Another month, another glaring example of toxic activism sweeping through the British workplace, and this time, it’s no less than shocking.
On July 11th, 12 year-old Courtney Wright was sent home from Bilton School in Rugby, Warwickshire, simply for wearing a Union Flag dress and hat for the school’s Cultural Diversity Day. She had put effort into her costume, even writing a speech celebrating British culture: Shakespeare, fish and chips, tea, the Royal Family. Yet for what was a harmless celebration of her national culture, she was excluded.
The school’s response? A sanctimonious head of year, presumably with the support of management and colleagues, told her: “You get to celebrate your culture every day. This is for everyone else.” Then ordered her to remove her outfit and wear a second-hand uniform or go home. So she, rightly, called her father, who came to collect her.
Stuart Field, her father, a 47 year-old Marine Engineer, alleges she was not alone. A boy was reportedly sent home for wearing a farmer’s costume, illustrating a broader, troubling trend: the suppression of British symbols and pride in the name of ‘diversity’.
The aftermath saw the usual potted response from the school’s governing trust, the Stowe Valley Trust about how it values “diversity”, “respect” and so forth, yet its words ring hollow. It claims to regret “upset caused”, note, not the exclusion itself – only the distress that followed. It says it will “reflect on how this could have been handled better”. It then goes on to assure parents that it will be looking at the policies and training.
But what does that really mean? The trust refuses to admit that sending a girl home for celebrating her country was an appalling and divisive breach of common sense and, arguably, of law. Their language suggests an attempt to dodge accountability, to spin it as a mere mishandling rather than a fundamental failure.
Here’s the key question: what kind of workplace or educational culture allows, even tacitly endorses, such an action that it becomes considered the correct approach to exclude? Why was the head of year convinced that excluding Courtney over a flag was appropriate, given exclusion is an incredibly serious escalation? Did the trust endorse this? Because it certainly hasn’t condemned it outright. Its apology is for how it was “handled”, not for the decision itself.
This incident exposes the true nature of so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in many institutions. They aren’t about unity or celebrating shared identity, they’re about division, exclusion and smearing symbols that represent ‘the oppressor’, in this case the United Kingdom, the nation which has welcomed these other cultures. To the staff involved, they clearly see the Union Flag as some sort of hate symbol, and British culture as invalid and oppressive and so egregious that anyone expressing pride in it or displaying its symbols is on a moral level with a bully or a thief within the school community.
I would like to understand how these members of staff came to think this about the flag and symbols of their own nation. Was this something that they were taught at their employer? Or was it taught at school or college? Well, given the message the head of year sent to the pupils through this exclusion – that the Union Flag and British culture are so toxic we cannot permit them onsite – I think we have the answer. We have a situation where the national flag, once a symbol of unity, is now cast as a hate symbol by radicalised teachers who have been indoctrinated into a divisive narrative.
But what about the employer here? Who trained the staff in DEI? Which policies were in play? And how do these policies square with legal obligations? Because, frankly, many aspects of what happened here appear to breach laws designed to protect freedom of expression and equal treatment as laid down in the legal obligations of schools. The school indicates that it will examine its polices and staff training. I would urge the parents to monitor this as in my experience, if it happens at all, it’s usually a case of going through the motions until the media circus moves on, then it’s business as usual.
But there’s another thing going on here: radical hard Left political views are now so ubiquitous in our institutions and education system that they have become the culture. The staff are so indoctrinated that they see no problem with excluding an A-grade student in this scenario. So what are these activists actually teaching our children? Is it any wonder that the majority of Gen Z think Britain is a racist country and that only 11% would fight to defend it, according to one recent poll? My sister-in-law teaches A-level biology in a North East comp. She reports that the staff room is toxic. A small cadre of very loud, highly politicised activist teachers spend every minute loudly proclaiming every hard Left political position while the majority stare at their phones, drink their tea and try to avoid engaging.
As a former HR professional, I urge parents and employees alike: scrutinise your workplaces and schools. Ask the uncomfortable questions. What is your DEI policy? How do you teach it? Are your children being indoctrinated to see national symbols as hate symbols? Are they being taught to be ashamed of their county, culture and history? If there are employees behaving like those I describe in the staff room above, challenge them. If they respond with aggression, complain to Human Resources. Do not stand idly by while a loud minority bully and intimidate.
And to those responsible at the trust? No, “reflection” is not enough. You need to clarify, you need to condemn, and you need to abandon policies that promote exclusion rather than inclusion. You need to follow your legal obligations.
