The St George Flag and the Shackles of Silence: Britain's Latest Assault on Free Speech, By Richard Miller (Londonistan)
Basking in the annals of British absurdity, where once we prided ourselves on the Magna Carta's defiant scratch and the Enlightenment's untrammelled quill, we now find ourselves in an era where waving the flag of St George, England's own patron saint, slayer of dragons, can get you branded a bigot, and complaining about it can land you in cuffs. Welcome to October 2025, where the chill wind of authoritarianism blows not from the Thames but from the corridors of a Greater Manchester secondary school. A father, unnamed but unbowed, strides into Broadoak School's reception to voice parental outrage over a teacher's lesson equating the Cross of St George with racism. For his troubles? Eight hours in a police cell, manhandled to the floor, and a stark reminder that in modern Britain, dissent is not debated, it's detained.
Let's unpack this farce, shall we? On a crisp Friday morning, a teacher at Broadoak, emboldened, perhaps, by the chattering classes' endless seminar on "hate speech," informs a classroom of impressionable teens that the St George flag, fluttering proudly from lampposts during England's summer of discontent, is "viewed by some" as a racist symbol. Not inherently, mind you, she's careful with that hedge, but enough to taint its red cross with the spectre of swastikas and beer-soaked chants. She regales the pupils with tales of her own counter-protest heroics in Fallowfield, decrying the "Nazi salutes" and "racist abuse" hurled at asylum seekers holed up in a hotel. Noble intentions? Perhaps. But in a classroom, not a soapbox. This isn't education; it's indoctrination, a one-sided dispatch from the culture wars, served up to children who should be learning algebra, not adult grudges.
The parent in question, a father of two, whose 12-year-old daughter had joined him at peaceful protests outside the Cresta Court Hotel in Altrincham, had every right to object. His girl, mingling with "mixed-race children" in a stand for "what's best for our country," embodies the very unity the teacher decries as division. Bills skyrocketing, heating unaffordable, a nation on its knees: these are the grievances fuelling the hotel vigils, not some primordial hatred. Yet when this dad shows up on Monday, alongside other concerned parents, to pull his daughter from the toxic brew of politicised pedagogy, the response is not dialogue. It's a swarm of New World Order coppers, eight of them, by one grandmother's count, smashing him against glass doors and pinning him to the linoleum. Arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker and a public order offense, he's hauled to Pendleton station in Salford for an eight-hour interrogation. Released without charge, naturally. Because when the state overreaches, it always retreats with a shrug.
This isn't an isolated blip; it's the latest tremor in Britain's seismic shift toward speech suppression. We've watched it unfold like a slow-motion car crash: the Online Safety Bill morphing into a digital Stasi, where algorithms police "harmful" words before human eyes even blink. We've seen pensioners prosecuted for silent prayers near abortion clinics, journalists grilled over "misgendering" tweets, and now parents treated like threats for daring to parent. Broadoak's headteacher, John Knowles, and academies director John Shakos issued a mealy-mouthed apology, launching an "investigation" into the lesson. How quaint. The real investigation should be into a system that elevates a teacher's partisan rant above a father's protective instinct. And the police? Their role here reeks of that pernicious two-tiered justice: swift batons for the working-class protester, kid gloves for the elite's excesses.
What galls most is the cultural erasure at its heart. The St George flag, once a banner of St Crispin's Day, of Spitfires over Dover, of every plucky underdog from Agincourt to the Ashes, is now a scarlet letter in the lexicon of the woke inquisitors. "Viewed by some as racist"? By whom, exactly? The same chattering brigade that deems Morris dancing "problematic" or tea "colonial"? This isn't nuance; it's neutralisation, a sly sleight-of-hand to delegitimise native pride while sanctifying imported grievances. In a nation buckling under migration's strains, hotels requisitioned for asylum seekers while veterans sleep rough, the flag becomes a proxy for deeper discontents. To call it "racist" is to gaslight a people into silence, to suggest their symbols of identity are inherently tainted. And when a parent pushes back? He's the villain, cuffed and cooling his heels while the woke Leftist teacher, whose "views" are aired unchecked, walks free.
