An Eulogy to John Wright, aged 54

 John Wright of Marlborough College correctly said, “No gays and no gum” in Malysia and now he’s dead by suicide. His story breaks my heart, and it’s on my doorstep, and it raises profound questions for us all.

During my suspension from New College Swindon for not referring to a girl as a boy I applied to Marlborough College for a teaching post. I was deeply impressed by the College and the students there. It was the only teaching job I’d applied for where I was interviewed separately by the Safeguarding manager, and she impressed me as being on the ball with her detailed questioning of my understand of safeguarding. It was a remarkable contrast with New College Swindon where hardly anyone even knew who the designated safeguarding lead was. I didn’t get the job. Maybe it was because I wasn’t good enough or maybe because New College Swindon wouldn’t give me a reference because of their safeguarding allegations against me. I’ll never know. But now I’m glad I was unsuccessful. Because if there I would almost certainly have found myself in the same position as John Wright. His flippant remark to make a serious point is exactly the sort of thing that I would do. The simple fact is that he was in a country where gay relationships are illegal. For all I know he could have had a student who preferred sex with those of his or her own sex and rather than make a point and put this person or these people in the spotlight, he might well have considered it was quicker and safer to make a short flippant comment. Or, he could simply have been trying to highlight the cultural difference between the Malaysia and the UK. Either way, it was an appropriate and reasonable thing for him to do. If Marlborough College thought this was not the case, then why were they even arranging a school trip there? I know from personal experience how devastated John Wright would have been on his dismissal. He would have seen it as not only his career that had been destroyed, but his trust and faith in humanity. Teachers have a unique and privileged relationship with their students. A good teacher invests much emotional capital into their relationship with their students and does so with no expectation of reward. I assume John Wright was a good teacher and by all accounts, he was. Doing this well can transform a child and it makes teaching the ultimate job that anyone can do. It took me several years to fully appreciate this. But we have entered into a paradoxical world where students across all social classes are encouraged to make complaints about teachers, irrespective of the emotional investments that good teachers must make, and the default position of schools and institutions is to believe the student irrespective of the absurdity of the complaint. To a certain extent schools have to do this, because the standard of teachers is so low. In this environment, when a teacher is faced with the inevitable complaint he is on the defensive from the start. He will have no union back up because the unions (even if he is in one) are ineffective as all their strength is focused on political ideologies; legal support is financially out of his reach, and the law is designed to operate against him. That was my experience, and I am sure John Wright would have seen the same dreary prospect ahead of him. If newspaper reports are to be believed, his dismissal was on safeguarding grounds, and so Marlborough College had a legal obligation to report him to the Disclosure and Barring Service. My experience of the DBS would lead me to think they would waste no time at all in taking the opportunity to put a teacher from a school like Marlborough College on the Children’s Barred List. At which point, John Wright would be subjected to something that is equivalent to house arrest for the rest of his life with a near zero probability of making a successful appeal. What makes this tragedy so personally painful for me is that as well sharing a kinship through experience, he was a neighbour I never knew. I don’t know where he lived, but I must have walked past his house on many occasions. I have no idea if he knew of my plight, but we could so easily have met in a local pub and talked and drunk a beer together and galvanised ourselves for our fights. But that is fantasy. He’s dead. He has come out of the same fight we are both in far worse than I have, and there but for the grace of God, could I have gone. And now for some idle speculation on Marlborough College’s motives. Could the college’s behaviour have been influenced by Elton John’s decision to send the boys he and his partner bought from a Californian woman there? Elton John is a great singer and performer who he has used much of his financial power and influence to normalise the link between the politically contentious concept of gay marriage and the morally bankrupt surrogacy industry. In the commercial circumstances of today, with private schools facing VAT charges, the last thing that Marlborough College would be able to tolerate is a teacher who raised even the slightest comment on gay relationships when they are schooling children who have been procured by one of the country’s most famous homosexuals. At the end of the day, very few of us have the courage or resources to stand up against the things that we know to be wrong. The management of Marlborough college are no exception to this age old rule of human nature. If the Elton John connection has been a motivator in John Wright’s death, then the management must acknowledge this and their weakness to stand for what is right and resign. But they should resign anyway. If they don’t, I cannot see any good teacher ever wanting to teach there and with no good teachers, there will be no Marlborough College. But this terrible incident holds lessons for us all. If my speculation on the Elton John link is correct, then it shows that if the most basic structure that underpins our society, respect for the family, is diminished, then we can all be at risk of indiscriminate harm. It also shows, as my case does, that if free speech is curtailed then harm is inevitable.