In the aftermath of a recent religious scandal involving a schoolteacher, Claire Fox, writing in The MJ, salutes the binmen who, she believes, have shown up how a climate of fear can make cowards of leaders – and threaten our democratic core values…
Three cheers for the binmen. And not just because they have continued to work throughout the pandemic, however risky their work, and rarely get mentioned in the eulogies doled out to frontline workers.
In a recent high-profile incident, a group of binmen showed courageous leadership in going where mainstream politicians and trade-unionists have literally feared to tread. Bury Unite commercial branch in the North West, which represents binmen across the borough, passed a motion standing up for a Batley grammar school teacher who was suspended, forced into hiding and shamefully abandoned by teaching unions, for using a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson on religious tolerance.
An independent investigation into the incident has concluded staff involved in the lesson did not intend to cause offence with the image and the suspended teacher can now return to the classroom. Everyone should be ashamed to live in a society in which a schoolteacher (and his family) has been forced into hiding for fear of his life, simply for doing his job. This fear is surely not unfounded in the context of the brutal beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty last year for showing cartoons of Muhammad to his pupils. The Batley teacher’s similar ‘offence’ led to angry protests erupting outside his North Kirklees school. Bad enough, but it’s the official response to those protests that is most troubling…
Read the full article here.