TRIGGERnometry - The Lessons of Batley Grammar - Andrew Doyle

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

In the face of authoritarianism, we need to hold fast to our liberal values. Andrew's Substack - https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewdoyle/p/the-lessons-of-batley-grammar?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Andrew's Twitter - https://twitter.com/andrewdoyle_com Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes children are not to be trusted. In Stalin's Russia, they were known to inform on their parents, a betrayal that would sometimes result in death by firing squad. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, innocent mothers and fathers were executed after their children had overheard them, criticising Chairman Mao. In the 1980s, Nikolai Chichescu blackmailed thousands of Romanian children

to spy on their families and teachers. And in March 2021, at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire, school pupils attempted to film their teacher on their phones in order to see him denounced. It had been a religious studies lesson on blasphemy, and cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad had been shown. Given that these same images had been the catalyst for the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices in January 2015 and the beheading of school teacher Samuel Patti in October 2020, they could not have been more relevant to the subject of the lesson,

but this wasn't enough to save the teacher. Some of the pupils were offended, and so his fate was sealed. One is reluctant to blame the children in such instances. Like the 13-year-old Brianie Talis in Ian McEwen's novel Atonement, they generally aren't capable of grasping the implications of turning informer on an innocent man. After the complaints, the teacher at Batley Grammar was suspended and his name was published by a group called Muslim Action Forum, along with false accusations that he had incited hatred against the Islamic community.

Protesters gathered outside of the school demanding that he be fired. After anonymous death threats were issued, the teacher retreated from public life. Three years later, he's still in hiding. What does it say about our society that a man is intimidated and threatened with murder simply for doing his job, while his employers, his union and the police fail to adequately defend him? Why were those sending the death threats not tracked down and arrested? Why were there no counter-demonstrations against the religious zealots who gathered outside of the school? Why did the headmaster not issue a statement to the effect that this is a free society

and that if you're offended by a cartoon, that is very much your problem? And recently, a report by Dame Sarah Kahn has been published by the UK government which delves into the problem of cancel culture and censorship by the mob. The Batley Grammar School incident is specifically mentioned as an example of how not to react in these circumstances. Kahn spoke to the teacher as part of the consultation for her report and has revealed that the ordeal left him feeling suicidal and that he had been thrown under the bus by school authorities.

Rather than accept the criticism, the Batley Multi-academy Trust has responded by claiming that they have fulfilled their responsibility and that the report contains inaccuracies. They have not specified what these inaccuracies might be. No great surprise there. It's very difficult to be specific when one is trying to promote an imaginary narrative.

Kahn's report makes for a grim reading. according to her survey, 85% of the public are aware of the existence of freedom restricting harassment in the United Kingdom. 76% have self-censored in order to avoid such treatment at the hands of angry mobs, either online or in the real world. Those of us who have been paying attention will already know that we are living in a climate of conformity, and that cancel culture is very real, in spite of the continual denials from commentators whose opinions happen to fall within the ever-narrowing Overton window. Khan has recommended that the government tackle the growing problem of self-censorship and council culture

through the establishment of an independent impartial office for social cohesion and democratic resilience. It all sounds terribly official and one wonders whether it might not be best simply to urge those in authority, whether they be in the police, the schools or the trade unions, to regrow their spines and stand up for the principle of free speech. We might also ask them to consider treating Muslims in precisely the same way as everybody else, rather than patronising them by assuming that they require a parallel system. Is it not a soft form of bigotry to regard a particular contingent among our citizenry to be uniquely combustible and prone to violence? I've written previously about how our failure to take a firm collective stand at the time of the

fatwa against Salman Rushdie effectively empowered the most reactionary members of the Islamic community. has been to the detriment of all of our freedoms, including the demographic that has been singled out for special treatment. A further recommendation in Khan's report is that schools should be ring-fenced with a buffer zone of 150 metres. This would prevent protests from occurring, with the possible exception of pickets relating to industrial action by school staff. And although I admire this effort to tackle the problem, I'm not convinced that further restrictions against protests are the answer. So often in history, we've seen the behaviour of unreconstructed mobs used as justification for authoritarian imposition but once such legislation is passed there can be no guarantees that it won't be exploited in the future

for purposes well beyond its original scope one obvious example of this is the battle of cable street on 4th of october 1936 the moment when demonstrators intercepted oswald mosley's black shirts at their march in the east end of london It was the Labour Party that campaigned most deciduously for public order legislation to stop further uprisings by the far right. But these very same laws have since been used mostly to crack down on left-wing activism, most notably the arrests of striking minors during the Thatcher years. That said, I do understand that there is a compelling argument when it comes to the protection of children and that they should not be exposed to dangerous protests. One recalls the terrible scenes on the streets around the Holy Cross Catholic primary school

in Belfast in 2001, when loyalists picketed the school. Riot police were deployed to protect the children from mobs who shouted sectarian abuse and threw bricks, fireworks and even urine-filled balloons. On one particular day, a pipe bomb was hurled at the police, causing panic among the children when it exploded. Of course, such behaviour ought to be outlawed, but assault and harassment are already criminal. The right to peaceful protest is a fundamental aspect of living in a free society. And while I do not agree with the cause that the groups who gathered outside Batley Grammar were espousing, they were not breaking the law. There were no calls for violence or threats, just weak and unconvincing appeals to the safety of the Muslim community. It should

go without saying that the only person who had experienced any authentic physical danger from the showing of the cartoon was the teacher himself. The protests outside the school in Batley weren't the problem. It was the lily-livered response from the authorities. In failing to side with the teacher, they were reneging on the liberal values that underpin our way of life. But I do not take the view that the only way to combat illiberalism is through further illiberalism, and restrictions on peaceful protest will surely only make matters worse. The Batley Grammar debacle ought to serve as a reminder that we must be steadfast when it comes to the application of the law and the equal treatment of all citizens.

No mob should get to decide where the limits of freedom of speech are to be drawn. Capitulation might seem like attempting short-term circumstances, solution, but as we have seen, the long-term consequences are invariably dire. If you enjoyed this video, please do check out my substack, where all of these articles appear weeks in advance. There's plenty of other material there too, so do check it out.