This is a wake-up call. We’ve turned a blind eye too long, tolerating the erosion of shared national identity under the guise of inclusion by radical activists in our institutions. If you see this happening, challenge it: persistently, politely and specifically. Don’t accept empty apologies, demand real accountability. The biggest lie of the hard Left is that they want to unite people and bridge differences. In fact, the Marxist-Leninism that lies at the heart of their beliefs demands that society be destroyed so it can be rebuilt. This is achieved by splitting society into ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed’. Courtney’s crime here was to celebrate the ‘oppressors’, and yes, this has nothing to do with ‘inclusion’, rather it is all about exclusion. It is all about division and it is a deliberate act to attack the glue that is the only thing that is holding the failed multicultural experiment together: our flag and our nation.
C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot who worked for 30 years as a Human Resources executive in some of the UK’s leading organisations. Subscribe to his Substack page.
Stop Press: No. 10 has condemned the school, saying Courtney was right to celebrate being British.
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Dear media luvvies. The Union Flag is not called the Union Jack unless it’s on a ship. Please get the basics correct if you want us to engage.
The Flag Institute disagrees with you.
https://www.flaginstitute.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Union-Jack-or-Union-Flag.pdf
I don’t care
It was almost aways called the Union Jack in the 50s and 60s – in fact all the time until some tedious flagologists got hold of the idea that it was “incorrect”. So your first statement is wrong – it’s called whatever people call it, like it or not.
And it’s a symbol of Being British so who cares what it’s called the important thing is, as the little girl showed, we should be bloody proud of it!
I have Union JACK badges on all my jackets. And I have a lot of jackets.
I’ve always called it the ”Union Jack”, but I was starting to doubt myself because, if you’ve noticed, it seems to be getting referred to more and more as just the ”Union Flag”. It’s like it was quietly renamed but I never got the memo as to why..
I was born in 1958, and a patriotic Guide. My brothers were Scouts. The flag was always referred to as the Union JACK. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of us here and around the world were wrong, but that IS what we called it!
For me it is the Union Flag, the jack is just a nuance since it refers to when it is flown from the jackstaff on a ship. Personally, I hate the bloody thing today, it represents everything wrong in these isles. My flag is the flag of England and I am not UK, British, European, I’m English. I may have no anthem, I may have no Parliament, I may have no respect because I am white, heterosexual, but I damn well know my flag and my country.
Oh get over yourself, this is the least of our worries
Am I allowed to call it the Union Jack if I am not British?! 😉
I had a Quick Look at the schools website, they say:-
At Bilton school…” we treat everyone with kindness”, “we are respectful to everyone”.
Clearly this doesn’t apply to anyone who considers themselves to be British or shows any sign whatsoever of being proud of their culture.
I’m going to stick my neck out and guess, without doing any checking, that the majority of senior teaching staff will be white. I don’t know about governors and things, as they tend to stay behind the scenes and I’m not sure how much direct influence they have on the policies of schools, but they’ll most likely be majority white as well.
Goes back to my comment from the previous article. It’s the native white traitors that will be our downfall. They’re the socialist/commie/Marxist self-loathers that are ensuring this slo-mo cultural suicide takes place.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the eco loons are all white, the “anti-racist” lot are all white, the trans mafia are all white ( seriously, where did the diversity go? Aren’t there any black trannies?🤔 ), literally the only ones where there’s a mix of white and brown faces is the terrorist-supporters/pro-jihadi lot. The footage from Glasto also showed virtually all white people in attendance.
So what does this tell us?
Well, much like with the Covidiots and Jabberwockies during the Scamdemic, white Brits are being shafted mainly by fellow white Brits, by a country mile. I don’t know why that is. Is it just that more white people are drawn to communism, or what? I just find it mystifying and very unsettling.🙁
You are right, it’s very noticeable. I think it may be due to the left wanting to destabilise the country and bring about the cultural change they need in order to gain control. These people are the useful idiots and I know many of them, they think integration is achieved by smiling at a checkout operative or going to an Indian restaurant once a month. None I know live in culturally “rich” areas yet they are vehemently pro immigration. When the ethnics move in nearby, they conveniently move to another area with better schools. They are similar to the eco warriors. I feel sorry for them because they are living in a false world.
I hope I’m a bit more worldly than them, I grew up in Brixton. I remember after the riots white middle class lefties went there and you could spot them a mile off, they seemed to think that it would give them credibility. It was laughable when talking to people who say they have been there and presume to know everything about integration when in fact they know nothing.
I’ve spoken to people about the Scarman report, they think that it findings were correct! The truth is that any black person who dared to give evidence contrary to the narrative would not last very long. The decent ones I knew moved out!
They also remind me of this. And we can look to history and other countries to see how this always pans out, particularly with regards to Islam;
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
That quote is by Sir Winston Churchill.
I’ll stick my neck out even further and suggest that those behind “inclusive” recruitment policy (where being a white British results in your being shunted to the back of the queue at best) are also white and British. One can only speculate I suppose, but it’s a logical extension of pattern you quite rightly notice.
