Rebel Labour MP Jess Phillips dismisses parents protests

IT IS “thanks to the bigotry of a few” was what rebel Labour MP Jess Phillips, Labour MP for the Yardley part of Birmingham told the BBC. She was reacting to a decision by the City Council to ban protests outside Anderton Park Primary School.

The protests arose when parents decided to show their objection to the school following the requirements of the national curriculum and including reference to lesbian and gay relationship in personal and social education lessons.

The Council became concerned that the protests posed a risk to children: the crowd and its chanting could intimidate some children on their way to school, making them anxious and affecting their learning; or there could even be a physical accident if the crowd surged or if drivers responded angrily to traffic being disrupted. It therefore obtained a High Court injunction prohibiting protest from taking place in the immediate surroundings of the school.

Educationalists have tried to present a calm and reasoned response to the protests, making a number of basic points.

•Teaching children about different family relationships is an equality measure. Telling children who have two dads or two mums that the only acceptable family structure is headed by a married heterosexual couple would only make those children feel alienated and upset.

•Telling children that some couples consist of a man and a woman and some of two women or two men is not going to make a heterosexual children, five or ten years later, adopt a homosexual sexuality against their own inclinations.

•Talking about difference in the wider community teaches tolerance and understanding. Parents whose religion prohibits homosexuality (and most mainstream religions do) can explain to their own children, at home, why that kind of sexuality is not accepted by their religion.

•If a school accepts that some parents whose religion proscribes homosexuality for its adherents have the right to alter the curriculum for all children, how long will it be before other parents ask the school to stop teaching that children of different colours or ethnicities are equal – because their personal views are that black and Asian children are second class citizens who should be deported?

Birmingham City Council Leader Ian Ward saw the injunction as a common sense measure to help the authorities ensure children were safe, saying “Children right across Birmingham should be free to attend school safely and without disruption.” At the same time he held out the hand of friendship to parents and to those supporting the protests, encouraging them to “engage in constructive dialogue with the school”.

Speaking on Newsnight, Ajmal Masroor of the Communities in Action campaign said that people would not be silenced by injunctions – but he also called for a dialogue to achieve harmony and peace, with all sides to the issue communicating with love and respect.”

It was left to Jess Phillips MP, a vociferous critic of Jeremy Corbyn, to drop any attempt at diplomacy and plough in without urging peaceful dialogue about parents’ genuine beliefs and the real, not the rumoured, content of the curriculum. She told the BBC that the Council had “done the right thing for the children” and went on to say that “it’s just a shame it has come to this thanks to the bigotry of a few.” The comments appeared to doubt that ordinary Muslim people living in the UK had the capacity to hold their own views.

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