This is not the Scotland we aim to create. This is the old repulsive Queen and Country Scotland, an irrational admiration for an alien culture, a class system not ours, an inbred subservience and a fear of losing what is in reality bogus protection from a distant monarch.
“We are slowly sliding into fascism” says the teacher involved. The SNP lost control of North Lanarshire Council not so long ago. Despite the SNP winning the most seats and most votes, North Lanarkshire is run by a Labour administration supported by the Scottish branch of the Tory party. Labour leader Jim Logue was appointed Leader of the Council with the support of Tory and faux ‘Independent’ councillors. Hell shouldn’t mend the deceivers. The electorate should rebel and remove the lot.
A teacher at a secondary school in Scotland has been suspended after making “inappropriate comments” during a lesson about the royal family, in the latest case of anti-republican repression following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. On Tuesday, North Lanarkshire Council suspended the teacher – who has taught in the area for 22 years – from Clyde Valley High School. After being informed of his suspension, the teacher was escorted off of the premises – due, he was told, to concerns for his safety. He requested anonymity for the same reason.
A spokesperson for the council said: “We do not comment on individual employee matters.”
In a letter to the teacher, Janie O’Neill, head of the council’s education and families team, said the reason for his suspension was a “parental complaint alleging that you made inappropriate comments whilst teaching a class about the royal family [and that] you mocked pupils in relation to this.” Though O’Neill does not specify these “inappropriate comments” in her letter, the teacher believes she is referring to an incident that occurred during a modern studies class with his third-year (year 9) students.
Speaking to Novara Media, the teacher recalls asking his class: “Have you noticed the media coverage about the royal family? And have any of you ever thought that it’s a bit odd that you don’t hear any dissenting voices, everybody’s all pushing the same narrative? You know, you don’t hear anybody saying, ‘Well is this maybe a time to think about moving away from a royal family?’” He says that while most of his students seemed to agree with his comments, one took umbrage: “This one girl flew at me and said, ‘You must be a Catholic’ – ‘You must respect the Queen’”.
The teacher says he replied: “You know, that’s really funny. That’s how my mum responds when I raise this issue with her.” He recounts that the other students laughed, while the girl “looked furious” and “stormed off”.
When he arrived at work five days later, the teacher was summoned to a meeting with Jacqueline Burton, education and families manager at North Lanarkshire Council, who notified him he was being suspended pending an investigation. “I couldn’t believe it was happening to me, but at the same time, I wasn’t that surprised,” says the teacher, who is being supported by his union, the Educational Institute of Scotland. “The warning signs have been there for years.”
While the Queen’s death has reignited tensions between republicans and monarchists across the UK, in Scotland the issue is particularly fraught, enmeshed as it is with sectarianism.
The Reformation of the 16th century split Scotland between a Catholic minority and Protestant majority. After Scotland became part of the UK in 1707, these divides began to loosely map onto pro-independence and unionist sentiment (although Scottish Protestantism has its own long history of separatism). Nowadays, this sectarianism expresses itself most starkly in western Scotland, particularly in the rivalry between the Glaswegian football clubs Celtic and Rangers. Recently, at a match against another Scottish team, Celtic fans hoisted a banner that read ‘If you hate the royal family, clap your hands’ during a minute’s applause to honour the Queen, prompting an apology from the Sky Sports commentator.
The country has also seen a spate of arrests following the Queen’s death, including that of a 22-year-old woman for holding an anti-monarchy sign and of a 22-year-old man for heckling Prince Andrew.
“There’s been decades of bigotry, hatred and violence between [unionist and pro-independence] communities,” says the teacher, whose mother is Catholic and whose father is Protestant. The royal family, he adds, “is a toxic issue in this part of the world.”
Still, that hadn’t prevented him from teaching many classes on the royals in the past: “It’s something that I would always be free to talk about, and wouldn’t get any sort of complaint.” This recent change, he says, is a symptom of a much broader and more worrying shift in British society. The teacher says the apparent restrictions on his free speech point to an anti-democratic tendency within the Tory government. “We’re rapidly sliding into fascism, if we’re not already there,” he says. “These are the kind of things that happen as a result of that.” He adds that the threats to his safety evidence the danger of this kind of political repression: “The idea that you must worship the royal family uncritically is very dangerous because it means that anyone expressing a different point of view is vulnerable – the very fact that I was threatened tells you that.”
Graham Smith is CEO of the political campaign group Republic. “If the school has an issue with teachers talking openly and honestly about monarchy and the coverage that it receives, then there is a serious problem,” he says. “This attack on free speech needs to stop.”
Asked by the reporter of Novara Media investigating the incident whether the teacher’s suspension was part of a broader attempt to repress republican sentiment across the UK, a council spokesperson refuted the allegation.
For his part, the teacher believes the state’s hair-trigger repression of republicanism belies deep insecurity: “I think they’re probably cracking down so much because this is a vulnerable time for the establishment. Elizabeth was probably pretty popular with lots of the population; Charles I’m not sure is so popular.” “At this time of transition,” he adds, “I’m sure they’re more than a little worried that a lot of people will start to wake up to the unjust system and the ridiculous inequality in our society.”
