I guess most people have seen this story from last Friday:

‘Purity’ ring case in High Court

A 16-year-old girl has gone to the High Court to accuse her school of discriminating against Christians by banning the wearing of “purity rings”.

Lydia Playfoot was told by Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, to remove her ring, which symbolises chastity, or face expulsion.

The school denies breaching her human rights, insisting the ring is not an essential part of the Christian faith.

On Friday, judgement in the case was reserved to a future date.

The story’s certain had plenty of press coverage of late - no less than three articles in the Telegraph since April, one each in the Observer and the Guardian and two from the Daily Mail, who first picked up on the story on October last year - a date that will become all the more significant in a moment - all of which are prominently linked on Playfoot’s own website, www.purityring.org.uk.

Now. according to this report in the Telegraph, the backstory to this case runs as follows:

Miss Playfoot chose to wear the ring after an event held two years ago by an American Christian movement, The Silver Ring Thing, which promotes abstinence before marriage and has encouraged a growing number of adolescents to make “a pledge of chastity”.

The ring refers to the Biblical quote: “God wants you to be holy and completely free from sexual immorality. Each of you men should know how to live with his wife in a holy and honourable way”.

Initially it did not cause a stir at the school. But after a dozen other girls started wearing the rings Miss Playfoot was asked to remove hers on the grounds that it broke the school’s no-jewellery policy and it could injure someone if she fell and used her hand to steady herself.

When she refused she was placed “in isolation”, missing classes and studying on her own. “I was surprised because the people who get put in isolation are caught smoking and are really rude and outrageous,” she said. “I thought, why am I here? I didn’t feel as if I’d done anything wrong.”

Her family claims that the school suggested she could attach the ring to her school bag, but if that was not acceptable she might have to look for a school that would allow her to wear it.

Although Miss Playfoot has not worn the ring in classes since last April, she decided to take the school to the High Court “because I didn’t want them to think that they had won. You can’t treat Christians like this”.

Before moving ahead, I should point out that the ‘Biblical Quote’ in question - from 1 Thessalonians - is one where there is considerable debate as the correct translation from the original Greek, not least because its one of quotations that’s frequently cited by Evangelical Christians in support of their being a specific New Testament injunction against homosexuality. It could mean pretty much what the article claims, or it could mean specifically that ‘god wants you to be pure by staying clear of the temple prostitutes’, but what the hell, if Playfoot and her family want to put the ‘virginity pledge’ interpretation on the passage then that’s really up to them.

One feature in this that no one seems to be noting or commenting on is the point about the schools appearing to have no great problem over this whole ring business until a whole bunch of other girls joined in, which you might easily think is just an indication that the whole got to be a bid of a fad amongst a few of Playfoot’s friends.

However, there are a few pieces of information that haven’t made it in to print that raise one or two questions about Playfoot and this case, information that is conspicuous by its absence from the press coverage.

Let’s start with Playfoot and her parents, Heather and Phil, who, as has been widely reported, in the full time pastor at the King Church in Horsham.

So far, so good.

But what none of the articles mention is that Heather Playfoot is the company secretary of Silver Ring Thing (UK) Ltd, a not for profit company set up in the last year as the UK arm (or perhaps franchise might be a better term) of the Philadelphia-based originators of this programme.

Fans of the lies, damn lies and statistics school of thought might enjoy a page from the US website called ‘Teen STDs: Just the facts“, which omits one important statistic - 80% of teenagers taking the ‘chastity pledge’ in the US, end up having sex well before they ever get married. But then that’s not such a problem, as being a forgiving bunch, if you fall off the chastity wagon you can always do a resit (for a fee) and retake the pledge - nothing yet, however, to suggest that this mat get taken to its next logical step, the miracle of the immaculate restored hymen, possibly because they’re unsure how to price that service against stiff price competition for virgins from the greasy pervert market.

And Phil? Oh, he’s the Parents Programme Director of Silver Ring Thing (UK) Ltd.

Both work with Andy Robinson, who’s described as the head of the SRT programme in the UK and its:

…official promoter, distributor and Managing Director of The Silver Ring Thing (UK) Ltd. Andy is now the full time youth pastor for Kings Church in Horsham. Up until Dec 2005 Andy was the Sales Director for an international software company.

