Headmistress Forced out by Muslims Speaks out

Today's Daily Mail carries a special report into the circumstances surrounding New Monument School in Woking and the orchestrated efforts of Muslim governors to drive out its dedicated Headmistress, Erica Connor, and make it an Islamic faith school.

I reported on this extraordinary case here after Mrs Connor was awarded a £450,000 payout for her ordeal, and because her employers and the local council were too afraid of being called racist to stand up for her.

This case is a testament to the dangers which occur when one group is allowed to function under their own laws, customs and rules with compunction by a state too weak and lacking in self confidence to assert itself, its authority or its traditional values.

Mrs Connor, her non-Muslim pupils and those Muslims who wished for a decent, secular education were abandoned by the very forces which should protect them; the forces which tell us that any form of cultural supremacy or arrogance is wrong.

Looking at this case, it would seem that only applies to the native culture and values of Great Britain. At the vanguard of this campaign against Mrs Connor stood Paul Martin (pictured above), a British convert to Islam who felt his adopted values and beliefs trumped not only his birthright as a free-born subject of the Crown, but those of the 20% non-Muslim pupils at New Monument School and any Muslims who wished to have a secular education and be part of British society.

The article is quite long, but I have reproduced it here in full; it is a very interesting, though disheartening, read, summing up so many of the issues we face in this country today, and just how much unscrupulous people can get away with by hiding behind their religion or ethnicity.

'Rising up from the centre of the Surrey commuter town of Woking stands the magnificent Shah Jahan mosque. It was founded in 1889 by Dr Gottlieb Leitner, a Jew who converted to Anglicanism.

He wanted the mosque to be part of an Oriental Institute, promoting a greater understanding between religions.

What irony. One hundred and twenty years later, two officials from Shah Jahan pursued a 'hidden agenda' forcibly to transform a local, secular primary school into an Islamic faith school.

Their aggressive campaign of 'anti-Christian' lobbying and unfounded allegations of racism and Islamophobia managed to destroy what had been a model school. Its inspirational headmistress was reduced to a nervous wreck, to the extent that she has now left education altogether.

Last week in the High Court, Surrey County Council was ordered to pay headmistress Erica Connor more than £400,000 compensation for having failed to support her. It is only now the full background to her case can be revealed.

Using statements of evidence and interviews, it is possible to piece together the extraordinary story of the downfall of New Monument school.

If there is one overriding lesson, it is that officialdom, anxious to maintain political correctness, will often kowtow to radical Islam - even if it does not reflect the wishes of the wider Muslim community.

New Monument is a maintained community school - state-run, with no religious affiliation. Mrs Connor arrived in 1994 and became headmistress four years later. Some 80 per cent of her pupils were Muslim, many with parents illiterate in English. Half were on the special needs register.

But under Mrs Connor the school showed the second most improved SATs results in the country. In 2001, she was invited to Downing Street in recognition of this.

However, these achievements began to unravel in February 2003 when Paul Martin was appointed as a governor - even though he did not have any children at the school.

Mr Martin, 57, who ran a clothes shop in the town, is a white Muslim convert (as is his Austrian-born wife) and, at the time, headed the education committee at the mosque.

Within months he proposed that Sofia Syed, another Muslim, join the school's board. Mumtaz Saleem, 41, was also recruited as a Local Education Authority (LEA) nominated governor.

Martin and Saleem and, to a much lesser extent, Syed, were to be the architects of the disaster which followed.

At his first governors' meeting, Mr Martin demanded they begin with a non-denominational prayer to the Almighty. Ominously, even at this early stage, he said he sensed 'tension between the school and the community'. This was news to everyone else at the meeting. But the storm really broke the following February.

It was then Mr Martin wrote to the headmistress alleging that a Muslim teacher and governor called Rosie Mir had said to him: 'I tell the children to throw the Koran away.'

He claimed she said that the holy book should be read only when the children were older and could understand it. He also alleged she said pupils were told they must leave their culture at home and become 'nice little English children'.

Mr Martin went on to make an equally explosive allegation against another female staff member. He said Stephanie Roche had asked: 'Why do they (children) have to go to the mosque? They can't even read English. It's so pointless.'

In response to these claims, Mrs Connor, wrote to Mr Martin and told him both women denied his allegations ' vehemently'. She added that she also consulted the imam of the Shah Jahan mosque, saying: 'He was astonished and perplexed by your suggestion that there was any ill-feeling between the school and the mosque.'

Mrs Connor took the precaution of informing the LEA's director of education, warning that the situation was becoming 'extremely difficult'.

