A court has ruled that social services can remove three children from their mother and her unborn child when it is born because they find her views unacceptable.

The woman is a former supporter of the English Defence League and is now believed to be a member of a splinter group called North West Infidels.  She has convictions for violence and is banned from owning dogs after setting a pitbull on a former partner.  Interestingly, though, it isn’t this past history of violence (none of which have involved children) that led social services to take her children off her but her views on Islam and immigration.

According to the Express, social services are concerned that her children will become “radicalised with EDL views” and a judge has agreed, on that basis, to permanently remove her three children from her care and to have her unborn child taken away and put up for adoption as soon as it is born.

The social worker report says:

Toni clearly needs to break away from the inappropriate friendships she has through either the EDL or break-off group in order that she can model and display appropriate positive relationships to the baby as he/she grows and develops.

Toni has been a prominent member of the EDL. They claim they are a peaceful group, however, they have strong associations with violence and racism.

This makes me particularly angry.  While there are undoubtedly racists in the EDL, the organisation itself is not racist.  This woman may be racist but that is not a good enough reason to take her children off her.  The association of violence with the EDL is the product of a compliant media and vested political interests (many senior politicians on the left and the right are members of UAF which is a front for the SWP) that refuse to truthfully report the cause of most violence at EDL marches: the left wing extremists of Unite Against Fascism and the Socialist Workers Party.  It’s bad enough that this dishonesty results in the far left getting away with some quite vicious attacks on EDL protesters but it’s something else when it means a woman loses her children.

Who this woman chooses to associate with (as long as they’re not people who would put children in danger) and whatever her views on immigration and Islam are is not a good enough reason to take her children off her.  Freedom of association and freedom of expression are human rights.  Taking this woman’s children off her for associating with the “wrong” people and having the “wrong” views is a breach of her human rights.

The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed—would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
– 1984, George Orwell