Robinson’s wife is, by the way, the UK programme director for… yes, you guessed it - Silver Ring Thing (UK) Ltd.

(Is it me or this all starting to sound a bit Watchdog/That’s Life?)

Robinson’s name is also on the Nominet registration for Silver Ring Thing (UK)’s website - http://www.silverringthing.org.uk - which is registered to what looks to be his home address in Horsham, and on the registration for ‘Playfoot’s’ website, although on this occasion he’s chosen to have his address omitted from the registration information on display - both trace back to the same IP address.

In fact, Andy couldn’t be more helpful and supportive of his franchise, oops, Playfoot’s human rights case, not only is he helpfully fielding all media enquiries, in conjunction with Paul Eddy of Paul Eddy PR in Bournmouth (Eddy also handles the PR and media relations for, amongst others, the Lawyer’s Christian Fellowship - who’re backing this case, of course - and other related Evangelical Christian pressure groups, which I guess makes him god’s own Max Clifford) but he’d be absolutely delighted to talk to journalists on Playfoot’s behalf:

Lydia Playfoot will not be giving any further interviews until the judgement has been handed down. However, Andy Robinson, director of the Silver Ring Thing will be delighted to help journalists. - from Playfoot’s website.

No such thing as bad publicity, eh? Especially when its free publicity, and the legal tab is (apparently) being picked up by donations - Playfoot’s’site’ has the obligatory donate button and tip jar.

No such thing as uncoached comments from Playfoot either, it seems, as Andy is also the ghost author of the press statement (pdf) issued on Playfoot’s behalf, which has been issued through Andy’s her website. Tsk - silly boy didn’t bother to clean out the document properties before posting the document to the website.

Oh, and did I mention that Playfoot’s left the school in question now (she is sixteen) so for her the whole ‘ring thing’ is a non-issue, personally, but obviously very much an issue for both her parents and Andy Robinson, as its the right of schools to enforce a uniform policy at the expense of their franchise that looks to be on trial here.

Oops, do I keep saying ‘franchise’? Silly me…

Right, let’s get to the bottom line.

Silver Ring Thing’s website doesn’t state what the cost of attending its four week ‘chastity course’ is (attendance required to get the ring) although it does ask for donations of £20 to cover the costs of those poor unfortunate kids who can’t afford to attend a course, and the ring itself is reported to cost £10 for the first one and £13 plus P&P for a replacement ring, which you can buy only if you show up on their database as having previously completed a course - at least I think its SRT’s database as there’s currently no registration on file for the company on the Information Commissioner’s Register of Data Controllers - oops.

Come on folks - £35 a year’s not that much to stump up to make your database all nice and legal. God would approve…

SRT’s online shop give a few more clues about the likely costs of their courses. It’s £40 for a ‘Leader’s Pack’ and £20 a piece for the Parent Pack and Student Pack - I guess that’s where the £20 donation for poor virgins goes - plus there’s a nice selection of t-shirts, baseball caps and beanies at £15 a time, badges and stickers (£5 for 8 ) and a hoodie for £20 -I guess this is one bunch of hoodies that Cameron won’t mind hugging, given half a chance.

But never mind all that, because it’s Playfoot’s ‘human rights’ that are really at stake here, even though chastity rings have no recognised status in the Christian religion whatsoever… well not outside SRT’s marketing department.

Now here’s a funny thing, as well.

In addition to using Phil Eddy PR for the media handling for this case, the SRT website also carries on its staff page, a photograph of a ‘media consultant’ named Denise Pfeiffer, although there’s no text profile for her at the moment, and a previous version of this page, which includes her profile has unfortunately not been cached by Google.

But not to worry, because a Google search for Pfeiffer does throw up some of the text that was picked up by Google’s spiders, text which describes her as:

a freelance writer and model based in the Midlands . She specialises in supplying wholesome, quality features to women’s magazines …

Which is obviously important as, according to her press statement, Playfoot feels really strongly about the way women are presented as sexual objects…

Increasingly, girls in particular are not looked on as human beings with value, and worth who have the right to say no to sex, or to keep sex for a loving, long-term relationship in marriage. It causes me great sadness to think that girls are often looked on as just sexual objects and others expect them to want sex and agree to sex, whatever the level of relationship.

