A girls' school in my former constituency of Wycombe barred a Muslim pupil for wearing a veil. Her father attempted to overturn the school's decision by taking it to court - using legal aid in the process. I supported the school strongly, believing that head teachers and governors should be able to set their own uniforms policy. If they think, for example, that veils in the classroom hinder teaching or learning, or that veils in the corridors harm safety and security, they should be free to implement a ban. I'm glad to report that the school won the case.
Other bodies for which the state's responsible, such as airports and hospitals, should also be at liberty to act in the same way, if they think that security warrants a ban - as should private premises, such as shops. Obviously, the veil or niqab, like the burqa, oppresses women if worn unwillingly. Both are barriers to integration into British norms. Nor can it convincingly be argued that either is an Islamic requirement. Most British Muslim women don't wear burqas or niqabs: to see either on the streets of Wycombe, where the Muslim population is sizeable, is rare.
So there it is: for better or worse, I don't like veils. But there's a difference between allowing institutions discretion to bar them - which in some cases they already have - and slapping down a fully-fledged legal ban, as Phillip Hollobone's Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill, which had its First Reading in the Commons today, seeks to do. I like Hollobone, who's a plain-speaking and hard-working MP, and he knows the difference between a niqab and a hijab. But why he thinks a law should be passed to ban people from wearing what they want in the street beats me.
Hollobone's explained previously in the Commons that he considers the veil "frankly, offensive". But there are a lot of things that a lot of people think are offensive in modern Britain. This isn't a good reason to ban them: being offended is part of the price paid for living in a free society. I'm not a free speech absolutist - for example, hate preachers who incite violence and hatred should be barred from Britain - but there should be a strong presumption in law that people are at liberty to do as they please. Furthermore, it can't simply be assumed that all women who wear the burqa or niqab have been compelled to do so - or that integration can or should be enforced by bans on bits of clothing (rather than by, say, stopping taxpayer funding for translating documents).
During the last election, UKIP suddenly leapt on Belgium's burqa ban, and proposed taking the same course here. The move had a nasty whiff of anti-Muslim opportunism about it. A legal ban may pass muster in Belgium, but it shouldn't do here. Sorry, Phillip, but it simply wouldn't be British.
Paul Goodman
