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Head at centre of 1980s ‘racism’ storm Ray Honeyford dies at 77
Ray Honeyford, the Bradford headteacher driven out of his job after he was accused of being racist
A HEADTEACHER who was vilified as a racist for criticising multi-culturalism and forced to leave the profession has died aged 77.
Bradford headmaster Ray Honeyford sparked a national scandal in 1984 when he wrote an article warning that “Asian ghettoes” would be created within the country’s inner cities.
It criticised councils for allowing children to be “sent to the Indian sub-continent” during term time and also hit out at what he called propaganda from “multi- racial zealots” and council bureaucracies which he argued made freedom of speech difficult to maintain.
At the time he was the headmaster of Drummond Middle School which served a predominantly Asian area of Bradford.
The reaction to his article led to protests, reported death threats being made against him and the then Lord Mayor of Bradford Mohammed Ajeeb calling for him to be removed from his job. Mr Ajeeb said he had shown “an inclination to demonstrate prejudice against certain sections of the community”.
Mr Honeyford retired in 1985 four years after being appointed as head at Drummond.
His infamous article had been published in the conservative magazine Salisbury Review and in it he warned that inner cities faced inevitable tensions.
Mr Honeyford claimed there were: “a growing number of Asians whose aim is to preserve as intact as possible the values and attitudes of the Indian sub continent within a framework of British social and political privilege”.
He also said that a “very high number of Asian immigrants have a habit of sending children to the Indian sub-continent during term time”, which he warned would harm their education.
Mr Honeyford died on Sunday. He is survived by his second wife Angela and by two sons from his first marriage.
A full obituary will appear in tomorrow’s Yorkshire Post.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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pockman
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 12:02 PMSad to read of Ray Honeyford's death. A good man cruelly hounded out of office by the ignorant and blinkered. His epitaph is that he was, of course, quite right in his predictions. Shame on all those who, cowed by the prevailing "political correctness" didn't have the guts to stand up in support of him. If his views, mild as they were, had been taken into account and acted upon then Bradford could now have been a far better place for all communities to live in.
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