Newsline 15 July 2016

Newsline 15 July 2016

Join the National Secular Society in celebrating 150 years of challenging religious privilege with a very special anniversary conference on Saturday 3 September.

A great line-up of speakers will discuss the role of secularism in diverse societies and debate some of the challenges facing secularism in modern Britain.

Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to hear some of today's finest advocates for secularism examine a broad range of topical issues, including the tensions between Islam and secular democracy, the role of religion in schools and religious threats to universal human rights.

Tickets for an evening gala dinner are available separately, priced £80.

If you would like to join the National Secular Society or if you need to renew your membership you can do so here – and there is a discounted conference ticket price available to our members!

News, Blogs & Opinion

NSS criticise Church plan to open 125 new free schools

News | Mon, 11th Jul 2016

The Church of England is planning to bid for control of more than one quarter of the new free schools announced by the Government.

A paper distributed at the Church's General Synod said the chance of controlling more than a quarter of all new schools in England was a "unique opportunity".

500 free schools are due to open by 2020.

The Church already controls the education of approximately 1 million children.

Stephen Evans, the campaigns director of the National Secular Society, called the plans "alarming".

"The significant changes we're seeing in the country's religion and belief landscape means the Church's role in state education needs to be diminished not expanded," he said.

"In an increasingly secularised society in which church attendances continue to fall, the Church of England knows that running schools is the most effective way, if not the only way, for it to reach children and their families with its message. One has to wonder to what extent the Church's keen interest in running schools is motivated by their need for self-preservation.

"Handing over vast swathes of publicly funded education to religious organisations may serve the Church, but it's hard to see how it serves families who aren't interested in religion yet are finding it increasingly difficult to secure a secular education for their children.

"The Government also needs to question just how sustainable it is to hand over large sections of our education system to a Church seemingly in terminal decline.

"In a religiously diverse and secularised society it makes little sense to organise education along religious lines. The additional school places needed should be created in secular and inclusive schools equally welcoming to all pupils, irrespective of their faith backgrounds."

In the past senior Anglicans had voiced criticism of the free schools programme but Church officials now view free schools as "the only show in town", the Telegraph reported.

In a paper for the Synod, the Church of England Education Office wrote that the "God of all creation is concerned with everything related to education."

They promised an "explicitly" "Christian foundation" "across the curriculum" for all Church of England faith schools and said they were "committed" to offering pupils "an encounter with Jesus Christ".

But in addition to their plans for their own schools, the Church said that a Christian "vision for education can still be expressed and promoted" in non-faith schools as well.

The National Secular Society is frequently contacted by parents who are concerned about the imposition of religion in schools, including non-religious schools, and the Church is making extensive use of academisation to take control of non-religious schools by incorporating them into explicitly religious multi-academy trusts.

It is also using academisation to foist a more religious ethos on voluntary controlled schools, which are generally less explicitly religious than voluntary aided ones – in many cases against the wishes of teachers and the schools' own church-appointed governors.

In the Synod paper, the Church's Education Office said their "vision for education reaches beyond Church of England schools".

They said it would be "unbiblical" to separate "the Church from involvement in education" and that their goal of "Christian participation" in non-faith schools was "already being achieved".

There can be no neutrality in education, the Church claimed.

Cruelty was normalised at Church of England children’s home, says report

News | Thu, 14th Jul 2016

An independent review into Kendall house, a children's home run by the Church of England, has reported "harrowing" findings where girls were sedated and abused.

Children as young as 11 were given powerful drugs, without any medical need and the report found "disclosures of unlawful sexual intercourse, to sexual assault and in a small number of cases, rape."

David Greenwood, the solicitor who represented 15 survivors of abuse at Kendall House, said: "I have been truly shocked at the way in which staff at Kendall House handed our heavy doses of drugs designed to treat schizophrenia to young teenaged girls. Many of the ladies I have represented have suffered poor quality lives as a result of this treatment. Many have been sexually assaulted and most were physically abused. It was only when the Home Office inspectors advised the church to alter the way they deal with drugs that this treatment was brought to an end."

