This has been a real test of Labour politicians. It is the first time
in years that there has been a hard choice about women’s rights - and
many failed miserably. Here is a conflict between two principles -
respect for a religious minority and respect for women’s equality.
For a host of reasons, some honest, some cowardly, an alarming number
of leading Labour voices got it badly wrong. But from the top, only
silence. Over religion, segregation and education, Tony Blair has led
his party badly astray through his own religiosity and by
misunderstanding the effect of personal “choice”.

When it comes to something as basic as women hidden from view behind
religious veils, is it really so hard to say this is a bad practice?
Because some racists may jump on the bandwagon to attack Muslims,
that’s no reason to pretend veils are OK. Meanwhile, Labour has given
away yet more state education to all the religions - 42 of the first
100 expensive academies gifted to Christian groups, seven new Muslim
schools, with 150 in the pipeline. Why, in this least religious of
nations?

The veil turns women into things. It was shocking to find on the
streets of Kabul that invisible women behind burkas are not treated
with special respect. On the contrary, they are pushed and shoved off
pavements by men, jostled aside as if almost subhuman without the
face-to-face contact that recognises common humanity.

The classroom assistant in a Church of England school in Kirklees
removed her veil for a job interview, but now expects to go veiled in
corridors or whenever she might meet a man. What does that say to
children about the role of women as victims and men as aggressors? Of
course it should be banned in all places of education, and the
community cohesion minister is the right person to say so. The veil
is profoundly divisive - and deliberately designed to be.

No one need be a Muslim to understand the ideology of the veil,
because covering and controlling women has been a near-universal
practice in Christian societies and in most cultures and religions
the world over. Western women have struggled hard to escape, but not
long ago women here were treated as chattels and temptresses, to be
owned by men and kept out of men’s way, to be chaperoned, hidden,
powerless under compulsory rules of “modesty”. Women’s bodies have
been the battle flag of religions, whether it’s churching their
uncleanness, the Pope forcing them to have babies, the Qur’an
allowing wife-beating, Hindu suttee, Chinese foot-binding and all the
rest.

Jack Straw questioned the veil when he found it was not fading out,
but increasing in his constituency. No one would ban it in the
street: where would fashion dictatorship end? But between teachers
and pupils, or public officials and their clients, the state should
not allow the hiding of women. No citizen’s face can be indecent
because of gender.

Prescott, Hewitt, Kelly, Hain and others failed the test, saying it
was women’s “choice”: can they really believe that’s the whole story?
Here is an uneasy blend of nervousness about racism and fear of
already angry Muslims. It was left to Harriet Harman to make the
unequivocal case for women’s rights: "If you want equality, you have
to be in society, not hidden away from it,“she said.”The veil is an
obstacle to women’s participation on equal terms in society." No
nonsense about choice. It took feminist leaders like her to fight for
women’s rights, often against a majority of oppressed women who at
first “chose” to think them outlandish and unfeminine.

Harman is astute about the way choice is culturally determined: do
women really choose the female roles societies assign them? She is
not alone in meeting Muslim woman who are appalled that their own
daughters might adopt the veil as a political gesture. It’s a danger
to other women’s “choice” if all “good” Muslims are forced to prove
their faith by submission. Linda Riordan, the Halifax MP, says she
talks to many veiled Muslim constituents who feel oppressed by it;
it’s not their choice at all. "And when I see women driving in veils,
I am horrified at the danger."

There is only one answer: a completely secular state. It is
astonishing that a Labour government has led the country into such a
morass. Things are far worse than they were 10 years ago. Labour
stood by as Blair gave religion more political influence, leaving
one-third of all state schools under religious control.

Alan Johnson, the education secretary, has been allowed to make only
a small improvement to today’s education bill, obliging new religious
schools to offer 25% of places to children outside the faith. (He and
many ministers would probably phase out all religious state schools -
but no chance under Blair.)

Meanwhile, segregation gets worse, with a third of schools now
religious. The Young Foundation’s study, The New East End, warns that
in Tower Hamlets white parents have taken over four church secondary
schools, making them virtually all white, so neighbouring secular
schools have become 90% Bangladeshi. Church schools aid segregation:
the Institute for Research in Integrated Strategies finds that the
number of children taking free school meals at C of E and Catholic
schools is lower than the average in an area. That means nearby
schools take more, magnifying the difference. Selection is the secret
“ethos” of church schools. Everyone knows it - I have just met an
Enfield taxi driver whose wife goes to church to get their child into
a church school. Is that choice?

As Christian hypocrisy keeps poor children out, others demand their
own religious schools. The Leicester Islamic Academy turns state
school next year, but the duty to accept 25% non-Muslims may not
trouble it much. The principal said on The Moral Maze that all girls
must wear the school uniform, both the hijab and the head-to-toe
jilbab. Not much choice there. The Commission for Racial Equality
says trust schools and parental choice are leading to parents
choosing schools of their own ethnicity.

Will the next Labour leader be brave enough to confront growing
segregation? If so, start by ending all religious state education. It
would be popular: a Guardian/ICM poll finds 64% of voters think "the
government should not be funding faith schools of any kind".
Desegregating schools is a matter of fairness: Muslims have the
poorest communities with the worst schools, and are in danger of
increasing isolation and anger. The veil is another totem of that
danger.