Report by Birmingham Education Commissioner, Peter Clarke, into 'Trojan Horse' allegations

The report by Peter Clarke, former head of the counter-terrorism division at the Metropolitan Police Service, into the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ affair in Birmingham is in many of the papers today.

The report, published yesterday, makes the front page of the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian with other coverage including the Daily Express, Daily Star, Independent and Daily Mail.

The newspapers focus principally on the findings by Clarke of ‘clear evidence that there are a number of people, associated with each other and in position of influence in schools and governing bodies, who espouse, endorse or fail to challenge extremist views’ and who have been ‘involved in behaviours…that have destabilised headteachers’ with action carried out in a ‘co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained’ manner so as to ‘introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos in a few schools in Birmingham’.

Clarke claims the investigation has ‘revealed a sustained and coordinated agenda to impose upon children in a number of Birmingham schools the segregationist attitudes and practices of a hardline and politicised strand of Sunni Islam.’

The report argues such an ‘agenda…appears to stem from an international movement to increase the role of Islam in education. It is supported by bodies such as the association of Muslim Schools UK, the International Board of Educational Research and Resources, the Muslim Council of Britain and the recently closed Muslim Parents Association.’

The mention by Clarke of a ‘politicised strand of Sunni Islam’ is further developed in a successive paragraph which states: ‘Essentially, the ideology revealed by this investigation is an intolerant and politicised form of extreme social conservatism that claims to represent, and ultimately seeks to control, all Muslims. In its separatist assertions and attempts to subvert the normal processes, it amounts to what is often described as Islamism.’

The report cites the definition of extremism, as presented in the Government’s 2011 Prevent strategy, in its scrutiny of online communications between teachers and governors in a WhatsApp group named the ‘Park View Brotherhood’. The group’s membership is purportedly all male.

The report does not explain how the transcript of the messages came to be in the possession of the inquiry. In its detail on the subjects discussed and content or tone of the messages, the report concludes that there is ‘clear evidence’ of a ‘number of people, associated with each other and in positions of influence in schools and governing bodies, who espouse, endorse or fail to challenge extremist views.’

The subjects singled out in the report, based on the WhatsApp messages include gender equality, political activity, homophobia, sceptical reaction to reports of terrorist attacks, disparagement of British armed forces and anti-Israeli images.

Clarke claims that views shared suggesting the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich in May 2013 was a ‘hoax’, like others in the communication trail, were not challenged by teachers and governors in the online group.

To this end, Clarke concludes that while he ‘neither specifically looked for nor found evidence of terrorism, radicalisation or violent extremism in the schools of concern in Birmingham’, the ‘hardline strand of Sunni Islam’ promoted in the schools ‘raises real concerns about their [pupils] vulnerability to radicalisation in the future and ‘will make it harder for them to question or challenge radical influences [in the future].’

The WhatsApp message trail appears prominently in the newspapers with the Daily Star titling its article on the report ‘Kids told Rigby murder ‘a hoax’’ although the report is clear that the communications were exchanged between teachers and governors, not pupils. The Daily Star repeats the assertion in its editorial stating ‘fanatic teachers were trying to brainwash kids by claiming Lee Rigby’s murder was a hoax’.

While there are a number of serious shortcomings detailed in the report, ‘brainwashing kids’ into believing Drummer Lee Rigby’s murder was ‘a hoax’ is not one of them.

The Daily Mail headlines with ‘Internet hate messages of the extremist teachers’ while the Independent leads with the Education Secretary’s response to the report in the form of tightening rules. The Independent notes Nicky Morgan’s statement to the House of Commons yesterday in which she stated ‘actions which undermine fundamental British values should be viewed as misconduct’ resulting in teachers being ‘barred from the profession’.

The Guardian and Daily Telegraph vary in their coverage of the report. The Guardian editorial focuses largely on policy failures associated with the introduction of free schools and academies and the loosening of regulatory and oversight mechanisms.

The Daily Telegraph editorial makes a significant leap in its reading of the report to claim ‘This saga reinforces the need to arrest the spread of Islamist ideology through the schools, not least because it radicalises impressionable young men, some of whom have ended up fighting in Syria and Iraq and harbour a hatred of western values that may yet be turned back on their own country.’

Clarke referred to ‘real concerns’ about the vulnerability of pupils to radicalisation, not as the Daily Telegraph editorial suggests, a clear and verifiable causal relationship between extremist views and radicalisation. Salma Yaqoob, a former Birmingham City Councillor, in a comment published in The Guardian reiterates: ‘There is no natural spectrum that takes a person from observing a faith to extremism, to violent extremism’.