Jon Holbrook has been cleared by the Bar council for his comments regarding a teenager who won an out of court settlement.
A senior barrister who was kicked out of his chambers for calling a mixed race schoolgirl ‘a stroppy teenager of colour’ has been cleared of misconduct.
Jon Holbrook tweeted about the case of Ruby Williams, 19, who won an out-of-court settlement from her school for alleged discrimination after they sent her home, saying her Afro hair had breached dress policy.
She was awarded £8,500 last year after she was repeatedly sent home from Urswick School in Hackney, east London, over a period of three years, starting in 2014 when she was just 14.
Her case was brought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission under the Equality Act in 2018 and later featured in a video.
Commenting on the case, Mr Holbrook, a member of UKIP, tweeted: ‘The Equality Act undermines school discipline by empowering the stroppy teenager of colour.’
To the normal, rational, reasonable person, nothing he said was remotely controversial, But you know, hurty feelz overcomes reason, hence he was disciplined and kicked out of chambers.
It would seem that he has been cleared of wrongdoing. However…
The regulator slapped him with a £500 fine and an official warning over another tweet which was said to ‘promote hostility towards Muslims’.
As I understand it, he will be appealing this decision and so he should. This is a classic case of the process being the punishment.
Jon has written about his experience over at Conservative Woman. It’s like reading about communist China or the Soviet Union, frankly.
Too little, too late. The process is the punishment.
The link doesn’t seem to go to the Ruby Williams story. Was the problem that she let her afro grow too big? Because otherwise sending her home for having naturally frizzy hair would be really obviously racial discrimination. I’m always suspicious of schools wanting to pedantically enforce too many mindlessly petty rules. I’m amused that when I was at school they got on your case for having your hair too long whereas now you can be suspended for having it too short.
Her hair was tied up on top of he head and pretty long. If you look at the picture in the Mail story, you can see it.
Like you, I don’t like petty, obsessive rules, but in no way was she subject to discrimination. She was subject to exactly the same rules as everyone else.
A couple of points from the chalkface (while accepting that school rules can be imperfect in both conception and enforcement):
In cases like this, especially where there is repetition, the hair simply provides the opportunity; the point is pushing authority to the limit. Sending home is almost always a last resort, used only when the pupil – or learner, as current orthodoxy has it – can not or will not alter the offending garment or hairstyle. Where the easy solution would be a hairband or tie-back, it implies a refusal to cooperate: this is a power game, pure and simple, on a par with a toddler tantrum.
Hair is a tricky area for schools: leaving aside the aesthetic/distraction aspect, there are some real heath and safety issues as well as the inescapable (and colour irrelevant) matter of blocking the view of those behind. Requests for tidiness or reminders of the dangers of Bunsen burners or orbital sanders carry little weight with vain and rebellious adolescents; in my experience, the most effective way to avoid unruly hairstyles is a public announcement of an outbreak of nits.
I presume that you’ve seen the pictures of madam’s hair? The school was being reasonable here.
That said, when schools get picky about brown piping on black shoes, they lose all credibility. There’s a balance to be struck – one that applied when I was at school. No one cared about my long hair, so long as I wore the uniform. It wasn’t so long that it was a safety issue and was fairly typical of the seventies. Still is…
The Mail link isn’t taking me to the story. It is just going to the latest posts. I did notice that opposing vaccine passports makes you an anti vaxxer.
I’ve just clicked on it and it took me to the story, so I don’t know what’s going on there.
Glad he won his case. Hostility to Muslims. Hello, Charles Martel (battle of Tours), hello John III Sobieski and hello Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Of course there should be hostility. Muslims should never have been allowed to settle in Europe! FFS all these wars to kick them out.
I quite agree.
If anyone needs a lawyer who would go the extra mile in a free-speech-against-the-woke type case, there’s somebody who has been there and done that.