This incident at Broadoak is the canary in the coal mine, keeling over in a toxic fog of enforced orthodoxy. Free speech in the UK isn't falling; it's being frog-marched out the door, one parental complaint at a time. We've traded the robust row of the pub for the sanitised seminar of the schoolroom, where questions are quelled and flags are fraught. The father's words echo like a lament: "It's nothing to do with race... People are suffering." He's right. This is about a fraying social contract, where the state, through its proxies in education and enforcement, decides what symbols we may salute and what truths we may utter.
Outrage? Damn right. This isn't just a Manchester mishap; it's a microcosm of a muzzled kingdom. If Britain is to reclaim its voice, the bawdy, bolshy, boundary-testing spirit that birthed Shakespeare and Keats, we must roar back. Demand inquiries not into lessons, but into why a concerned dad becomes a criminal suspect? Why a flag of saints is flagged as sinister? And why, in 2025, the land of the free press now imprisons the free parent? St George, if you're listening from that dragon-haunted heaven, lend us your lance. We've got some windmills to tilt at, and a nation to rescue!
"A parent was forcefully arrested in a secondary school reception and detained by police for eight hours after he went to complain about a lesson where a teacher told pupils St George flags could be viewed as a "racist symbol". The Mail has the story.
Broadoak School, in Partington, Greater Manchester, has launched an investigation into comments allegedly made to pupils on Friday morning following complaints by parents.
Yesterday, it emerged a father was arrested in the school's reception on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker when he joined others to complain to the school on Monday.
The parent, whom the Daily Mail is not naming, described how he was detained for eight hours, interviewed and then released without charge.
After he was released, he said he had gone to the school to remove his 12 year-old daughter because of concerns she would be branded 'racist'.
The father-of-two said both he and his daughter had also attended protests at the Cresta Court Hotel in nearby Altrincham which houses asylum seekers.
He said: "She's been with me and made good friends there. We stand united for the country. She's with mixed race children there.
"We just want what's best for our country and our people ultimately. People are suffering, without any help for heating.
"The whole country is struggling. Bills are going up and everyone is struggling and feeling the effects."
The comments made by the teacher at Broadoak School on Friday were captured on a video and shared among parents.
In the clip, the member of staff can be heard noting the rise in the number of St George flags erected on lampposts in Partington and other parts of the country before telling pupils: "We are not saying that the England flag is an inherently racist symbol.
"However, unfortunately for some people it has been viewed to be that."
The teacher told the pupils she joined a counter protest in Fallowfield to oppose people there who were "trying to make those people inside the hotel feel unwelcome".
She said some of the main protesters were "using Nazi salutes and throwing very racist abuse towards the people inside".
Protests and counter demonstrations have taken places at hotels housing asylum seekers across the country, including the Bell Hotel in Epping, Best Western Hotel in Fallowfield and the Cresta Court Hotel in Altrincham.
The parent said the lesson was "disgusting", adding: "I don't think her political views or beliefs should be aired to the children in the way it's been.
"Yes, she's going to the protest and that's one thing, but don't be telling the children that's what they should be thinking or believing."
He said he turned up with other parents at the school on Monday and removed his daughter because he feared her "being called racist for something she has not done".
"It's nothing to do with race," he said. "It's obviously made her worry that the teacher has said she has been to counter protests and that people who demonstrate outside the hotels are racist."
In the school's reception, he admitted he "raised his voice" and police were called.
He was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and police assault before being taken to Pendleton police station in Salford.
The father said he was released without charge at about 5.30pm, some eight hours later.
The grandmother of another pupil who witnessed the altercation and said she counted eight police officers, said: "I was there for exactly the same reason. It went absolutely mental. He was smashed against the glass door and then onto the floor…. I'm shocked by it."
She said the man had done nothing except express his frustration and was simply a "concerned parent".
On the same day the school's Headteacher John Knowles and Academies Director John Shakos sent a letter to parents apologising for the lesson."
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