Workers' Liberty

An 81 year old retired Irish cardinal, Desmond Connell, has gone to the High Court in Dublin for a writ to stop his successor as Archbishop of Dublin from handing over church files on paedophile priests to a state-organised inquiry into clerical abuse of children.

The first state-funded Hindu faith school in the UK — the “Krishna-Avanti primary school” — is set to open this September in Edgware, north-west London. The sponsor is none other than the International Society for Krishna Consciousness — aka the Hare Krishna movement.

Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was locked up by the Sudanese authorities for allowing her class to call a teddy bear Muhammad, said of her experience: “The Sudanese people I found to be extremely kind and generous and until this happened I only had a good experience.”

Fifty-two per cent of people in Britain, asked in a YouGov poll in February 2007, oppose the growth of faith schools in this country. Only ten per cent positively approve.

By Nikolai Bukharin

The working class and its party — the Communist-Bolshevist Party — aim not only at an economic liberation, but also at a spiritual liberation of the toiling masses. And the economic liberation itself will proceed all the more quickly, if the proletarians will throw out of their heads all the crazy ideas that the feudal landholders and the bourgeoisie and manufacturers have knocked into them.

Take a look at the second and third petitions on this page of the Downing Street petitions site.

The first wants the Prime Minister to "continue the support for faith schools and to ensure that in all schools the teaching of traditional ‘faith’ views of origins is included alongside the more recent scientific ‘theories’ which many scientists ‘believe'", and goes on to argue that "Evolution and other scientific theories should not be taught as fact but instead along side other ‘faith’ views of origins."

A report has claimed that East End schools are dividing by race.

While 17 Tower Hamlets primary schools have more than 90%+ Bangladeshi pupils, nine have fewer than 10%. Three of the borough's 15 secondaries have less than 3% Bangladeshi pupils, while two have more than 95% Bangladeshi pupils and three over 80%.

From Workers' Liberty Teachers NUT conference bulletin 2007
For the second year running Conference delegates may have the opportunity to debate our policy on faith schools.

From Workers' Liberty Teachers NUT conference bulletin 2007
Some on the Left argue that Moslem women have taken to wearing the ‘veil’ (meaning such attire as the niqab or burqa) as a political act with a positive content.

Religious indoctrination and religious segregation has no place in schools. Children should be able to learn and work out their ideas without officially imposed or sponsored indoctrination from priests, imams, or rabbis. There should be no faith schools. Schools should deal in inquiry and reason, not faith.

By Pat Murphy, Leeds NUT

The government is all over the place on the issue of faith schools. On the one hand, a set of prominent Blairite Ministers have been given license to stoke up a debate about the dangers of segregation and the need for “community cohesion”. On the other hand, the government seems to lack the will or the capacity to introduce even the most limited measures to ensure ethnic and religious integration.

The march of the creationists into our kids' schools must be getting bad when even other Christians are complaining about it to the Government.

Christian thinktank Ekklesia and the British Humanist Association have jointly written to Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Education, calling for science teaching to be based on, er, science.

Faith schools featured as a controversial aspect of debate at conference 2006 and despite a lengthy discussion – on the web, in conference hall and at fringe meetings – no real progress was made. The union had not considered its position for some time and many asked ‘why raise the issue now?’ This strain of thought was given weight by the wording of the initial motion which allowed sections of the union to cloak discussion in terms of Islamophobia. Amendments did little to help with some giving implicit support for the expansion of faith schools and others failing to deal with issues of parity between different denominations.

For the first time in many years Conference delegates will have the opportunity to debate our policy on faith schools. The debate on Sunday morning will provide a choice between three broad positions.

1. Against faith schools: Motion 31 and five of the amendments to it (31.1, 31.4, 31.5, 31.6 and 31.7) argue against the expansion of faith schools and the reintegration of existing religious schools into the local authority system.

2. For the right of religious groups to state-funded schools: amendment 31.2 from Westminster asks Conference to ‘support the rights of Muslims, as of other religions, to have faith schools teaching according to the National Curriculum’.
3. Establish a working party and convene a seminar: amendments 31.3 argues for amendments to the Education Bill which seeks to limit the powers of religious groups who run schools and protect our members from discrimination. On the principle of faith schools, however, it deletes the calls for ‘an immediate halt to new government funded faith schools’ and ‘a long term phased programme of ending state funding to faith schools’ in the original and replaces them with calls for a working party and a seminar. This is repeated in 31.8.

In summary the original motion and the majority of amendments give delegates the opportunity to oppose the expansion of state-funded faith schools and move toward a secular education system.

Mark Sandell’s letter (Solidarity 3/87) attacking my article on secularism in France did make a sustained effort at picking holes in my argument, but did little to justify his own position.

Last night, I tuned in to Channel 4 for The Root of All Evil? a programme by Professor Richard Dawkins (Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, pictured) damning the revival of religious superstition.

Campaigners in Nottingham have stopped a local school becoming the fourth Muslim state primary in the country. The independent Islamia School in Hyson Green had applied to become a voluntary-aided state school, which would entitle it to Government funding. But the school's application was turned down by Nottingham’s School Organisation Committee, which is made up of city councillors, governors and church leaders.

By Tim Cooper

In Nottingham the council is proposing that a local small private Islamic school become a large LEA voluntary-aided school.

Notes from a discussion at a North London AWL branch meeting, introduced by Jean Lane.

What are the reasons for the growth in the movement for single-faith schools?
Why do socialists oppose this?

Speakers from the National Secular Society and Christian Socialist Movement.

Download a leaflet advertising this event here.

The work of God?

New Labour’s encouragement of religious schools is nothing new, but it was still something of a shock to discover that Ruth Kelly, the newly-anointed Education Secretary, is receiving “spiritual guidance”, as she puts it, from Opus Dei. She can’t be a proper member, because she is a woman.

The main discussion will be about Schools and Secularism, introduced by Jean Lane. The third in our series of three discussions about Religion and Politics.

A girls’ school in the East End of London recently decided to ban the wearing of the jilbab by students. The jilbab is the long coat or dress, which covers the body from the neck to the feet and is worn over the school uniform. As a result of the ban, three students stayed away from school and those wearers of it that continued to attend set up a petition demanding the right to do so.

By Mathew Bailey

Parents, teachers and students of Northcliffe School, serving Conisbrough and Denaby near Doncaster, have recently stopped their school from being turned into an academy run by a religious organisation, the Emmanuel Schools Foundation (ESF). This is the first time proposals for an academy have been overturned. It is, as the Yorkshire Post put it, a “huge blow to Blair”.

By Mike Rowley

In the context of the debate on the banning of the hijab in French public schools, it is instructive to consider the contrast between the educational systems of France and Britain.

By Joan Trevor



Parents and teachers of Northcliffe School, serving Conisbrough and Denaby near Doncaster, are fighting to keep their school… and to keep it from Christian fundamentalists.

Most secular liberal teachers would respect the right of students to express their religious beliefs. But the veil attracts particular discussion because of the signals it consciously and unconsciously sends: girls should cover their hair and faces.

Mark Sandell (Solidarity 3/49) claims that I "say there is a mass pro-hijab revolt by French Muslim girls". In Solidarity 3/48 I wrote: "I made it clear in... Solidarity 3/46... that I do not believe that there is a mass revolt of Muslim girls demanding the right to wear the veil". The word "not" changes the sense.