A primary school teacher in London was reportedly sacked after telling a student that “Britain is still a Christian state.”
Police were called to investigate an alleged hate crime, after the teacher reprimanded Muslim students for washing their feet in the sinks of the boys’ toilets, according to The Telegraph.
The teacher, who did not want to be named, reportedly pointed to the fact that the King was the head of the Church of England and that Islam was a minority religion in the UK.
A safeguarding officer concluded that the teacher had made hurtful comments and should be prevented from working with children. Three children who complained said the teacher had shouted at them, making them upset.
Lord Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, told Fox News Digital that the central accusation was triggered by the teacher’s statement that Britain remains a Christian country. “To claim that Britain is a Christian country and to point out that the king is the head of the Church of England isn’t a particularly politically contentious thing to say. It’s just stating a pretty straightforward fact.”
Lawyers representing the teacher in a legal claim insisted that prayers had been informally banned in the playground, which would extend to washing feet in the sinks, as a prayer room had been created. The school was not a faith school.
The ban was successfully appealed, with the teacher now suing the local authority with support from the Free Speech Union (FSU).
Lord Toby Young, FSU director, told The Telegraph: “Things have reached a pretty pass in this country if a teacher can be branded a safeguarding risk because he says something that’s incontestably true. If he’d claimed that Islam is the official religion of England, even though that’s not true, I doubt he would have got into any trouble.”
(Premier News)
