An anti-Israel campaign to prevent a pro-Israel Labour Party UK Parliament member from visiting a school was revisited with outrage at the Sunday Jewish Labour Movement conference, where MP Steve Reed related that a Jewish MP had been banned from visiting the institution to avoid angering teachers.
Reed said during a panel that he had a “colleague who is Jewish” who had been “refused permission to visit a school in his own constituency in case his presence inflames the teachers.”
“That is an absolute outrage that this could have possibly ever happened... they will be called in, and they will be held to account for doing that because you cannot have people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children,” said Reed.
Jewish MP banned from visiting school
The BBC linked the story to Bristol North East MP Damien Egan’s canceled visit to the Bristol Brunel Academy in September. The Jerusalem Post contacted both Egan and the academy for comment.
The Bristol National Education Union (NEU) said on September 5 that the MP’s planned school visit was stopped after “concerns were raised by the NEU trade union staff group, parents, and local constituents.”
The NEU chapter said that it had raised concerns over Egan’s support for Israel, saying that Egan was vice chair of Labour Friends of Israel and had visited Israel during the Israel-Hamas War.
“This is a clear message: politicians who openly support Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza are not welcome in our schools,” Bristol NEU said on Facebook.
The cancellation was also praised by the Bristol Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who said on Instagram on September 5 that they were celebrating the incident as a “win for safeguarding, solidarity, and for the power of trade unionists, parents, and campaigners standing together.”
On Monday, Reform MP Richard Tice on X/Twitter called the affair “disgraceful antisemitism” and demanded that the school’s staff be held accountable for an “appalling breach of the law.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said preventing a Jewish MP from speaking to a school in his constituency was a “breach of this school’s obligations to its pupils.”
“We will work with the government to ensure sectarian politics are not allowed to poison and polarize teachers and students and to expand antisemitism training in the education system,” the board’s president, Phil Rosenberg, said.