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A l a m y through web archives. It published Leggatt’s letter, along with a call for the event to be cancelled and details of who to contact.
The anonymous blog editor described Leggatt’s letter as shameful and the event as scandalous, writing: “Cancel culture is all the rage now, so let’s not waste time in following this ‘fashion’; this is a very serious matter and I’ve already heard the opinion expressed by one parent that for any Catholic school to organise such a blatant promotion of the LGBT+ ‘lifestyle’ is tantamount to child abuse.”
The school chaplain sent letters to parents encouraging them to boycott. According to Leggatt, some parents withdrew their children from the talk, although others sent supportive messages.
“And then it came out that the diocese that week had instructed the school to cancel,” Leggatt said. The school refused.
The governing body held an emergency meeting on the Saturday preceding the Monday event, where they voted to continue with the visit. And then the situation stepped up a gear.
“On Sunday evening, I got the call from my manager to say that the diocese had fired the entire governing body,” Leggatt said. The visit was cancelled.
“I think it was a shock to many of us that the diocese used that power and did in fact have that power.”
A joint statement came out from the SLA and CILIP, and school staff went on strike. But the visit did not go ahead.
Schools watchdog Ofsted visited the school for a snap inspection and its report criticised the archdiocese’s attempts to remove the school governors and praised the headteacher for his handling of the events.
In an article on pages 22-23, Green describes how the debacle impacted him as an author.
“I know from other librarians who work in faith schools that the behaviour of that archdiocese was considered to be unusual. Generally, there’s a kind of softly, softly approach to these kinds of things,” said Leggatt, who left the school. And with other books in the library dealing with much more challenging topics – such as teen pregnancy and drugs – the only issue around Green’s books, as far as she saw it, was gay relationships.
“What I’ve since found really interesting, looking at the progression of what happened, is how closely it mirrors what is happening in the USA,” she said. “It was the same arguments, the same shifting goalposts, and the fact that the initial complaint came from a group completely unconnected to the school.”
As one of the only named censored school librarians in the public sphere, other librarians have contacted Leggatt about their own brushes with censorship. She says around 20 people have told her their experiences, and all the issues have stemmed from books about sex and gender. Something that often connects these stories, she says, is that everything is quickly hushed up. Experienced librarians are telling her that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything they’ve seen before.
And she is also concerned about self-censorship because librarians are nervous. Some 89% of respondents said they were at least a little worried about the potential for censorship in our survey with 30% saying they worried a lot.
A series of minor acts
Green’s very public cancellation is not the only censorship that has happened in school libraries. One librarian told Index that in a private school with a Christian ethos, a senior member of staff removed all Philip Pullman books without explanation. When pupils asked her where they could find His Dark Materials, she trotted out the line that the school didn’t have them.
“It made you feel disempowered,” she said, adding that she felt that the knowledge and experience she held as a librarian was disregarded. “At the time I needed that job and wasn’t in a position
Because one book was challenged, the whole collection was removed to ruffle any feathers.”
Louise, who works in a library service providing books to a range of schools, was asked by one to swap books with LGBT+ representation for different titles. Although she didn’t want to, she was left with no choice but to comply.
She described how she worked in a predominantly Muslim area, where senior staff were not from the same background, and took pro-active steps to avoid confrontation.
“We’ve all seen what happened in Birmingham,” she said, referring to the months-long protests outside a primary school in 2019 against the teaching of LGBT+ relationships. “No one wants to be like that school.”
At some schools, she doesn’t bother offering particular books in the first place. “If I’m buying for a school, I have to consider carefully how much the headteacher will back me,” she said.
“Over here in the UK, it’s soft censorship. It’s easy in the USA – they have this handy list.”
Amy lost a job over her refusal to censor a book which was perceived to be about LGBT+ issues. At first, the headteacher told her a couple of parents had complained about the book, and then came a written complaint from a conservative Muslim family. Amy argued that talking about equality was part of her remit as a librarian, and that the school should not assume the rest of the Muslim community would have the same reaction.
She was blamed for the upset, and for making the book available. She was asked to leave.
“What I draw the line at is when
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