A high court judge has been asked to extend an exclusion zone permanently banning activists against LGBT equality lessons from demonstrating outside a Birmingham primary school.
Protesters went head to head with a local authority during the five-day trial to stop protests outside Anderton Park primary school. The school, in the Sparkhill area of the city, has become the focus of a long campaign to halt LGBT equality messages being taught in the classroom.
Most of the protesters have been of Muslim faith and some have stood regularly outside the school chanting “Let kids be kids” and carrying placards with the message: “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
Birmingham city council launched court action to prevent more protests outside the school after about 300 people gathered at the gates in May. This included a speech by a controversial imam who claimed anal sex, paedophilia and transgenderism were being taught in schools.
Following the five-day hearing, high court judge, Justice Warby, reserved his judgment until a later date.
An emergency interim order was granted, and later extended in June, which sought to halt any more gatherings near the primary school that could disrupt pupils or intimidate staff.
The temporary injunction banned defendants Shakeel Afsar, his sister Rosina Afsar – who had two children at Anderton Park but has since removed one of them – and Amir Ahmed from coordinating protests outside the school.
All three defendants gave evidence at this week’s hearing and are contesting the need for a legal injunction to curtail protests.
The judge heard closing arguments in the case of Friday, including a invitation from the council’s barrister, Jonathan Manning QC, to extend the existing ban on protests to two further areas of land on a road near the school.
Manning told Birmingham’s Civil Justice Centre: “It’s clear that the conduct in question is such as to satisfy the definition of anti-social behaviour and public nuisance.
“I am instructed to ask for a modest variation to the (existing) orders. What we have seen by the movement (of protests) from outside the school gates to where it currently takes place is a significantly higher level of disturbance to other members of the community in their residences, due to very loud amplification.”
Christian campaigner John Allman from Okehampton, Devon, is also opposing the imposition of what he claims would be a “super-injunction”.
In documents submitted to the court hearing, Allman accused the council of choosing “war war rather then jaw jaw” and said he had decided to became a formal defendant in the court proceedings as a member of the general public.
A witness who gave evidence to the hearing earlier this week, Tom Brown, claimed that Allman subjected him to homophobic verbal abuse after his testimony.
But Allman denied he had made a derogatory remark about local Anderton Park resident Brown, who filmed protesters outside the school and said demonstrators on megaphones compared those from the LGBT community to “dogs and paedophiles”.
Barrister Paul Diamond, representing Allman, submitted that the judge hearing the case should treat online discussion of events at Anderton Park as vital in a free democratic society.
Diamond told the court: “There is a limit to law. It should not be used to silence debate. We say the British population are very concerned about this teaching.”
Speaking after the case was adjourned, Afsar told a news conference: “We feel that us parents shouldn’t have been here anyway. We feel that the judge will look through the relevant evidence and see that parents were within their rights and were actually forced to protest.
“We would also like to reiterate to the school that mediation and consultation was never the end of the road. Whatever the outcome of this case, we would urge the school to start a fresh dialogue with parents. We hope and pray that the verdict will be one that will cater for all our communities.”
