Actually she is allowed to wear her cross - ickle as it is. BA caved in on this due to the public pressure which came from a whole number of people - religious and secular - including a whole number of Labour MPs, not known for their love of the Church or ickle crosses.
The case was about her claim for religious discrimination, based on a whole series of issues beyond the cross she wore and which extended into such areas as the Islamic channels which BA install on their planes in their entertainment stuff.
She lost her case but she is still alowed to wear her cross because BA amended their dress code before the case came anywhere near a tribunal. If she had more sense she would - in the words of Reeves and Mortimer - have let it lie.
But don't let the fcats get in the way of a good sneering there Tom.
I didn't see that. The principle still stands, and it was a ridiculous issue to begin with.
2008-01-12EST13:08:56+00:00
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Oh, and Blair-era Labour seems to have had rather a long love affair with the Church, as it's constant support for the continued ridiculousness that is faith schools demonstrates.
2008-01-12EST13:14:11+00:00
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Tom, if you're trying to conflate the "religious right" of your opening post with "Blair-era Labour" as being in a conspiracy, then you need to put down the Dan Brown book and step away from the door.
The Blair era stuck its fingers up to the Church across a wide range of issues, not least civil partnerships, with the Gay Rights agenda having done partiuclarly well under Blair.
As for faith schools, you can't deny the good results and if you claim to be drievn by pragmatic outcome rather than oppoitional ideology then surely this must be a good thing ?
2008-01-12EST14:52:53+00:00
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The Blair era stuck its fingers up to the Church across a wide range of issues, not least civil partnerships, with the Gay Rights agenda having done partiuclarly well under Blair.
As for faith schools, you can't deny the good results and if you claim to be drievn by pragmatic outcome rather than oppoitional ideology then surely this must be a good thing ?
@Jake Paton: On good results of faith schools, he should know better than anyone else, after all he was educated in one! :P
Of course, the Blair government has always been more woolly-minded on religion than most: Blair himself "does God" but his spinner tried very hard to bury that fact in order "not to incite secular public".
However, since she's allowed to where the cross anyway, there is little point of continuing the case other than a) for principle and b) for monetary purposes. On both grounds, she had lost, but the fact that she can now wear any religious symbols as she pleases meant that the argument has gone...
2008-01-12EST15:32:51+00:00
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Of course, the Blair government has always been more woolly-minded on religion than most: Blair himself "does God" but his spinner tried very hard to bury that fact in order "not to incite secular public".
However, since she's allowed to where the cross anyway, there is little point of continuing the case other than a) for principle and b) for monetary purposes. On both grounds, she had lost, but the fact that she can now wear any religious symbols as she pleases meant that the argument has gone...
The religious right in this country isn't a solid block like in the states, but a sort of group of generally pissed-off middle age people who conflate secularism, multiculturalism, liberal education reform and a whole load of other disparate issues. They seem basically like a screaming mob.
And you can't deny that the middle aged, hysterical Daily Mail readership has been a block that Blair has been trying very hard to capitalise on - faith schools being one very strong part of that policy.
I don't have a blanket policy against faith schools. I mean, I went to a Jesuit university which is technically a 'faith school'. The key part is what you mean by a faith school. In the case of my college, they taught Catholic theology to those who wanted to study it, but there was no test of faith to enter, no mandatory prayers or service attendance. If faith schools were simply ordinary schools where students could take optional courses on RE, church history etc. - just like sports colleges are schools where there are more opportunities to play sports - I can't object. But faith schools in this country mean a lot more than that. The fact that people are going to church for years in order to get their kids into faith schools speaks to the absolutely ridiculous situation faith schools place normal people in.
I don't deny that faith schools get good results, but I do think that we should not simply make more faith schools in order to get good results. We should be working hard on producing a decent secular education system by improving the curriculum, employing better teachers, reducing red tape and 'targets', getting rid of the increasing trend towards vocationalisation and so on - that'd do a lot more than "just add faith".
I also haven't claimed to be driven by "pragmatic outcome". I'm actually driven by principle, with pragmatic outcome as a secondary goal. You can see this by taking something like torture - I think torture is wrong full stop, and it doesn't matter at all whether or not it 'gets results' (the facts seem pretty plain that it doesn't, but even if it did, I would still be against it).
I have been quite critical of naive forms of pragmatism in various arenas, and I still think rights trumps pragmatism. I don't think it's right that I, as an atheist, am forced to fund the operation of schools teaching dogmatic religious faith.
Instead of arguing around the issue, I think the important thing here is the actual point of my post - is it employers who decide what employees should be able to wear and act while on the job? I can't see any decent argument for that not being the case. This is about the principle of the case, not the specifics of Ms. Eweida's case. And her position on the principles is wrong, and - regardless of BA's subsequent actions - at the time of starting the action she was wrong.
She has managed to exert enough political pressure to change company policy, but that doesn't mean that the company policy was unjust in the first place. Employment is a bargain you make with your labour exchanging money for supressing some of your rights - when those rights are suppressed, you can't exactly complain about it since you've agreed to it! There are limits, of course, but I don't think that Eweida's right to free expression or her right to believe and practice her religion has been suppressed by having to conform to a company uniform policy.
2008-01-12EST16:23:56+00:00
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And you can't deny that the middle aged, hysterical Daily Mail readership has been a block that Blair has been trying very hard to capitalise on - faith schools being one very strong part of that policy.
I don't have a blanket policy against faith schools. I mean, I went to a Jesuit university which is technically a 'faith school'. The key part is what you mean by a faith school. In the case of my college, they taught Catholic theology to those who wanted to study it, but there was no test of faith to enter, no mandatory prayers or service attendance. If faith schools were simply ordinary schools where students could take optional courses on RE, church history etc. - just like sports colleges are schools where there are more opportunities to play sports - I can't object. But faith schools in this country mean a lot more than that. The fact that people are going to church for years in order to get their kids into faith schools speaks to the absolutely ridiculous situation faith schools place normal people in.
I don't deny that faith schools get good results, but I do think that we should not simply make more faith schools in order to get good results. We should be working hard on producing a decent secular education system by improving the curriculum, employing better teachers, reducing red tape and 'targets', getting rid of the increasing trend towards vocationalisation and so on - that'd do a lot more than "just add faith".
I also haven't claimed to be driven by "pragmatic outcome". I'm actually driven by principle, with pragmatic outcome as a secondary goal. You can see this by taking something like torture - I think torture is wrong full stop, and it doesn't matter at all whether or not it 'gets results' (the facts seem pretty plain that it doesn't, but even if it did, I would still be against it).
I have been quite critical of naive forms of pragmatism in various arenas, and I still think rights trumps pragmatism. I don't think it's right that I, as an atheist, am forced to fund the operation of schools teaching dogmatic religious faith.
Instead of arguing around the issue, I think the important thing here is the actual point of my post - is it employers who decide what employees should be able to wear and act while on the job? I can't see any decent argument for that not being the case. This is about the principle of the case, not the specifics of Ms. Eweida's case. And her position on the principles is wrong, and - regardless of BA's subsequent actions - at the time of starting the action she was wrong.
She has managed to exert enough political pressure to change company policy, but that doesn't mean that the company policy was unjust in the first place. Employment is a bargain you make with your labour exchanging money for supressing some of your rights - when those rights are suppressed, you can't exactly complain about it since you've agreed to it! There are limits, of course, but I don't think that Eweida's right to free expression or her right to believe and practice her religion has been suppressed by having to conform to a company uniform policy.