Tellingly, for the first time, she also used the phrase 'hidden agenda' in connection with Mr Martin's behaviour. She said she heard from parents that proposals had been mooted for New Monument to become an Islamic school.

As an indication of her professionalism, she said she did not have a problem being head teacher of a faith school if the community wanted that.

The LEA remained silent. But Mr Martin made himself busy, complaining to the authority that he felt 'traumatised' and bullied by the other governors. He said he suffered from 'loss of sleep, profuse sweating, loss of concentration, poor performance at work' and disruption in his family life. Furthermore, he was not convinced that the school was doing all it could 'to proactively avoid anti-Muslim feeling within the school'.

A memorandum was duly produced by an LEA official, in which the following observation was made about Martin: 'He takes everything literally and ... one wonders if he does not have a hidden agenda. He is very active in the local mosque and has the potential to do harm to the school's reputation.'

On June 9, 2004, another governors' meeting took place. Again, Mr Martin and Mr Saleem harangued the headmistress on the need for a closer relationship between Islam and the school.

Eventually, Mrs Connor walked out, 'clearly upset' by the aggressive questioning.

Afterwards, one of the governors wrote complaining to the chair of governors, Mark Tackley-Goodman, about Mr Saleem's hostile attitude and his 'highly insulting' observation that parents who sent their children to New Monument had a 'lack of values'.

But Mr Martin was also back on the attack. He sent the chairman an email saying: 'I have been a Muslim for nearly 25 years and I have never had any personal experience of Islamophobia. I am sorry to say that that has changed since I have been a governor.'

Unsurprisingly, Mr Tackley-Goodman lost patience at this accusation. He emailed an LEA official to complain about Mr Martin and Mr Saleem, adding: 'I believe the time is well overdue for the LEA to step in and investigate.'

But the LEA was not prepared to defend its staff. In fact, one of the senior LEA officials expressed the view that Mr Martin was 'quite reasonable' and not a trouble-maker adding:'He has clearly stated to me that he is not after a single faith school.' A bland reassurance was sent to the headmistress and an LEA officer later met her to discuss the situation.

Mrs Connor told the officer that parents were reporting meetings in the community that were organised to, in her words, 'get me out'. She was also upset by an extraordinary ' cultural awareness' training session that had been organised by Mrs Syed for the school's staff.

The session trainers produced a special diagram setting out ideal Islamic attitudes in contrast to perceived English values - which contained things such as drinking, drug-taking and extra-marital affairs.

Once again, the chairman of governors asked the LEA to step in. This time the authority agreed to conduct a review.

It coincided with another 'stormy' governors' meeting. Again, Martin and Saleem focused on faith.

Such was the atmosphere, that the Muslim teacher Ms Mir said Mr Martin's allegations had made her ' emotionally ill' and had driven her to question-her choice of career. In November-the LEA review delivered its report, having conducted 58 interviews, including one with the imam of the mosque.

It found there was 'no evidence of deliberate racism or religious bias within the governing body or the school staff'. It added: 'The head teacher has established a strong and enthusiastic team of staff who are committed to doing their best for pupils.'

But the strain caused by Martin and Saleem's provocative behaviour was beginning to tell. The clerk to the governors quit.

In her resignation letter she said: 'The last few meetings have been monopolised by Paul Martin and Mumtaz [Saleem] ... An inordinate amount of time (was) spent on discussions concerning the mosque/school relationship.'

An educational training consultant who attended a governors' meeting observed 'bullying' of the majority took place. She, too, noted that the term 'hidden agenda' was now being widely used in relation to 'a campaign-by certain governors to get a single faith Islamic school on the New Monument site'.

Mr Tackley-Goodman, the chairman of the governors, went on the counter-attack yet again. In early 2005 he wrote to the LEA saying: 'The LEA are now casting those who have tried to resolve the anti-Christian and anti-secular antics of a small group of individuals, as the parties at fault.'

In May, mediation between the warring factions took place. Two days later the governing body voted to remove Mr Martin. Mrs Connor, the head, said that after that meeting Mr Saleem shouted at her that they were going to get her. If she thought she would 'get away with this' she was wrong.

As part of routine changes among the governors, Mr Tackley-Goodman stepped aside as chairman, though he continued to play an active role on the board.

A week later an LEA official reported a conversation he had with the new chairman, a moderate Muslim called Mr Shah, who reported that the militant governors 'did not represent any community and had been removed from their respective roles/interest in the mosque'.

Mr Shah could not understand why Mr Martin was pursuing a single faith school when that was not the wish of the wider community.

