Vile, truculent and threatening – menaces that shocked school

Senior teacher reveals background to cancellation of controversial visit

A city grammar school was subjected to vicious threats and menaces ahead of a planned talk by a controversial ex-pupil, it has emerged.

James Soderholm, Langton Boys’ director of humanities, has described how emails sent to the school “were so vile, truculent and threatening that we began to worry for the safety of the students” – prompting it to cancel the visit of Milo Yiannopoulos.

Milo, an editor at US news service Breitbart, is infamous for holding forthright views on topics such as feminism, which he equated with cancer, supporting Donald Trump for president and denouncing the Black Lives Matter movement. The 33-year-old was to speak on identity politics.

The school cancelled the talk the day before it was scheduled last month amid serious concerns for the safety of pupils as young as 11 after threats of a protest.

In an article published this week for the Breitbart site, Prof Soderholm writes: “Hundreds of messages appeared on our monitors either celebrating the school’s bravery in allowing so controversial a figure to speak to secondary school students, or condemning the school and its leadership for allowing an ‘extremist’ and ‘white nationalist’ and – of course – ‘fascist’ to contaminate the hearts and souls of ‘children’.

“The celebratory messages were heartening and made some of us wish we had gone ahead with the event.

“But the condemnatory emails we received were so vile, truculent and threatening that we began to worry for the safety of the students.

“We had already set up extra security for the event, but what if some of these truly menacing people actually showed up at the school?

“The pastoral care of the students began to loom large as one ugly email after another began to dominate the responses we received.

“But surely it is a dire sign when so much security must be in place to allow Milo to voice his views.

“Is it not in fact a sign of profound cultural insecurity that so much security is involved? That is a worrying paradox.”

Prof Soderholm argues that the episode – which he dubs “Milogate” – raises profound questions about free speech in the UK and the rights of critics to silence opinions they do not want to hear.

He writes: “No matter what one thinks of Milo’s penchant for playing the humourist-provocateur, it is hard for anyone who defends the principle of free speech not to share his moral outrage.

“What are people so afraid of? Why must all speeches given at all schools represent some nar- James Soderholm said the school felt pressurised

rowly-conceived, smugly-left, unctuously- academic orthodoxy?”

Prof Soderholm adds that while the school made the “complex and tormented” decision to cancel the talk itself, it felt pressured to do so after the intervention of the Department for Education’s counter extremism unit.

The unit asked whether Mr Yiannopoulos had been properly vetted and raised the issue of pupil safety.

“Some of the emails we received from people well outside the Langton were vaguely menacing,” Prof Soderholm conceded.

“One begins to wonder who are the ‘extremists’ — the incendiary speakers or those who would actually threaten a school with violent protest?”

What do you think? Email kentishgazette@thekmgroup.co.uk or write to Gazette House Estuary View Business Park, Whitstable, CT5 3SE.

Picture: Mike Allen Simon Langton former pupil Milo Yiannopoulos had been due to speak to pupils