Yes, and we know this to be true in many cases, such as with the armed forces. They’re all headed up by white men. Various police forces have been featured on here, discriminating against white recruits, too. So it doesn’t matter what staff are doing in individual departments, such as HR, surely it’s the case that the buck stops with the person at the top of the tree and they must take overall responsibility. Isn’t that also the case with government, too, though? We can slag off the individual MPs until the cows come home, but it’s not like they’ve all gone rogue and are doing their own random thing, and making a pig’s ear of it. Whatever they deliver, Starmer has already signed off on. Only he’s in charge so he should be held to account.
Kindness another word taken by the woke and inverted. Go against their beliefs their ideology and you will see how kind they are. These are the Witch burners, the heretic hunters. They need to be disallowed from being in contact with children, they spread hate.
What if this white British girl had turned up in a hijab, or with dreadlocks?no doubt she would have been accused of racism and cultural appropriation.
That actually happened in Bristol years ago, when some enthusiastic young female British college students dressed up in traditional African female costumes to attend an African cultural celebration, thinking that the Ethnic Africans there would be pleased at their show of solidarity, but were viciously attacked and denounced by female African students, who sent the well-intentioned British girls fleeing in tears and shock.
Activism invading institutions in general is a scourge this country needs to divest itself of. But it is particularly egregious when it literally becomes part of a school curriculum, channelling pliable young minds into a very particular and arbitrary way of thinking.
It’s like when my nephew came home from school at the tender age of 8 years old proclaiming “We’ve been doing a project on Greta Thunberg. She’s helping the world.”
I’m just glad he didn’t get a module on “Being Ashamed of Your Heritage”!
It’s common for British supermarkets to use stylized Union Jack to mark British produce. The same would be totally impossible in Germany: Using the present German flag to mark German products would amost certainly result in national scandal, accusations of Nazi “blood and soil” ideology and probably, terror attacks and boycott calls for the supermarket which had dared to do this.
You only think this is exceptional because – while you forced this on us – you didn’t mean to force it onto yourself. Chicken … home … roost.
Germany produces excellent tennis players and they are always identified with the German flag beside their names. The only exception to this practice is Russia whose players appear to be stateless.
Every instance of some larger sports tournament in Germany reliably produces a slew of articles in the German leftoid press with headlines like “How dangerous is German sports patriotism really?” which are stuffed full of hearsay supposed to document that everyone with a German flag – and the flag of the FRG has exactly no association with national socialism – is really a dangerous closet Nazi.
I’ve intentionally used the supermarket example because to someone with a German background, this is seriously bewildering as something like this would be absolutely impossible in Germany for the reasons mentioned. German bakers who are communal AfD politicians get their shops vandalized because “We don’t want Nazi rolls!”
Do you still hate Britain and the British so much after living here for 15 years?
The trick with leading question which makes a factually not justified assertion about someone who wrote something you happen to disagree with (despite it’s – to the best of my knowledge – factually accurate) is a bit old.
“an incident occurred during our Culture Celebration Day”. No! An activist intervention involving anti British bigotry was initiated by a school staff member, supported by the school management. And now a mealy mouthed double speak non apology is required to be published. It is pretty clear that they hate themselves. Understandable, I hate them too.
I think this should classify as incident: A 12-year old white English girl got targetted by a bunch of jobsworths because she mistook Cultural Diversity Day for, well, Cultural Diversity Day instead of the intended meaning as Five Minutes of Anti-British Hate (alluding to the hate ceremonies described in 1984).
Telling her “This day is for everyone but you” is already incredibly gross and tin-eared for people who are supposedly professional child educators.
She should have gone to scool wih a bone through her nose, and maybe a grass skirt – that’s what I’d call diversity!
In ‘black face’.🤭 Well, might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb…
In a head-to-toe burka she’d be welcome!
The girl should have had a another dress in reserve. One made of the Palestinian Flag. “Just one moment, headmaster, I’ll go and change into my ‘diverse’ dress.”
Does that mean that if the Spice Girls have another reunion, Gerri won’t be able to wear her trademark Union Jack dress?🤦♀️ Because that just shows how times have changed ( and clearly not for the better ) just since they were at their peak. What a sad deterioration there’s been in British culture, even just in the last two decades. It’s like: how do you think classic British comedies such as Little Britain would be received now? There was “ableism”, “transphobia”, “racism”, “homophobia” and even “fat shaming” in that series. The whole shebang!😆
But as you say, I’ll hazard a guess Courtney wouldn’t have been excluded had she worn a ‘Palestine’ dress. Draping herself in a flag of jihad would at least have made a controversial talking point, and been rather apt, given the current climate in Britain.🙄
Or wielding a machete with fake explosives strapped to her chest, clamouring for intifada. Wouldn’t want that culture to be under-represented would we?
Or perhaps a T-shirt reading “I <heart> Hamas”? “Up The Ayatollah”? “Death To The IDF”?