Bit odd that, don’t you think?

The photo of Ms Pfeiffer is still on SRTs website - in fact, the photo they’re using is a cropped version of the photo below, which is by C Potter and which appears on her portfolio on the UK Model Jobs Pro website:

And very wholesome it is too, however there is also another photograph in her portfolio which, while wholesome enough as far as I’m concerned, may explain the sudden absence of any text on the SRT website referring to Pfeiffer and her modelling career…

————————————————————

UPDATE: It would appear that Ms Pfeiffer has become aware of this article and has removed the rather tasteful lingerie shot from her modelling profile and replaced it with this somewhat more demure effort.

Which is all rather a shame as now you’ll just have to make do with this photograph of Ms Pfeiffer is tasteful lingerie instead:

In case anyone’s wondering what the most appropriate quote for the occasion might be, can I recommend a slight paraphrase of this little gem, as spoken by Riddick in Pitch Black:-

“Did not know who [s]he was fuckin’ with.”

Oh, there’ll a bit more on Ms Pfeiffer on my follow-up post - Asexual Nazi’s for God - in a few minutes

————————————————————————

[Now back to the original story]

What was that you were saying Andy, err Lydia?

It causes me great sadness to think that girls are often looked on as just sexual objects…

Mmm… is Denise in the Evangelical doghouse over her lingerie shots, do you think?

But if so, why ditch the profile text from the staff page but not the photo?

Of course, there is the other possibility - that Denise is still very much in the fold (hence the photo) but that SRT figured that while the pretty lingerie shot in her portfolio didn’t quite fit the outraged moral crusader image they’re trying to weave around Playfoot, the simple expedient of removing her profile (and any reference to her modelling career) might be enough to throw journalists off the scent…

…which it seems to have done as this is yet another facet to this story that has had precisely zero attention… until us naughty inquisitive bloggers started poking around, of course.

But what the hell, its too late to be worrying about trifles like this, even if does make you curious about the full ‘why’ (and when) of this change to their website.

So where does all this leave us?

Well, with a conundrum for starters.

Why, if this ring was not apparently a problem at the outset, when Playfoot shipped up to school with it, did it suddenly become a problem later on, when the wearing of these rings started to spread to other girls.

To be honest, the whole uniform policy thing on jewellery has always been a bit vague - schools generally are not keen on kids wearing much more in the way of visible jewellery than plain ear studs, but when asked why tend to waffle on unconvincingly about health and safety and uniform policy without the greatest sense of conviction that they’re clear about why the don’t want kids wearing rings and other items of jewellery. If anything, the impression I’ve always got is that, deep down, schools just don’t want the hassle of dealing with irate parents if their precious daughter’s expensive jewellery gets lost or stolen during school time, so banning the wearing the of jewellery is a just a means to a bit quieter life and one less hassle to worry about.

What seems clear, however, is that the reports suggest that the school stepped in only after the chastity ring fad started to spread to other girls, which suggests that they may have been less concerned about the rings themselves than about our young heroine going about the school as a self-appointed ‘virgins for god’ recruiting sergeant - in which case the school would certainly have had a point in clamping down on this whole ring business. Religious freedom is one thing, Evangelical groups priming their kids to try and recruit followers during school hours is quite another and no school should be required to tolerate or accept organised proselytising in the playground.

Beyond that, one has to question not only the merits of Playfoot’s case but the motives of the people around her, especially if one factors in the ‘elephant in the room’ that the press are assiduously ignoring, the very obvious interest that both the Playfoots (Playfeet?) and Robinsons have, as directors of Silver Ring Thing (UK) Ltd, in obtaining a High Court ruling that gives their chastity campaign the legal cover of the Human Rights Act.

The more one examines the background to this case, the more one has to wonder whether what’s really being sought in the High Court is not legal support for the rights of individual teenagers to wear chastity rings in schools, but legal support for the efforts of an Evangelical Christian group to turn schools into recruiting offices for their particular US-import brand of god regardless of the wishes of schools, their governing bodies or the parents of other children.

Oh, and one more thing. Dates.

Remember right at the start of all this I mentioned that the date of the first Daily Mail coverage of the Playfoot’s case - which was this article on 17th October 2006?

