In a thorough comparison of responses to terrorism in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States, one conclusion is that the worst anti-terror excesses have taken place outside the law (Douglas, 2014). The Birmingham Trojan Horse affair is a particularly relevant case study for how civil liberties were lawlessly violated based on shaky documentation, coming close to ending with a Berufsverbot for some of the teachers in the school.
The affair began in late 2013, when a photocopied letter was sent to Birmingham City Council, purportedly written by someone involved in a plot to ‘take over’ schools in areas with large numbers of Muslim pupils and enforce extremist, ‘Islamist’ attitudes within them. This letter is now regarded as a fake, but, leaked to the newspapers, it provoked a ‘moral panic’. Some 21 local schools were made subject to inspections, not least culminating in a report led by Peter Clarke for the Department of Education. In late 2014 the British government imposed a duty on all schools to ‘promote fundamental British values’. But much of the panic was directed against a particular school, Park View Academy, almost all of whose pupils were Muslim and which had been granted permission for Islamic worship since 1996.
Almost three quarters of the pupils in this school received free school meals (an indicator of relative poverty) and English was the first language of only 7.5% of them. Nonetheless, the school had reached the top 14% of schools in England for academic achievement and had been regularly commended by previous regular inspectors for its success in preparing pupils for life in Britain. It had even been asked to act as a support for other, less successful schools. But in 2014, on foot of the ominous letter, eleven of its teachers were accused of professional misconduct – in cases that collapsed in 2017. While numerous prominent commentators continue to imply that these teachers were at fault, Holmwood and O’Toole analyse the Clarke Report here. They show how its authors were overwhelmed by anxiety to the extent that they did not even test witness statements for veracity. Their work was so captured by fear of an ‘Islamic takeover’ that it permanently ruined reputations and careers on the basis of murky machinations, described in this book. For Holmwood and O’Toole, the whole operation, in scapegoating Muslims and ignoring their rights, itself betrayed the very values the Government was urging schools to maintain, in a way that casts negative light on the ‘counter-extremism’ agenda.
The distinction between non-violent and violent extremism is fundamental to such agendas. When counter-terrorism laws are discussed, made and enacted, such a distinction cannot be overlooked by law-makers, governments and the police without stepping into the dangerous ground of potential violation of civil liberties. Countering Extremism in British Schools? The Truth about the Birmingham Trojan Horse Affair complements statements by the UK Government’s Department of Education, whose lawyers made it clear that the charges against the teachers were not in the category of violent extremism. And, as the charges against the schools and teachers were finally dropped, rebutted and unsubstantiated, it became apparent that this was not a case of non-violent extremism either. The Trojan Horse turned out to be as naked as the Emperor – a fact that the (tabloid) press has shown less interest in when compared with their extensive coverage of the Trojan Horse narrative over the years, as documented by Holmwood and O’Toole. The authors assert that the lessons drawn from the Trojan Horse affair are of grave concern because they lay the ground for serious problems in further policy-making in the field of counter-terrorism. In their book, the authors propose six alternative lessons to be learned:
Lesson one is to frame a legally acceptable definition of extremism in order to avoid conflicting with civil liberties and the fundamental values in a democracy such as the UK. A de jure understanding of extremism cannot be at odds with fundamental values and principles of mutual respect, tolerance and diversity. In other words, it is beyond the law to classify opinions, attitudes and nonviolent behaviours as ‘extremism’ simply because they lack respect and tolerance for other religions, social and ethnic groups.
Lesson two is that a policy of multiculturalism, respecting both religious and cultural commitments on the pupils’ parts, works when it is combined with equal educational opportunities and educational achievement. This means that one of the major obstacles to the integration of any cultural, religious or social category is the educational disadvantage experienced by pupils in formal education. Those schools that are successful in equipping pupils for integration, therefore, should receive support and recognition and not be denigrated and undermined.
