Happy winterval

You hear about it, but you never think it will happen to you. Last week our little Essex town was splashed across the pages of the national press after a local primary school were banned from singing at the town festival because their programme of Christmas carols was deemed too religeous for the 'theme' of the event.

On the one hand, I do feel a bit sorry for the festival committee. They work hard for months trying to put together an event which genuinely does bring the community together for one night each year. Now one member makes a bad decision and they find themselves in the middle of a storm of criticism.

But the more I think about this, I'm glad that it has provoked such a strong reaction. Our forefathers fought and died for the right to freely express their faith in this country. Exactly how did we manage to get from a moderately sane society to one in which a well meaning local volunteer could somehow perceive that banning schoolchildren from singing carols was 'the right thing to do'? And even more worrying, how could a school head teacher (who you would expect to be at least a bit more politically and media savvy) simply roll over and accept it? If anyone along the chain had spoken up, they could have stopped this cruel, inexplicable, divisive, anti-inclusive action right there. But no-one did.

20 years ago society as a whole recognised that racism was wrong, but a lot of it still happened because people 'didn't know any better'. Our thresholds of acceptance are much lower today. We need to be equally intolerant of the creeping religeous persecution which has emerged under the cover of 'political correctness'. Hopefully in Corringham at least, next time someone suggests that it is OK to ban Christianity from public expression, there will be someone there to blow the whistle.