But a British flag… ohhhhh no.
If Courtney had gone to school in a ‘Palestine’ dress there’s a good chance she would have made the front page of The Groan.
😀
I wish this warped vendetta against our homeland would just DIE.
I would like to understand how these members of staff came to think this about the flag and symbols of their own nation.
For the anti-whitists our flag represents the group they think of as “world poisoners” – i.e. white people as a whole.
Nothing will change, it never does. It will only get worse.
Nice to have some optimism on here for a change!
Come on, guys.
Surely you know the rules by now:
diversity = not white and not British,
inclusivity = everybody except white British,
equality = a hierarchy of discrimination, with white British at the bottom.
Some people have already left some appropriate Google reviews for the school.
I love that quote: “You get to celebrate your culture every day.” I bet she doesn’t. It’s more likely that British culture is presented as something we have to either ignore, tolerate or apologise for.
More to the point, everybody gets to celebrate their culture every day in this country. Why should she not get to celebrate HER culture on “Culture Diversity Day”? But let’s not even try to rationalize or reason with morons. I can’t believe the level of immaturity among some so-called full grown adults that their minds can be so manipulated by the latest daft fads and social memes.
They themselves have been brainwashed by Marxist “educators” at whatever training college they attended. Their conditioning is constantly augmented by vitriolic anti-Britishness as policy laid down by similar self-loathing worms.
Well done to C.J. Strachan & the DS for featuring this appalling news. The school should now let her give her speech to the whole assembly, instead of yet another mealy-mouthed “Lessons have been learned” fake apology, and that Communist “Head of Year” who forced the girl to sit in Reception all day should be severely reprimanded. Imagine if she had worn an England Flag Dress and hat instead!
Here’s the poor girl explaining what happened in her own words, though one photo makes her look too old:
12-year-old girl banned from wearing Union flag dress on school’s culture day
The UNION FLAG is regularly seen as a problem in London by the Met police. They call it ‘inflammatory’. An absolute disgrace.
I wonder what they call the ENGLAND FLAG then?
Union Flag: “Inflammatory”
Welsh Dragon flag: “Fine”
Scots Lion flag: “Fine”
Irish flag: “Fine”
Palestinian Terrorist flag: “Fine”
England flag: “Racist”
I always wear a Union Jack badge on my jackets and to be honest it is intended to be inflammatory – I am proud of my country and my flag and if the anti Brits, of any colour, don’t like it – tough.
I just hope Courtney Wright stands by her convictions, now and into the future. Maybe we’ll hear from her again in the future.
I read that Tommy Robinson has invited her to speak at the next ‘Freedom Rally’ in September. A nice big ‘two-fingered salute’ to her crummy, racist, traitorous schoolteachers. 🙂 I do hope she doesn’t start getting any kind of flack or bullying, either from fellow pupils or idiotic parents, though. You know how any association with Tommy tends to go down with the Leftards and Muslim crowd. Her dad has said it’s already started but it’s all on his social media, so he’s shielding her from it.
Disgusting that she would be victimised in this way. There is a deep-set cancer ravaging our culture and identity and denial has been the only response.
Personally, I think this shows that the Diversity crowd do not believe in Diversity at all.Her outfit represents the made up puniverse piece of paper known as the United Kingdom. I doubt there is any more diverse group of nations anywhere on the planet. The United Kingdom practically invented the term.
We are committed to fostering an environment where every pupil fells respected, valued and included
Every pupil? No you don’t!
We are committed to learning from this experience and ensuring every student feels recognised and supported when expressing pride in their heritage.
Really, every student, even the white ones? If ever a school needed putting under OFSTED special measures its this one, rampant anti-white racism and child abuse by staff and senior management.
Hope the Dad sues them!
Just imagine what would have happened if she had been wearing a far right Cross of St George dress and hat.
Emily Thornberry would have been on the case! 🏴
But yet the Welsh dragon or a kilt… absolutely fine.
Perhaps the head of year should be sent home ….for being a tw@t!
And everyone wonders why so many ordinary education-focused teachers are leaving the profession.
Someone I know well has been in teaching for over 15 years and the stories of management behaviour in the schools are consistently awful: spineless, clueless and gutless.
It’s even worse than we thought, as her dad pointed out several other kids at her school who were punished at the same time for the same offence (but got no publicity).
“Mr Field also claimed other students wearing forms of British cultural dress were admonished alongside his daughter.
“One child dressed in traditional farming clothes — flat cap and checked shirt — wasn’t allowed in. Another with a St George’s flag. One had a Welsh flag. All turned away.
“It felt like anything remotely British was deemed unacceptable. Yet pupils in burkas, niqabs, or Nigerian traditional dress were allowed through.”
Lee Anderson explodes after school bans Union Jack dress – ‘Put a stop to this!’ | Politics | News | Express.co.uk