Lesson three deals with the need for protecting the participation of communities at the local level so that they can have a voice in finding ways to live with religious differences that are expressed in both words and deeds. Religious identity is fundamental to many, and displacing this part of ‘the self’ reduces the possibility of authenticity which is so important during integration processes. Such displacement also demonstrates disrespect on the part of society, when the learning goals are exactly the opposite with respect to cultural and religious differences. Learning about religion without learning from other pupils with different religious backgrounds is like learning about poverty without ever going to the part of town where it can be seen.
Lesson four is that community and local governance of schools is a major contextual condition for overseeing the quality of education, including how the school performs with respect to equal educational opportunity and how teachers, as well as pupils, are enabled to show and find ways to live with their differences – including spiritual differences. I interpret this lesson to read that the greater the differences are in a community, the more the school’s contribution to social cohesion and common values depends on its liberty to process differences through interactions both in the curriculum and in the school yard. In this constant interplay among the pupils, they have a chance to learn the meaning of cohesion rather than fearing the differences they might have to other pupils. Such contributions in formal education could serve as a correction to the possible failures of homes and peer groups to contribute to social cohesion. In addition, the mandate of formal education to search for true and valid knowledge may also be strengthened by observing and discussing the failure of non-formal educational narratives in avoiding unjust scapegoating and blame – including those channelled through mass and social media – as in the case of the Trojan Horse affair itself (see also lesson five in the next paragraph).
Lesson five is about true narrative. The authors warn against the scapegoating of marginalised groups in contexts where public anxiety and moral panic is amplified by the press through recycling or repeating inadequate narratives in social media where editorial controls are absent. Thus, an early report – perhaps in a newspaper such as The Sunday Times – may take on a life of its own and dovetail with public anxiety and moral panic in such a way that it requires an academic study like the present book to finally halt a narrative that in the end may turn out to be ‘fake’ and an outright lie – even though promoted by public figures such as Sir Michael Wilshaw (p. 247). This combination of the role of public figures in supporting public anxieties about terrorism, together with the recycling and addition of news in the mass and social media, may produce narratives that are limited in analysis because they are based on scapegoating. Lesson five calls for an extended analysis of the Trojan Horse affair in terms of the ideals of equal educational opportunity and achievement as closely related to questions of the integration of diverse groups in society.
Lesson six is about leadership. The authors’ analysis and discussion of the fragmented, specialised and complex structure of governance as a cause of the false reporting and evaluation of what was happening in this school where a ‘Trojan Horse’ had appeared reminds me of John Ralson Saul’s warning that democracy is subverted by the dominance of ‘rational’ systems of control that stand in the way of participatory democracy (Saul, 1992). Saul argues, however, that this kind of modern governance is essentially unreformable – an argument which I hope is not valid in relation to the power from below found in civil disobedience and in resistance to such undemocratic systems.
Now, more than ever, it is important to create safe spaces in formal education and in the academy, that can support authentic communication among pupils and students, including dealing with political issues that may be controversial, without incurring self-censorship and fear leading to hiding opinions, feelings and expressions. This, I think, is in line with the advice given by an independent reviewer of anti-terrorism policies (ConnectFutures, 2018). Secrecy and disassociation may be a first stage in the formation of isolated cells beyond the reach of parents, communities and authorities. To be open to the world and one another, pupils, students, parents and teachers need to become part of the process of building relationships of trust and respect. A democratic society cannot exist without dialogic interactions in formal education that can arrest any falsehoods and scapegoating in homes, peer groups, and communities, as well as in the vast mass and social media of today. Davies (2008) has developed a pedagogy of critical idealism that in its form and content may be a way to go. Moreover, safe spaces in education are fundamental to countering a neoliberal modern governance that stands in the way of participatory democracy: this countering strategy has been coined applied governance of knowledge systems (Hoppers, 2018), and its aim is to include the bearers of suppressed or marginalised ways of seeing the world into public meaning-making.