Well, three days later, something else interesting happened, according to Companies House…

Company Details

The WebCHeck service is available from Monday to Saturday 7.00am to 12 Midnight UK Time

Name & Registered Office:
SILVER RING THING (UK) LTD
23 HAZEL CLOSE, SOUTHWATER
HORSHAM
WEST SUSSEX
RH13 9GN
Company No. 05973106

Status: Active
Date of Incorporation: 20/10/2006

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Now that is a coincidence, isn’t it?

Okay, time for a bit of analysis and a few thoughts on the Deputy Leadership contest.

I’ve included the round by round results, but done the numbers in more detail, especially in terms of how the redistributed votes split in each round, all of which is laid out in the this Excel file - labour-deputy-leadership.xls

So, without further ado, let’s get on with the results.

Round 1

Blears and the Blairite ‘Ultras’ bomb out in the first round on the back of a paltry 3% in the members’ section (and to think there were concerns expressed before the contest that her being Party Chair might give her an unfair edge) and another last place finish in the Union/Affiliates section, although she does roll in third amongst MPs and MEPs.

Cruddas has come from nowhere, before the campaign kicked off, to top the poll on first preferences (and presumably would have won if the vote had been run under FPTP) on the strength of a clear win in the Union/Affiliate section, beats Johnson in the members’ section and Benn in the MPs & MEPs section.

Harman has polled well amongst members despite a pretty lacklustre campaign, and having come second in the MPs & MEPs section (and overall) looks a stronger contender than she’s been given credit for.

The left/right split in the first round is 53.6% to 46.4% in the left’s favour.

Round 2

Johnson is the main beneficiary of the redistribution of the Blears vote - up 5.5% overall - but the left/right split actually swings further to the left by 4.4% (58% to 42%).

Blears goes out and the overall vote swings left???

Two things appear to have gone on here - Harman has picked up about a quarter of Blears’ vote (and around the same percentage in all three sections), which suggests that that’s Blears’ share of the chromosomal vote moving across to Harman.

Hain and Cruddas have also made marginal gains on this round (about 1%) and as I can’t imagine too many people actually switching from Blears to either its look as if quite a fair number of ‘Blears of nothing’ votes went in - anything up to around 20% would be my guess - making Hains’ and Cruddas’ first round showing look a touch stronger this round.

Benn also does badly out of Blears with a 1.8% pick-up, a third of that of Johnson and behind Harman as well.

Hain goes out.

Round 3

Hilary Benn finishes fourth and goes out, but what happened to the Hain vote?

This round sees a big swing back to the right, which for the first time takes a marginal lead in the overall voting (50.2% - 49.8%). Overall that suggests that Hain’s vote must have broken slightly to the right, rather than staying firmly with the left, which turns out to be backed up by the numbers which show that the Hain vote split fairly evenly across the four candidates, with Harman benefiting most (4.7%), Johnson and Benn picking up about the same (4.2% and 4.1%) and Cruddas losing out slightly (3.5%).

In the three sections, Harman has a slight advantage over Johnson in the pickup from Hain’s Union/Affiliate support, beats him comfortably in the members’ section (coming in only slightly behind Benn) and comes in more or less even with Johnson on picking up votes from Hain in the MPs/MEPs section.

For Cruddas, the redistribution of Hain’s votes is a bit of a disappointment as he comes in behind the other three remaining contenders in both the Union/Affiliates and Members’ sections while gaining a little ground in the MPs/MEPs section.

Throughout the contest it looked very much as if Hain lacked a clearly defined constituency to pitch to, which is evident is how his vote split when redistributed.

Round 4

Now we’ll see where the Benn vote went, and again its fairly even split - Johnson gets 8.4%, Harman 7.6% and Cruddas 6.5%, which puts Cruddas out.

The big news in this round is what happened to Benn’s in the member’s section, which broke a little over 60-40 against Johnson, which suggests that if Benn is to be considered centre-right then he’s only seen as marginally so by members and the Benn name still carries a fair bit of weight in left-wing circles - Hilary’s politics may be rather different from those of his father on many issues, but one has to wonder whether Tony’s reputation for being his own man hasn’t rubbed off on his son, which is why he’s pulled votes in from the left.

