Posted: June 2011

On June 12th The Sunday Telegraph column Gilligan on Sunday ran a piece called Police 'cover up Muslim crimes'.  The gist of the story is that Police in Tower Hamlets (east London) ignore hate crimes implicating Muslims for fear of being accused of Islamophobia.  I need to dig into these claims but the reason I'm posting this is because halfway down the story Andrew Gilligan mentions Nicholas Kafouris: "a teacher at Bigland Green primary school [who] took the council to an employment tribunal last year, saying he was forced out of his job for complaining that Muslim pupils were engaging in racist and anti-Semitic bullying ..."   At this point in his article Gilligan clearly wants to widen his argument about Police seeming to ignore Muslim hate crimes to include a similar failure in Tower Hamlets council itself.  However, the Kafouris example was a bad one to choose.  Its a long story.  I wrote about it at the time.  In short, this was a christian teacher who was offended by the words of a few children in his class and expected the school to execute the appropriate 'racist incident' procedures.  The school veered dangerously toward common sense (arguing that the kids were too young and that Kafouris should keep better discipline). But Kafouris wouldn't let it lie.  He lost his tribunal claim. He hadnt been forced out of his job - he went sick with depression and never returned. 

For me the Kafouris v Tower Hamlets saga cant be dragged into a 'for' or 'against' two cornered argument.  Both sides were wrong. True, he had a right to expect the school to follow local authority guidelines but for a 52 year old teaching professional to claim offence at the childish words of a 9 year old is itself a sad reflection of a growing culture of victimhood.  Especially gauling was Tower Hamlets hiring a barrister to chip away and smear Kafouris (in the most underhand manner) without any acknowledgment of its own cackhanded policies which require teachers to define a racist incident as anything perceived as racist that might spill from the lips of kids from 5 up.

Gilligan might be right that the police in Tower Hamlets tip-toe around adult crimes for fear of being accused of islamophobia.  But in the borough's schools its a different story.  One of the most typical officially recorded 'racist incidents' is when one Bangledeshi child insults another with the age-old insult 'kaler bander' (black monkey).

Read my article on the Kafouris saga. jcomments on}