NOTE This report was published in Novara Media. Thanks are due to Rivkah Brown, commissioning editor and reporter. She is also the editor of Vashti.
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Grouse Beater 
Thank you for that and more info on these incidents than bbc gives …
Shocking! but not necessarily surprising when this but comes to mind. In this land of King and Queen the Orange Order rule supreme.
The dissenting young girl appears to be advocating aspects of her ‘home education’ that possibly run contrary to those of her peers.
This attempt at stifling critical analysis is not a good look for North Lanarkshire Council nor indeed for the pupils and teachers alike who might seek to embrace the principle of free speech throughout the educational curriculum.
The UK is already a fascist state. It is relatively mild at the moment, but we are witnessing the thin end of the wedge. Consider:
Military fetish
This has been building probably since the Falklands Conflict of 1982 under Thatcher, through the Yugoslavian, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq Blair years and now the Ukranian/Russian war.
Coffins of dead British armed personnel, draped in the Butchers Apron, flown in on military aircraft from war zones and paraded through villages on the way to the cemetery. All filmed dutifully by the state and other broadcasters.
Monarchical sycophancy and Deification
Has always been thus, certainly in southern parts of this island. All the royal weddings, jubilees and deaths constituting a complete shut down of all UK public institutions and administrative functions including potentially life-saving hospital operations. Now the propaganda has just been turned up to number 111, courtesy of the death of an old lady who lived a long and very privileged life.
Free speech
Protests against the Union or UK soon to be outlawed. Hold up republican banners, anti-monarchy placards, blank sheets of paper and any non-conformist sentiment … you’re nicked, mate!
Parliament proroguing/”Henry VIII Powers”
Attempted and failed in 2019. But they’ll try and outlaw opposition again. Just like 1933 in another supposedly advanced cultural country in Europe.
The teacher does sound like he may hold republican views. That is not the point, however. Modern Studies essentially covers current affairs, and the teacher is surely obliged to engender debate, to make people think so that they are able to formulate rationale, cogent and coherent arguments.
Now we have a young girl making a complaint about the opinion, possibly provocative (I don’t know), expressed by her teacher on a highly topical matter within his field of study. I think the pupil may be in need of extra lessons on constructing arguments if the best response she could muster was ‘you must be a Kafflic!’ or some such.
We’re on the road to Kymer Rouge Kampuchea.
In every instance of (modern) regime repression, the youth are the foot soldiers: Nazi Germany; Cambodia; China. Narcissistic and psychopathic adults manipulate and direct them. There is some hope for the daft wee lassie, who will grow up one day and realise the harm she has done to her teacher. No such hope for her ignorant parents.
We are living in a very precarious time when dissent of any kind is suppressed. I can understand that the royal family itself is deep in grief because no matter that you might have expected the demise of a near one, it does not make it any easier to bear, and, perhaps, the funeral cortege was not the best place to protest.
Protest and dissent of any kind, however, is at stake, not just republican dissent or Catholic dissent. In the name of a wildly unattainable personal freedom (total abandonment of all boundaries and laws) we are sacrificing the freedom to think rationally and to explore ideas of many different kinds.
This is, essentially, mass conformity and delusion, the principal struts of fascism/totalitarianism. This teacher, teaching his subject which concerns politics, society, legal concepts, etc., appears to be a decent and excellent teacher, and that wee lassie should be grateful. The local authority should be sunk in shame at its treatment of this man.
The Ontario, Canada (Tranada) teacher with the massive bazookas, playing out his woman-facing fetish on innocent youngsters has been lauded and supported by his local authority/school board because he is entitled to his personal freedom to express his ‘real’ self. Thus, we lose any sense of proportion when dissent to this extreme form of abuse is punished by being accused of ‘bigotry’. The two situations could not be more different, yet more analogous: the same mass hysteria pandered to for fear of being castigated.; the abuser lauded and the decent teacher treated abominably; the right to protest at different forms of excess stifled.
Postcolonial theory tells us that a colonial society is a ‘diseased society’, for which there is only one cure – decolonization.
Thankfully I come from a mixed religious family one side catholic the other side protestant and can honestly say that any sectarianism was played down , I always take exception that the west of Scotland is always highlighted as the worst offenders with Rangers and Celtic being the worst of a bad bunch, there is bigotry and sectarianism throughout Scotland you only have to look at the rivalry between the opposing teams in the same cities , I am not a football supporter but I blame the clubs themselves for their disingenuous and fake claims that they are combating the bigotry , if Scottish governments were serious about STOPPING the bigotry they would take a stronger stance with the clubs and call out and shame ANY politician who makes sectarian comments
Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female.
@Twathater
The two Dundee clubs a few years ago seriously considered uniting. The only sectarianism is imported whenever the Glasgow big two come here.
Only the continuing existence of Catholic schools belies the surface calm here. Don’t tar the rest of Scotland with the West’s brush. I don’t have to be a Protestant Atheist here, just an Atheist.