Harman picked up the most votes in the member’s section in this round, which swings things back towards the left in a big way, but the 2 to 1 break is a bit misleading on the strength of there being two centre-left candidates to one on the centre-right.

Round 5

And Harman takes it by a very narrow margin, after the Cruddas vote splits evenly in the Union/Affiliate section but breaks in Harman’s favour amongst members (5% - 3.8%) and MPs/MEPs (5.1%-2.5%).

Harman wins by a very narrow margin on the pickup from Cruddas in the members’ and MP/MEPs section. The Union/Affiliates section has little or no impact on the outcome in this round, although it must be disappointment to Johnson because his union background.

Conclusions

Cruddas lost the battle in the end, but as was apparent from Brown’s first speech as leader, won most of the arguments. Housing is right up near the top of the policy agenda and with the Deputy Leadership goes the job of reconnecting with the party’s membership base (and the Party Chairman[person?]ship), which, much to my amusement, means that Brown’s first clear decision as leader ended up sacking Blears by default.

Johnson put up a solid showing and should stay within the upper ministerial echelons on this showing, although he probably not done enough to get one of a big three/four portfolios (Treasury, Foreign Office, Justice/Home Office).

Benn was down for better things before the election on the strength of his performance on International Development and his placing will neither hurt or enhance his chances of promotion in the next Cabinet reshuffle.

As for Harman… who knows quite what to make of her result. She certainly benefited from a solid chromosomal vote - witness the 20-25% of the Blears vote she picked up in the second round - and one has to suspect that she also gained from being the relatively inoffensive middle ground candidate that supporters of Benn, Hain and Cruddas could safely switch to on the anyone but a Blarite tactical vote.

And that leaves Hain and Blears as the losers and the candidates most likely to warming the backbenches come Thursday.

Ministerial chances

Harman: Picked up the Party Chair along with the Deputy Leadership, which makes it clear that she won’t be Deputy Prime Minister. Does she also need a ministerial portfolio to keep her media profile high?

Not a major department certainly, but should pick up the equality portfolio from DCLG, on which she’s a much safer bet than Ruth ‘Opus Dei’ Kelly.

Johnson: One of the policy priority ministries, certainly, but not a move upwards into the great offices of state. May stay at education to finish the job or possibly pick up DCLG to move the local goverment reform agenda.

Benn: Widely viewed amongst the membership as a future Foreign Secretary but is it too soon for him to make the jump? Much depends on where Straw goes and how Brown sees Milliband, but could find himself at the FO if Straw takes the Justice portfolio and Deputy Prime Minister as some expect.

Cruddas: Will he be the new housing minister? Short on ministerial experience, which goes against him, but did very well in connecting with the membership during the campaign, so maybe not housing but a role within DCLG on local government reform and engagement with communities.

Hain/Blears - off the backbenches one suspects, unless Blears’s unswerving support for Blair sees her moved to the Lords in his resignation honours list.

At best, Hain might hang on to the Wales portfolio.

Sectional Results
In the sections, Cruddas topped the poll in the Union/Affiliate section right up until his elimination in the last but one round, and picked up 40% of the votes in that section.

Harman’s big success was in the the Member’s section, beating Johnson by 56.5% to 43.5%, having lead in that section throughout the whole contest, with Benn running second up until his elimination.

Johnson topped the poll amongst MPs/MEPs (53.7%-46.3% in the final round) and, again, led that section throughout the entire contest.

The turnout in each section is reported to be 99% in the MPs/MEPs section, 53% amongst members and a poor 8% in the Union/Affiliates section.

What these results show most clearly is that the days when the members were regarded as a dangerous hotbed of unelectable hard-left activists are long gone - if it can be said that there’s a shift to the left at all, then that shift goes only so far as the Benn/Harman axis, which is about where the Party should be as a credible, mainstream centre-left, social democratic party.

All the Blarite talk of Labour abandoning the political centre-ground and lurching to the left is complete nonsense. There’s a need, and a demand amongst members, for the party to spread a little more to the left in a couple of key policy areas - housing being the obvious one, where the balance between ownership and the social/rental sector needs attention, and the justice/security portfolios need to be rebalanced so that were more visibly seen to be defending our traditional civil liberties in the face of threats to national security and not curtailing them.

