SocietyWatch

What are ‘British values’?

Britain’s Department of Education is closing the Durham Free School—which is part of a government program to allow new schools to be established outside of local authority control—in late March for failure to uphold “British values.”

A report by Britain’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) cited these offenses against “British values”: Its promotion of tolerance toward Islam is insufficient, it does not comply with government sex-education guidelines, and it teaches creationism.

The inspecting team complained that the Christian-oriented school, which only opened in September 2013, put too much emphasis on “religious credentials” when recruiting, and said: “Some students hold discriminatory views of other people who have different faiths, values or beliefs from themselves.”

It took officials only a matter of weeks to decide on a date to close the school for these transgressions.

Compare this draconian punishment to the “Trojan horse” scandal last year in Birmingham. There, Muslim school officials in Britain’s second-largest city secretly introduced pro-Islamist teachings into the curriculum of seven schools—including anti-British, radical Islamist views. There was an effort to establish sharia law within the school body. In some instances boys and girls were segregated. Some students were allegedly taught that the reason they were poor was because Jews and Zionists had all the money. Student ambassadors were assigned to report on any students that did not conform to sharia law.

Later it was found that whistle blowers had warned for over 20 years that extremists had “infiltrated” the schools. Yet these schools all remain open.

Earlier this year, Ofsted investigated Grindon Hall Christian School and conferred upon it the ranking of “inadequate”—the lowest possible rating—because, like Durham, it did not advance “British values.”

Grindon Principal Chris Gray described what values the education department now considers British: “The questioning by inspectors makes clear that their idea of a balanced curriculum is for us to force pupils to celebrate non-Christian religious festivals. This would breach our Christian foundation, which stipulates that we are a Christian school” (Telegraph, January 20).

Ofsted has not forced the Muslim Birmingham schools to celebrate Christian or Jewish festivals.

The government’s treatment of primary school pupils indicates that, of all the cultures that make up multicultural British values, the only one under attack is the one that made Britain Britain in the first place.

Communist agitators inflamed Ferguson riots

As people around the world watched news footage of rioting and looting in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer after a white policeman killed a young black man, most were unaware of one disturbing fact. Many protesters carried signs bearing the insignia of the Revolutionary Communist Party, U.S.A. The rcp is currently the foremost Maoist party in the United States, and, although its membership in the U.S. has always been comparatively small, that membership has agitated and inflamed civil unrest in an attempt to plunge American society into chaos.

During the days immediately preceding the violence of the infamous 1992 Rodney King riots, rcp national spokesman Carl Dix circulated a leaflet throughout south-central Los Angeles titled “It’s Right to Rebel.” Many rcp activists were involved in the riots, which ultimately left 58 people dead and more than 2,300 injured.

During the Ferguson riots last August, Dix himself was spotted walking along West Florissant Avenue with Joey Johnson and Lou Downey, members of the Revolution Club of Chicago. Johnson was later involved in a scuffle with the police. That night the situation devolved into clashes between police and protesters.

The Ferguson protests were not masterminded by Communist activists, but the rcp did amplify the tension. Renowned educator Herbert W. Armstrong proclaimed for decades, based on Bible prophecies, that race war is coming to America. This war will be deliberately stirred up by the organized planning of political leaders.