Yet still tensions were rising. June 14 was to prove a disastrous day for the school. There was another explosive meeting, during which Mr Tackley-Goodman claimed to have been threatened by Mr Saleem. He said Saleem also made a 'scandalous allegation of racism' against the headmistress.

The same day, Mr Martin delivered his coup de grace - a complaint to the LEA that the school was, to use that dread phrase, institutionally racist.

Among his criticisms was that while the cover of a school document showed seven children, only one of whom was brown-skinned.

That afternoon, outside the school gates, rumours circulated of the existence of a petition of no confidence in the headmistress. Graffiti offensive to Mrs Connor was daubed on school walls.

That same evening, senior LEA officers were advised by the grandly-titled County Council Complaints Management and the Equalities Coordinator that they should launch an independent investigation into the complaints against the school and its headmistress. If not, they faced 'the risk of a referral to the Commission of Racial Equality'.

The following day the rumoured petition appeared. It was headed with the words: 'We the undersigned, parents of children at New Monument School, no longer have confidence in Erica Connor to educate our children in a way that respects and values our faith, culture and heritage.'

Attached to the petition were two pages describing the headmistress as 'racist and Islamophobic'. She had, the petition alleged, transferred resources from 'brown Muslim children to white special needs children'. Scandalously, the document also drew attention to her part- Jewish background.

Presiding over the High Court case, Deputy Judge John Leighton Williams would later observe this petition was 'a highly offensive document, itself racist'. Yet here it was, being distributed in the playground and to local homes. Mrs Connor said some parents told her they had been intimidated into signing it, and apologised to her.

But by now there was real fear among school staff. Police issued them with personal attack alarms and advised them not to stay at school after 3pm. On one occasion, Mrs Connor said she had been surrounded by youths after leaving the school, but an ex-pupil intervened to help her. She said the experience was 'very threatening'.

So, again, what did the LEA do? It wrote a letter to parents and staff which the judge later described as 'not clearly and unequivocally supportive of the staff and Mrs Connor'.

Mrs Connor was now not only fearful for her safety, but deeply demoralised. She told staff her life was 'falling apart' while the LEA stood idly by. One LEA-appointed consultant warned the authority the staff as a body were 'deeply offended to be called racist.' The consultant added: 'There is a real atmosphere of fear and suspicion ... Everyone is careful of what they say and who they speak to. This seems to be permeating into the classroom.'

Yet astonishingly, far from supporting the headmistress and her loyal staff, the authority assured Mr Martin they were setting up an investigation into his concerns. Two people would conduct it, one of them from a Muslim background, as he had demanded.

Mr Tackley-Goodman tried one last time to get the LEA engaged.

He told the authority: 'The school has time and time again been held up as a model of racial and cultural integration and I would like to believe the LEA will now take positive action to reinforce these messages in the community.

'Unfortunately I fear that so-called political correctness will prevent a fair-minded and balanced approach.'

How right he was. The LEA was then put under further pressure.

A 'joint communication' purportedly from 'Woking Asian/Muslim organisations' suggested in schools where there is 'not a majority, but a significant Muslim presence' there should be changes. These included an act of collective Islamic worship, recruitment of Islamic teachers, 'adjustment of the National Curriculum', facilities for Friday prayers and a staff dress code.

The final straw came when the LEA report into allegations of racism was delivered.

Investigators admitted they could not 'find sufficient evidence to uphold the complaint of racism by the school or the local authority'.

But it added: 'We believe the headmistress, along with some other governors, indirectly displayed Islamophobia through ignorance and fear of losing control.'

Indirect Islamophobia? Delivering his verdict last week, Judge Williams was scathing. He said: 'I have to say that many of the views they (the investigators) have expressed are not views I would have reached on the evidence before me.'

At the time, Mrs Connor was simply 'horrified' - and 28 of her staff signed a letter to the LEA damning the report. They said they felt 'let down' by the authority.

On September 21, 2005, the deputy head teacher was certified unfit for work due to stress. Six days later Mrs Connor followed suit. Neither has been back to New Monument. Mrs Connor has not taught again.

With the school in disarray, Ofsted was forced to intervene, placing it under special measures and appointing an interim head teacher and deputy. Academic standards slipped. The school's subsequent Ofsted report stated, thanks to plunging morale among teachers, 'standards are low and pupils' achievement inadequate'.

Mr Martin still lives in the area, but is no longer involved with the school. He declined to speak to the Mail. Mr Saleem has moved out of the area and could not be contacted. Nor could Mrs Syed.

Their legacy, though, is only too apparent. New Monument, once a beacon for community cohesion and educational excellence, has been sacrificed on the altar of religious bigotry.'