I was threatened with being struck off as a nurse and told I was a danger to others because I don’t believe all white people are racist
Now Amy is taking an NHS Trust to court in a landmark case that could have profound implications for freedom of speech
WHEN she embarked on her forensic psychology course in the autumn of 2020, Amy Gallagher was prepared for challenging times ahead. The 33-year-old mental health nurse knew she would have to juggle coursework and lectures with her day job and that her studies would occasionally be gruelling.
And challenges there most certainly were — just not remotely of the kind she envisaged. Over the past two years Amy, from Orpington, Kent, has been the subject of a litany of accusations that has left her reeling.
Accused of being a racist who was not fit to work as a nurse because of her prejudiced views, she was told her presence on the course was a threat.
Given such a damning character indictment you might wonder what on earth those ‘views’ might be? Surely only something heinous could justify such accusations?
But Amy had merely objected to teaching which she felt portrayed Christianity as a racist religion and which also suggested that all white people must accept their ‘inevitable’ white privilege.
The latter thinking is fundamental to Critical Race Theory, an academic concept that promotes the notion of racism being institutionally endemic.
But it’s a concept entirely alien to Amy, who has always tried to judge people not by the colour of their skin but by their character — something one leading member of staff at her course provider told her was an ‘outdated’ idea which could not be ‘tolerated’.
Worse was to follow: Amy not only found herself under investigation on her course, but also in her work as a nurse after a lecturer referred her to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
‘ Not content with falsely accusing me of racial prejudice, this meant my actual livelihood — something that was nothing to do with my course — was put at risk,’ Amy tells the Mail in an exclusive interview. ‘All because
I wouldn’t subscribe to ideology which I believe has no place in a clinical setting in the first place. It’s just offensive and deeply wrong.’
Today, though, she is fighting back: Amy is suing her course provider, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, for religious and racial discrimination in what she believes is the first test of ‘woke ideology’ in the courts.
‘I am doing it in part to protect my career but also to stand up for what is right,’ she says. ‘We need to challenge the notion that we can be told what we are meant to think — and that if we don’t agree we are racist.’
Strong words with which many readers will undoubtedly sympathise, although Amy says such is the rigorous campaign of scrutiny to which the Tavistock has subjected her that she has been riddled with self-doubt.
‘It’s been really hard,’ she says. ‘There’s been lots of times where I’ve questioned myself. It’s hard not to when you’ve got a whole organisation telling you your views are wrong. At times I thought I was going mad.’
Meeting Amy today, it’s certainly hard to square the softly spoken, rather reserved young lady with the aggressive and zealous offender depicted by her supervisors at the Tavistock.
‘I have been told my tone of voice was inappropriate, that the way I disagreed was too forceful,’ she says, her bewilderment all too clear. Yet far from being a zealot, Amy says her faith has always led her to extend tolerance and understanding to others.
Raised in a non-religious family and one of two sisters, Amy attended a Catholic primary school, her faith burgeoning in her 20s, when she started regularly attending church.
‘It helped me see a bigger picture, which has been helpful through this,’ she says.
After studying English literature at Sussex University, Amy opted for a career in nursing. She was drawn to specialise in mental health nursing and, after a two year course at Buckinghamshire New University, was employed seven years ago by a South London NHS Trust.
She loved her work, even if on occasion she noticed that her faith was open to ridicule. ‘Sometimes the way patients who are Christians are spoken about — you’d hear talk of their “silly ideas”, comments like that,’ she says. ‘I tried not to let it bother me.’
Four years ago, Amy decided to pursue a qualification as a psychotherapist, enrolling in a four-year course at the Portman Clinic, part of The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which also ran the Gender Identity Development Service, which is being disbanded after a damning independent review.
‘While the scandal with the gender identity clinic was unfolding during my training, my course wasn’t remotely connected to it,’ she says.
The course cost around £20,000 in total, which Amy paid in stages from her savings. Her first two- year foundation course passed by uneventfully, and in September 2020, she enrolled for her final two years specialising in forensic psychology, when she would also start to see patients as part of her coursework.
Two weeks in, Amy and her fellow students were given an online lecture — the Covid pandemic meant that learning was on Zoom — called Racism And Difference. ‘ The lecture linked Christianity to slavery and suggested Christianity was a racist religion which I thought was an extraordinary statement,’ says Amy.
A few days later, she was invited to attend an online seminar called Whiteness, A Problem For Our Time. The lecture was promoted on the Tavistock website as a flagship ‘ policy’ lecture to mark its centenary year and in its online description offered the following summary: ‘ The presentation is rooted in the assumption that the problem of racism is a problem of whiteness.’
‘I was already taken aback, and when I actually attended it was worse than I thought. I felt it was one- sided and basically driving home the message that all white people are instinctively racist,’ Amy says.