In 2015 Teresa Cooper, an abuse survivor who pushed for the Church of England to launch an investigation, said that the health problems her own children have suffered can all be traced back to the drugs forcibly administered to her at Kendall house.

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: "The report catalogues abuse on a monumental scale over many decades first documented in a television expose in 1980.

"Once more, references of complaints to the police over decades failed to result in action against any of the perpetrators. It is difficult to overstate the Church's incompetence in relation to this establishment. The management committee completely failed to protect the children in its care. They failed completely to hold professionals to account and the Church colluded in dismissing legitimate concerns raised by the press, parents and members public. The former Bishop of Rochester Nazir Ali did not even consider the issue to be sufficiently important to mention in his hand over to the new bishop. Had he done so, as the report of this inquiry acknowledges, it would have been addressed many years earlier.

"The Church, despite for many years being cognisant of its culpability for the abuse has failed to offer compensation to victims as would be their human right – including under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This has necessitated victims seeking redress through lawyers. We call on the Church to offer a compensation scheme to all victims without the necessity to involve lawyers. We further regret the timing of the announcement of this report, so conveniently made on perhaps the biggest news day of the year. Only the most naive would see this as a coincidence.

"The Church continues to give greater priority to maintaining its reputation and resources regardless of the adverse effect on victims of its mismanagement."

The report said that victims' accounts were highly consistent, "individually credible" and "corroborative".

The chair of the panel, which was commissioned by the Bishop of Rochester, said the home was "a frightening, violent and unpredictable place to live."

The report found that the home took girls' "individuality", "hope" and "liberty".

The Church of England's lead bishop responsible for safeguarding said, "The appalling standards of care and treatment should never have been allowed.

"On behalf of the national church I apologise unreservedly to all the former residents whose lives were and continue to be affected by their damaging experiences at Kendall House."

Unsurprisingly, being church-led, the report failed to recommend compensation to the victims.

Meanwhile, it also emerged this week that senior church leaders failed to share documents about abusive Bishop Peter Ball with the police. The BBC reported that "the Diocese of Chichester did not share documents which could have jailed Ball earlier." The BBC obtained files that showed Lambeth Palace "received six letters detailing indecency allegations shortly after an arrest in 1992." At the time Ball only received a caution. It was only in 2015 that Ball was finally sentenced to 32 months in prison after he pled guilty to two charges of indecent assault and misconduct in public office.

One of Ball's victims, the Revd Graham Sawyer, has criticised the Church's inquiry into the case, and called for the Terms of Reference to specifically include "bullying, intimidation and threats" made to victims. The Review declined to do so and said its Terms of Reference were already "sufficient".

Defend Free Speech coalition challenge government failure over extremism orders

News | Wed, 13th Jul 2016

Security minister Karen Bradley MP has faced strong criticism in a letter from the Defend Free Speech coalition, following her appearance before the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Discussing proposed 'extremism disruption orders' (EDOs), the minister told MPs: "For me the public promotion of an ideology which can lead to greater harms is what I see as being extremism."

She said the "harms" included terrorism, violence against women, hate crime and "wider social harms" which could lead to "division".

Simon Calvert wrote to the minister, on behalf of campaign groups including the National Secular Society and the Christian Institute, that her remarks had caused "considerable alarm".

"Your difficulty in articulating a clear, consistent definition of the kind of activity the Government aims to punish via civil orders was very concerning. The Home Office has been working on the issue for well over a year and yet the impression was given that the Government still has no clear idea how to legislate for what it wants to achieve."

The Government originally proposed 'extremism disruption orders' to "eliminate [non-violent] extremism in all its forms".

Mr Calvert continued: "The Defend Free Speech campaign, and many of the groups associated with it, are greatly concerned that the proposed 'civil orders regime' will damage both security and civil liberties. They risk distracting the authorities away from terrorism and violence and into monitoring and punishing legitimate expressions of opinion."

During the meeting, Harriet Harman MP said that MPs still "don't know what civil orders are being talked about", or "what the sanctions are likely to be" and that the Government had still failed to even define what 'extremism' meant.

