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‘Worse than Goering’ – corrected

Former Times Educational Supplement editor and Gove fan Gerard Kelly has sparked outrage on Twitter with an astonishing attack on a trade union activist. LOUISE RAW reports

Mr Gerard Kelly: A correction

In the Morning Star dated July 22 we published the below article which criticised Mr Gerard Kelly (a friend of former education secretary Michael Gove) for posting a tweet which compared a Jewish school teacher (an NUT Officer) to Goering —  a notorious anti-semite, who played a central role in initiating and presiding over the cold-blooded murder of millions of Jews.

In the article the author, Dr Louise Raw, said — in Mr Kelly’s favour — that on reflection he must have thought the comparison was inappropriate (to say the least) and that he had deleted it.

Mr Kelly instructed solicitors, Messrs Mishcon de Reya, who have stated in very strong terms that their client had no regrets about his “metaphorical” reference to a person they call “Mr Goering,” despite his having murdered millions of Jews, and did not delete his tweets.

We are happy to acknowledge that Mr Kelly has no regrets about his intemperate (not to say poisonous) language and we have deleted the reference which his lawyers have complained about.

 

 

We’ve all done it. Late on a Friday, a shade over-refreshed, we’ve hit a sudden moment of clarity.

We, and we alone, are the voice of reason in a crazy world. It’s time we let everyone know it — and what’s more, we’ve just thought of a hilarious one-liner.

In the days before Twitter, we could usually rely on unconsciousness taking over before we’d managed to find the phone and drunk-dial our ex, etc.

How Gerard Kelly must wish he lived in those times still.

Kelly is a journalist, former editor of the Times Educational Supplement, and chairman of governors at Woodside High School in Wood Green, north London.

I am not remotely suggesting that he was tired and emotional when he took to Twitter on Friday night. But his astonishing attack on suspended Haringey National Union of Teachers secretary Julie Davies and, indirectly, on the NUT, is going to take some explaining.

Davies was suspended in early July for “gross misconduct.” Her union branch has threatened to strike over the suspension.

In a letter to members, NUT regional officer Darren O’Grady said Davies was being victimised by the school’s management, in part for writing a letter of support to a colleague facing compulsory redundancy.

O’Grady also challenged employer allegations about her use of Twitter. The fact that social media use formed part of the charges against her makes Kelly’s behaviour all the more ironic.

In a tweet about Davies at 7.14pm on Friday, which was directed to NUT members and supporters of Davies, Kelly said: “…Julie Davies has probably been the biggest impediment to ed. [sic] in Haringey since Herman Goering.”

Davies is of Jewish descent.

As people expressed outrage at his remark, Kelly helpfully explained that Goering — a WWI fighter pilot before he became a senior nazi — had “bombed quite a few of the schs [schools], tho arguably did less damage than Julie.”

He also applauded the local authority for taking on “the union bullies.”

It’s not the first time Davies has been attacked by the right in ways that reveal both ignorance of, and massive hypocrisy over, trade unions.

Pieces had mysteriously found their way into the London Evening Standard well in advance of the suspension, lamenting the amount of “taxpayers’ money” spent on Davies.

Why? Because she’s a full-time elected union officer on 100 per cent release from work, so still draws her teachers’ salary.

“Facility time” has been going for decades, with the agreement of employers. It’s a method by which members can elect a workplace representative who has done the job and knows the territory, but can devote her or himself to union work for a percentage, sometimes all, of the working week.

The release from work lasts only as long as they are elected. Should they fail to be, they go back to their original post.

Yet the right-wing press suddenly seized on this completely legitimate practice as if they’d cleverly uncovered a financial scandal.

The Standard also noted Davies’s opposition to late education secretary Michael Gove — pauses, re-reads last five words, smiles quietly to self — and his plans to force academy status on local schools. Kelly is — by total coincidence — a huge Goveite.

As the Haringey Independent newspaper noted in 2012: “A commission into the future of Haringey’s education set up by the council will include a vocal critic of the borough’s schools … Gerard Kelly … has labelled the borough’s education record ‘abysmal’ and backed education secretary Michael Gove’s move to forcibly convert four (local primary schools) into academies.”

On Davies’s suspension, tiresome right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes also got in on the act, gloating over her situation and exclaiming over her king’s ransom of a £35k salary.

Fawkes is the pseudonym of Paul Staines, a former financial trader who began his politician-baiting blog anonymously. He was a member of dubious, now defunct pressure group Committee for a Free Britain, funded by the Unholy Trinity of billionaire tycoon James Goldsmith, Rupert Murdoch and adviser to Thatcher David Hart.

Despite Staines’s bravura claims since about his love of confronting enemies — “You fuck with me and I’ll fuck with you” — he initially preferred to do so from the shadows. Literally.

Not only was the Guido Fawkes blog anonymous, Staines’s website was registered in a Caribbean tax haven under a false name and address.

Staines refused to give interviews for years. When he finally appeared on Newsnight in 2007, he did so only on the proviso that he appeared in shadow and under his pseudonym — until fellow guest Michael White of the Guardian rather blew the mystique by referring to him by name.

Staines earned $1.4 million in commissions between 1997 and 2001 working for Mondial Global Investors, a Bahamas-based hedge fund — making his hand-wringing horror at Davies’s salary even more surprising. Perhaps he assumed the £35k was per day.

In other noble rhetoric, Staines has called Harriet Harman a “throwback to the unwashed ‘ladies’ of Greenham Common” and opined that killing communists is a jolly good thing.

He has advised Boris Johnson on using social media, though he feels BJ is not right-wing enough. I could go on, but still my favourite thing about him is that he occasionally sports a pointy goatee and cavalier-type moustache — you know, just like Guy Fawkes.

Kelly must be delighted with his new political friends.

Teachers on Twitter have contacted both the school at which Kelly is chief governor, and the TES, to ask for comments on his outburst. I for one will be watching Twitter with bated breath.

The elitist clout of men like Kelly and Staines who, from the safety of their keyboards, howl for the blood of one worker is notable.

Davies should consider it a mark of honour that, with all the highly suspect power their boys’ clubs wield, women like her can still annoy the hell out of them.

Louise Raw is the author of Striking A Light: The Bryant & May Matchwomen And Their Place In History (Bloomsbury).

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