Schoolgirl arrested for asking to be assigned to English-speaking study group

This seems literally incredible, but I’m just reporting what I’ve read. According to The Daily Mail, a teenage girl in Greater Manchester was arrested by police for racism after she asked her teacher to re-assign her from a group of pupils who did not speak English. Fourteen-year-old Codie Stott’s family claim she spent three-and-a-half hours in a jail cell after she was reported by her teachers.

To catch up on a science project she had missed the day before, Codie was assigned to sit with five Asian pupils. Only one could speak English, the others were speaking a language thought to be Urdu. So Codie went to the teacher.

“I said ‘I’m not being funny, but can I change groups because I can’t understand them?’ But she started shouting and screaming, saying ‘It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police’.”

Codie said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.

A complaint was made to a police officer based full-time at the school, and more than a week after the incident on September 26 she was taken to Swinton police station and placed under arrest.

“They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewelry, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken,” said Codie. “It was awful.”

After questioning on suspicion of committing a section five racial public order offence, her mother Nicola says she was placed in a bare cell for three-and-a-half hours then released without charge.

She only returned to lessons this week and has been put in a different science class.

In addition to Codie’s asking to sit with pupils who speak English, the school said that she had referred to the Urdu-speakers as “blacks.” That is the totality of her misdeeds, as reported in the Daily Mail. She asked politely to be moved to a different group, and she called the other students blacks. But that was enough.

Headteacher Dr Antony Edkins said: “An allegation of a serious nature [LA: a serious nature! A criminal nature!] was made concerning a racially motivated remark by one student towards a group of Asian students new to the school and new to the country.

“We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards people and pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form.”

Fewer than two per cent of pupils at Harrop Fold come from an ethnic minority.

… Last night Robert Whelan, deputy director of the Civitas think-tank, said: “It’s obviously common sense that pupils who don’t speak English cause problems for other pupils and for teachers.”

“I’m sure this sort of thing happens all the time, but it’s a sad reflection on the school if they can’t deal with it without involving the police.”

“A lot of these arrests don’t result in prosecutions—they aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say.”

Greater Manchester Police denied Codie had been kept in a cell but would not comment further.

Also, the headline of the story reads, “Schoolgirl arrested for refusing to study with non-English pupils.” But the story itself does not say Codie “refused” to do anything, but only that she asked the teacher if she could be moved to a different group.

I said at the beginning that this seemed incredible. But now I realize that it is not incredible at all. We all know that Britain makes a crime of “incitement to racial hatred” and of other “racist” speech and behavior. So if Codie said anything at all that could be thought by a teacher to be racist, it would automatically transcend a mere school disciplinary situation and become a criminal offense. To say that this is insane and crazy, to say that this is political correctness run amock (as a judge in the same area said last April when a ten year old boy was brought before him for calling another pupil a “Paki” and “bin Laden”), is not accurate. This is not a matter of “PC going too far.” This is a matter of the logical operation of Britain’s criminal laws against “racism.” If people want to stop this madness, they must cease impotently complaining about “PC going too far” and repeal Britain’s anti-racism laws.

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James H. writes:

The title of the Daily Mail article says “non-English pupils.” It shouldn’t say that; it should say “non-English-speaking pupils.” The title attempts to mislead the reader into thinking that “racism” was present, because saying “non-English” suggests that the girl was refusing to associate with pupils because they were not ethnically English.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 12, 2006 10:50 PM | Send