The Defend Free Speech campaign has welcomed government commitments to a public consultation, but has insisted in its letter to the minister that the consultation must "include precise statutory definitions that can then be subjected to scrutiny."

"A consultation will be worthless," Mr Calvert said, "if it does not give the actual wording with which the Government intends to resolve the tension between security and liberty."

The campaign has requested an urgent meeting and said that the "Home Office cannot simply shrug its shoulders and say 'we're not sure what we're doing'."

The Committee is seeking evidence on the Counter Extremism and Safeguarding Bill and the NSS warned in its submission that the vague definition of extremism offered by government ministers and the low threshold for prosecution "combine to produce a proposal with potentially toxic effects for freedom of expression, freedom of religion and our core societal values and human rights."

In the submission the Society wrote that it, like the Committee, awaited substantive language from the government on the crucial question of how it would actually define in legislation what 'extremism' is.

NSS: New Government must act to outlaw caste discrimination

News | Tue, 12th Jul 2016

The National Secular Society is calling on the new government to legislate to outlaw caste discrimination, as directed by Parliament and the United Nations.

During a House of Lords debate this week, the Government rebuffed repeated cross-party appeals to legislate specifically to outlaw caste-based discrimination.

In 2010 government research found that caste discrimination could be behind incidents of school bulling, denial of school places and workplace discrimination.

The new Prime Minister, Theresa May, has spoken of building a "better Britain" that "works for every one of us" and the NSS has urged her to tackle caste discrimination to protect vulnerable members of society.

Keith Porteous Wood, the National Secular Society's executive director, said: "Without clear legislation those suffering from caste discrimination are not being protected. We call on Theresa May to honour parliament's will, our international obligations and those subject to caste discrimination by outlawing it. We are hopeful she will be responsive to this."

During the debate in the House of Lords the Conservative peer Lord Deben said that the new Prime Minister's "first principle was to ensure that all people had a fair do in life."

"Can one possibly say that and yet exclude from the fair do in life those who happen to be Dalits? This is the first chance that a new Government have got to stand up and tell this House that they intend to obey the law. The only alternative is to tell this House that they intend to disobey the law. I do not believe that is a proper position for any Government."

He said that refusing to explicitly recognise caste-based discrimination as a form of discrimination under UK equality law, despite promising to do so, had brought "shame on our democratic system".

Baroness Flather (pictured right) said there was a need to recognise that Hindu organisations "have a lot of connections in ​Parliament" and "have quite a lot of pull in this matter".

Seven peers, four of them Honorary Associates of the National Secular Society, spoke in the debate in favour of legislation to outlaw caste-based discrimination. Baronesses Flather and Thornton, Lords Cashman, Deben, Desai, Harries and Lester were scathing about the Government's failure to legislate, on grounds which Mr Wood described as "disingenuous".

The Government claimed that it "may well be" that case law, and in particular a recent Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling, "provides the appropriate level of legal protection that is needed against caste discrimination."

But Mr Wood said: "The ambiguous and untested case law which the Government relies upon to deflect calls for explicit legislation in this area fails to meet our international obligations and our societal obligations to vulnerable members of low castes."

Only one peer, Lord Popat, spoke explicitly against legislation on caste discrimination, saying that "The British Hindu community has felt somewhat persecuted by this caste discrimination campaign."

Mr Wood added: "This presumably means those of higher castes. That is no reason to deny legislative protection to the oppressed. As the late Lord Avebury put it, that would be 'like saying that ending apartheid in South Africa was wrong because white organisations were opposed to the idea'."

Parliament's direction to legislate on caste came in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, with an instruction to the Government to "make an order which includes 'caste' within the definition of 'race'" in the Equality Act 2010.

In 2012 the UN recommended that the UK "eliminate discrimination against caste".

Despite this, no action has been taken.

NSS Speaks Out

This week we were quoted in the Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Independent and in specialist and some international news outlets about the Church's bid to take control of 125 new free schools, and our executive director Keith Porteous Wood was quoted by the Express and Telegraph on the Church's report on historic abuse in a Church-run children's home.