In 2014 a torrent of abuse was launched against schools in Birmingham, Manchester and Bradford about a conspiracy by Islamic extremists acting as school governors in an undercover plot to take over schools – the Trojan Horse.
A wave of Islamophobic racism swept through the media. The retired Commander of Counter Terrorism Control, Peter Clarke, was appointed to lead an investigation into 25 Birmingham schools. Tony Blair joined in, recklessly linking the so-called Trojan Horse plot to the fundamentalist organisation Boko Haram.
Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Education, used the occasion in his rivalry with Theresa May, then Home Secretary, to push his British Values school agenda and increase his popularity with the Tory right wing. The Muslim community, parents, pupils and teachers, suffered in the service of a racist electoral agenda.
In June, disciplinary proceedings against five teachers for allowing ‘undue Islamist influence’ in the running of three Birmingham state schools were dropped after the government’s case against them was found to involve an ‘abuse of process’ so serious that ‘it offends the panel’s sense of justice and propriety’.
We are all offended by this outrageous case of blatant Islamophobia and alert to the use of racist tactics to sustain and support the interests of British imperialism at home and abroad.
Susan Davidson
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 258 June/July 2017