Alarmed, she sent a message to the course head, copying in a number of other students and several senior figures at the Tavistock, asking for a more balanced debate. ‘I pointed out
‘I am doing it to stand up for what is right’
‘It’s my career — but I felt like quitting’
that this is not psychotherapy, this is a political ideology and it’s not evidence based,’ she says. She was then asked to attend a meeting with the course head. ‘She told me they were an anti-racist organisation,’ says Amy. ‘I said I was against racism as well, and that my understanding of that would be not to judge a person by the colour of their skin.’
Amy was told that this ‘colourblind’ approach was now viewed as discredited and outdated. ‘She added that it was a bit like the way all men are inherently sexist. To which I replied that I didn’t agree with that either.’
To Amy’s astonishment, the meeting ended with the course head telling her that ‘given her opinions’ the course might not be right for her. Torn between anger and defiance, Amy says she did consider quitting. ‘On one level I didn’t want to continue with the institution if this is what they were saying — but this was my career, and what they were doing was wrong.’
At the end of January 2021 she made a formal complaint to the trust, saying their message went against the Equality Act. Four days later she received an email about her progress on the course in which she was told that her clinical work was progressing well but that the ‘trust’s antiracist thinking challenged some of your personal views’.
‘I was really angry about that,’ she recalls. ‘It felt like what was going on was leaking into my ability to be independently judged on my work alone.’ In the
meantime, course material continued to circulate, among it an essay called The Criminalisation Of Blackness, which talked about the Bible’s use of the words light and dark, suggesting it caused unconscious racism.
But when she raised objections at an end- of-term Zoom gathering she received a subsequent email from the course head accusing her of creating a ‘traumatising environment for fellow students’. Amy was also told that a student conduct policy against her was being raised — the first step towards suspension.
‘That was really hard,’ Amy says, her voice faltering. ‘I got the email at work and had to go home early as I was just in shock. I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong and was feeling quite targeted.’
In short order, Amy then received a letter from one of the training directors, informing her that, following the complaint, it had been decided Amy’s behaviour was ‘ vexatious’ and that further incidents could result in her being suspended. Another letter a week later informed her that her complaint about discrimination, registered four months earlier, had not been upheld. The report said that the lecture had been ‘intense’, but said it was ‘undeniable’ that ‘Europe in the name of Christianity was instrumental in the racism, slavery and colonialism that has a linear connection to . . . forensic services’. It also upheld the trust’s view that Amy had been ‘excessively and inappropriately confrontational’ when raising her concerns. It denied that her progression on the course had been compromised by her views but said there had been ‘concern’ for her ‘capacity for learning becoming restricted’. ‘They hadn’t followed their own policies and procedures,’ she says. ‘ I think they wanted me to just give up at that point, but my actual clinical work was going well, and I was determined to see it through.
‘I clung on to the idea that someone sensible would step in. But they never did.’
Amy embarked on the final year of her studies, determined to focus on her clinical work, only to find another hurdle: in March this year, she learned that the lecturer who had suggested Christianity was a racist religion had made a complaint about her to the nursing regulatory body, the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
Why? Well, two months previously, Amy had started an online crowdfunding campaign to raise money to fund possible legal action. ‘As a consequence, she essentially accused me of racially harassing her and of perpetuating a narrative of hate,’ she says. ‘She questioned my ability to work with diverse patients in the NHS.’
It meant an already unpleasant ongoing dispute now directly threatened Amy’s livelihood. ‘It was really scary because my nursing is how I pay my mortgage,’ she says. ‘It was also upsetting to have this put in my workplace. My head of nursing said they had no issue with me and they couldn’t find anything that matched the description that they were being given of me. But I was now under scrutiny, and it was horrible to think that my seniors might be thinking there was no smoke without fire.’
In June, Amy was told the investigation had concluded and that there was no case to answer.
‘ They said they’d found no evidence of me being racist at all, and, in short, that there was nothing wrong in me disagreeing with critical race theory. It was a huge relief,’ she says. Now, Amy has decided to fight back: she has filed documents at the Central London County Court claiming harassment, discrimination and victimisation at the hands of the Tavistock. Her fees so far have been raised through crowdfunding, and she is being supported by the Bad Law Project, a new ‘anti-woke’ legal initiative founded by free speech campaigner Harry Miller.
She has not ruled out the possibility of asking for a judicial review of the Portman’s practices.
Her fight has come at a price. ‘There’s been lots of sleepless nights, lots of anxiety. I’ve had to take some time off work,’ she says. ‘It helps that I’ve had a few close friends going through it with me and really helping me.’
You might wonder what any of this has got to do with being a psychotherapist — a question Amy has continually asked herself.
‘What’s really concerning me is that this is a clinical training. It’s not like a humanities course where there’s different theories. Essentially what they’re teaching is an ideology,’ she says. ‘ It’s wrong, and someone has to stand up for what is right.’
A Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said: ‘ The matters raised by Ms Gallagher are the subject of ongoing litigation, for which the trust is currently preparing its defence. As this is a live legal matter we are unable to comment on the allegations. As a trust, we have made a public commitment to work to become an anti-racist organisation.’
‘There has been anxiety, lots of sleepless nights’