Why the ethnonationalist right agrees with the woke left about Katherine Birbalsingh and her school

The ethnonationalist right dislike her because overt values-led education flavoured with patriotic symbolism doesn’t match their idea that disorder and violence is a racial feature

Ever since Katherine Birbalsingh stood up at the Conservative Party Conference in October 2010 to criticise the failings of Britain’s state education system, she has been the target of criticism. Birbalsingh, of course, put her opinions and reputation on the line by setting up a ‘free school’, Michaela, in Wembley. And an objective look at the school tells us it is a success, at least in doing that thing parents want most from the school their kids go to, getting good exam results and positive outcomes for children. Despite this apparent success, Birbalsingh and the school she leads continue to attract criticism: too strict, too narrow a curriculum, “preparing children for a society that no longer exists”, and a persistent objection to the manner in which Birbalsingh manages a multi-ethnic, religiously diverse school.

Most of this criticism comes from the political left who detest that Birbalsingh spoke to Tory conference and took advantage of a programme for creating new schools championed by the Tory Party and its education secretary, Michael Gove. When Birbalsingh won a court case claiming the school had discriminated against a Muslim pupil by not allowing her to pray, arguing that the school was militantly secular, the left’s attacks seemed to peter out. Not allowing prayer, like having vegetarian school dinners, was a deliberate policy to reduce conflict and division based on religion. But what most of us, watching the success of Michaela from a distance, hadn’t expected was that an emerging element of the British political right, wrapped in an ethnonationalist worldview, would begin to attack Birbalsingh.

This began with a far-right commentator called Connor Tomlinson:

“Birbalsingh seems nice, and her methods get good exam results. But inculcating a feeling of belonging to a people and nation, and fashioning the future custodians of our culture, requires more than manufacturing well-performing cogs for the workforce, reading Shakespeare, or revering Churchill. As Ed West observed during a panel, the prefix “British” before “culture,” “values,” or “heroes” denotes that they belong as exclusive property to a distinct British people. Being a member of that people is often a prerequisite to buying into that culture or values. Such was the model of shared hero worship in the tribes and city states of antiquity. Any attempt to overcome these cultural differences will fall at the first hurdle if it fails to recognise how ethnic identity and rival religious beliefs present an impediment to buying into the British tribe.”

Tomlinson argues that there is a “spontaneous order of our settled, high-trust, homogenous English culture” and that, echoing the left wing critics, the Michaela model is “anathema to the rambunctious nature of young boys” drawing on the myth of the feminine longhouse to try and manufacture some academic credibility for this viewpoint. Longhouses, multi-family communal dwellings, were not female spaces but this metaphor of these spaces as excluding ‘rambunctious’ boys or worse as somehow neutering them, represents a core challenge to the strict discipline, silent corridors and orderliness of a school like Michaela. For Tomlinson and others on the ethnonationalist right, a school like Michaela presents a false prospectus of multiculturalism, secularism and specifically a ‘de-christianised’ idea of England.

And this ethnonationalist right detests Birbalsingh’s insistence on promoting and using the symbols and traditions of Britain and England. Even when Birbalsingh says she “teaches and inculcates in kids strong Judeo Christian values and demands sacrifice from all”, the response of these ethnonationalist critics is to point at girls wearing hijabs saying:

“Moreover, when she still allows her kids to wear hijabs and other ethnic garb, she cannot possibly tell us with a straight face that she’s making a serious contribution to integration. It’s essentially reinforcing separatism - making no demands of foreigners to compromise their ethnic/religious identity. The precise opposite of integration.”

Of course the real bother for the ethnonationalist right is the fact of non-white and muslim pupils in the first place, not that Katherine Birbalsingh runs a school where most children are non-white and helps most of them get into good universities, colleges and other positive outcomes. Michaela’s order, discipline and the behaviour of its pupils are an affront to the view that black and brown immigration promotes violence and disorder, that these people are ‘orcs’ or ‘savages’ or ‘invaders’. And because Michaela (and it is not alone in doing this) provides a good education, inculcates strong moral values and behavioural norms, the idea that foreigners coming here are corrupting England and the English - “London has Fallen” as they cry - carries less weight.

The left dislike Katherine Birbalsingh because she runs a school based on strong discipline, traditional (and in England that means Christian) values, and the rituals of patriotism that were once normal in all schools. The ethnonationalist right dislike her for the same reasons since overt values-led education flavoured with patriotic symbolism doesn’t match their idea that disorder and violence is a racial feature not a consequence of social or communal failure. If successful, positive, maybe even patriotic people emerge from communities of recent immigrants that destroys the ‘England for the English’ idea at the heart of ethnonationalism. If black or brown people can be English (and they can) then concepts of racial superiority or exclusivity cease to make any sense.

There was a time when the mainstream right sought a colourblind approach to race and community relations. Where the left created ever more detailed categories based on race, religion and other features, the right believed that the individual was paramount: that they’d “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” as Dr King famously put it. Or, if you prefer a different spiritual leader:

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a White has no superiority over a Black nor a Black has any superiority over a White except by piety and good action.”

The political right in Britain faces a crossroads, it can take the route of ethnonationalist purity offered by Connor Tomlinson and Pete North, or it can take the road shown us by Katherine Birbalsingh and focus on raising the next generation with strong values, cherished traditions and love of Britain. I know which road I prefer.