Moreover, there is a real need to recast some areas of policy into an authentically Labour narrative. One of things that has clearly been problematic during the Blair years is Blair’s own lack of substantive roots in the party and his poor understanding of the party’s intellectual foundations and history.

Take the NHS and moves towards greater localism (e.g. Foundation hospitals); under Blair this policy was presented as something entirely new and largely without intellectual or political roots within the Labour canon. Nothing could be further from the truth. The tensions between centralism and localism in the NHS (and the debate surrounding the balance between the two) stretch right back to the very foundation of the NHS in thq 1940s and the heated debates of the time between Bevan and Morrison, who favoured a decentralised model that is not that dissimilar from that which the current party leadership have been trying to take forward.

Internally, one of Brown’s big strengths is likely to be his understanding of the party’s roots, history and intellectual traditions, which, if used well, may take some of the sting out of some of the more divisive policy issues of the Blair era. On public sector reform, in particular, we already know that there will be no great substantives change in policy, but what Brown can give the party that Blair couldn’t is a clear sense of how those reforms are actually part of a clearly Labour narrative founded on the long-standing values and intellectual traditions of the party rather than mere pragmatic borrowings from the Tory Party, as too often seemed the case under Blair.

Perhaps the last thing to say here is to address a stream of posts about the Deputy Leadership by Luke Akehurst, who’s about the most openly Blairite Labour blogger out there.

First things first - calm down, Luke, you’ll end up on suicide watch if you’re not careful.

Second, try looking at what actually happened with these election.

1. However you look at it, the old ‘hard-left’ has been almost completely eclipsed. Not only did McDonnell fail to make the leadership ballot but few but his own supporters had any major complaints about it or took the view that the transition between Blair and Brown had been devalued due to the lack of left wing challenge.

2. Cruddas was much the most left-wing candidate in the Deputy Leadership contest and his main platform amounted primarily to one of paying more attention to the one hot issue in many of our heartland constituencies - housing - and a call to reconnect with a membership that, as the results demonstrate, sit somewhere (politically) between Hilary Benn and Harman.

Not much in that, then, to support the idea of the party lurching to the left or red under the bed or whatever it is you’re worried about, just a good strong belief in working from a platform of social justice to build a fair society.

It wasn’t the Amicus/TGWU vote that swung it for Harman - unless you think that somehow being an ex-Postie gave Johnson a divine right to sweep up the union votes when Cruddas was eliminated - it was Harman’s strong performance in the membership section and the 2:1 split in the pickup from Cruddas in the MPs/MEPs section than swung the final vote. All this talk of:

I can’t help thinking that all this stems back to Sir Ken Jackson losing the Amicus General Secretaryship by a couple of hundred votes a few years ago.

At least we know Harriet will follow instructions from Gordon.

Those of us on the right of the party need a serious strategic rethink - the two most left-talking candidates came 1st and 3rd so something was badly wrong with our campaigning or our organisation.

And…

As the gossip from the count is that the union members polled heavily the way they were advised to by their executives the internal party political priority for the long term is to get the unions back to being what they historically have been - the bastion of the right of the party. If we don’t ensure the successors to the current generation of General Secretaries when they retire are from the moderate wing of the party we’ll end up in a decade’s time with Brown’s successor in a contested election being from the left.

…is hardly helpful, in fact it all sound a little reminiscent of the kind of talk that would, during the 80s, have kicked off questions about whether there was a ‘party within a party’ operating - and we know where that led.

Seriously, Luke, if you actually look at where we are today, then its obvious that we’re not going to shift on economic policy, simply keep a steady course. We need to tone things down on justice and security, but that more about quelling some of the ‘not on my watch’ panic around terrorism and telling the Daily Mail/Express to fuck off and stop jumping to their histrionic and sometimes racist bullshit. On Education and the NHS, we need to cut out much of the managerialist waffle and get the narrative right so we take the membership with us on the reform agenda by linking it clearly to substantive Labour values - its then just a matter of delivering. On local government, the new emphasis on housing and localism needs to be welded together into new strand of bottom-up municipalism for the 21st century.

And generally we just need to get on with the job of beating up on the Tories at every possible opportunity.

What there to worry about in any of that?