Council blocks BNP school governors

By Martin Wainwright | Friday, 22 October 2004 | Click here for original article

The British National Party's hopes of winning school governorships in a score of Yorkshire schools have been blocked by a decision to end the much-criticised "Buggins' turn" system.

Calderdale council voted overwhelmingly to abandon the long-standing practice of distributing local authority places on school governing bodies between political nominees according to how many local ward councillors each party had.

The system would have handed most places in the Illingworth and Mixenden ward of Halifax to the extreme right wing BNP, which currently holds two of the three seats there. The BNP would also have been able to claim places in the Town ward, where it has one councillor.

The decision to change the appointments system was supported by all the other parties on the hung council, which consists of 21 Conservatives, 15 Liberal Democrats, plus three Labour, three independent, and three BNP members.

Illingworth and Mixenden, which has a high concentration of social problems and decaying housing, two years ago became the first ward in Yorkshire to elect a BNP councillor.

The council agreed to replace the appointments system with a selection panel, made up of councillors, church leaders, existing school governors and trade unionists, which will decide on nominees for the local authority places. It is expected to meet early in the new year, and the appointment of new governors will be frozen until then.

Councillors changed their minds about keeping the old system after widespread alarm about possible BNP disruption of schools. Calderdale recorded more than 170 cases of race-hate incidents in its schools last year, including one by a member of staff.

Some governors refused to work with BNP appointees, and the local branch of the National Union of Teachers appealed for government intervention. A spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills warned that that although the government was committed to diversity and freedom of speech for all, every governor would have to obey race relations laws or face the sack.

The BNP is now expected to attempt to target parent governor posts.