanistan, or indeed to bring appropriate charges against the perpetrators under the Public Order Act 1986 (section 18).
