THE LEFT-WING INFILTRATION OF EALING SCHOOLSThe Council is proposing to “decolonise” the school curriculum. The project is fronted by council officer Julie Lewis, but is a far-left infiltration of our schools, originating from the likes of Dawn Butler and Diane Abbott. 1. The project did not arise locally. It began at a meeting of NW London branches of the National Education Union (NEU) on 25.6.20. Speakers included MP Dawn Butler. That did not encourage me to think moderation would characterise what happened. (Butler recently defamed police officers as racist just because they stopped a car she was in.) 2. The local webpage also reported that Ms Lewis was working “with partners in Hackney and Brent”. A BLM meeting there featured Diane Abbott. She was reported as saying “only teachers of colour can teach children of colour”. Is Ms Lewis intending to ethnically cleanse teaching staff?3. Starmer booted Abbott and Butler off the opposition front bench. Do we want their extreme and racially-divisive agendas in our class rooms? They are there already. A contributor to the Ealing Today forum wrote that his niece and her class had been told by teachers that the Police were evil towards black people and not to be trusted. The girl was mixed race. Her parents were disgusted but too scared to complain. 4. The project was brought to Ealing by Stefan Simms, the local NEU rep. Mr Simms has a great deal of influence over education in Ealing. One might take him for the director of education. Perhaps, in practice, he is. Nominally in charge, however, is Ms Lewis. Simms and Lewis had a meeting on June 30. Ms Lewis proved a compliant conduit for his left-wing political project, a nice white-privileged face to front it, not very appropriate for a BLACK Lives Matter project, but ALL Ealing’s senior officers are white. The top team looks about as inclusive as an expat club in an outpost of the former Empire. 4. The BLM decolonising project was introduced into the EALING LEARNING PARTNERSHIP, an association of council officers and head teachers. Ms Lewis is its Director so she had no difficulty in doing that. 5. I hoped to discover more about it by accessing the ELP, but the people of Ealing are debarred from accessing it. I asked Ms Lewis to allow me access. She failed to do that. I asked if the council had an official statement about the project that they had sent to head teachers and could I have a copy. She failed to give me one. I came to the conclusion that the project was being conducted behind the back of the public. I described it as “furtive”. All she had to say about that was that she disagreed, a worthless remark as it was unsupported by argument and untrue in face of the stone wall I had encountered. 6. I found one statement: The ELP “provides information and guidance relating to Black Lives Matter and anti-racism, and presentations addressing George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matters protests”. I asked her what guidance she had given schools in respect of the BLM movement and protests. She failed to respond. This did not reassure me. 7. Twyford School was singled out in a local news report. It has an excellent report from Ofsted. It does particularly well in respect of black pupils. It is the last school that needed to be distracted from its primary responsibilities by Lewis’s left-wing proposal. What was alarming was that the school was singled out because of a communication from the local “union rep”. He “revealed” that a letter had been received from 700 current and former pupils urging the school to “decolonise” the curriculum and support Black Lives Matter. A working group was being set up at the school for September. The suspicion is that the union rep was behind organising the letter and setting up the working group. He was distracting pupils from their education at a time when concentration upon it is particularly difficult and attempting to martial a posse of left-wing BLM activists. Are his left-wing views as a union activist compatible with his legal obligation as a teacher – if that is what he is - to discuss political matters with balance? Schools have a legal duty to teach children about politics in a balanced way. The Education Act 1996, Part V. Ch IV at 406 1 (b) prohibits “the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school".This, however, was a left-wing project. It was backed by two far-left MPs. Its content is left-wing. The phraseology of some of what was proposed echoes Corbyn’s Race and Faith manifesto. Labour lost the election but here are its activists working on school children. Simms has “infiltrated” our Ms Lewis! He is her “handler”. I decided to write to Ms Lewis. It was her project. Her duty as a public servant and according to the council’s code for employees is to be accountable for what she does. DIARY OF CORRESPONDENCE 5.8.20 Submitted questions. I numbered them and asked her to respond by number. (Council officers regularly avoid dealing with issues by replying in generalised terms.) 5.8.20 Ms Lewis responded. She asked whether I represented an organisation. I could not understand what difference that ought to make. I asked her whether she belonged to a union, a fair like-for-like question. She failed to answer. She made a brief remark in respect of the Ealing Learning Partnership which left me none the wiser. 10.8.20 I replied. I said I did not represent an organisation. I made remarks in respect of her account of the ELP, but tried to bring her back to the matters that concerned me, my questions. 11.8.20 She responded: “I can provide a short summary to your key concerns that may help with an understanding and appreciation of our work”. The “concerns” she misattributed to me were the secondary matters relating to the ELP that had arisen in the exchange of correspondence. In respect of them, she offered generalised comment of the kind that I asked her to avoid. It was laced with self-congratulatory, mission-statement material: “We are very proud of our work in supporting our key aims “no learner left behind…no school left behind”. I wondered whether she was being devious, deflecting attention from the true matters of my concern, the questions I had asked, to these secondary matters. However, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. 13.8.20 I responded. I pointed out that she had misrepresented what were my “key concerns” I asked her to return to my questions and answer them as she had not yet dealt with the many serious issues they raised. 17.8.20 I am waiting for a response.JUST SOME OF MY CONCERNSWho is in charge of education in Ealing?Why is this project being conducted in a secretive manner?In what document was the project put to schools and why is it not available to the public? Would head teachers feel intimidated into going along with it for fear of being called racist, which is the bullying ploy of left-wing agitators?Why was Ms Lewis concentrating only on the under-achievement of black Caribbean-heritage boys and not white working-class boys as well. How could this not be racially discriminatory? Which “Black Lives Matter” movement was Ms Lewis supporting? The original, formed by three black feminist lesbians? The USA organisation with its Defund the Police agenda The Black Lives Matter movement in its Marxist manifestation in which the black/white polarity is interpreted as the oppressed/oppressor scenario of the “long march”? Or was it the BLM Movement we had seen in action, rioting in Central London, injuring members of the police force, attacking and abusing black officers, committing acts of criminal damage in Bristol, rioting again in Brixton, and whose members interviewed on TV had stated that its aim was to destroy capitalism?Which subjects were to be decolonised and what did “decolonise” even mean in respect of them? One cannot decolonise a quadratic equation. ‘“Dead white authors” were to be replaced by others more relevant and “just as good”. Who was just as good as Shakespeare and who was to replace him? And how could this far-left inspired project with its one-sided “corbynated” view of the history of the British Empire conform to the legal requirement of balance in school discussions of political matters?
Andrew Farmer ● 2266d