Ideologue Attacks School

Britain is coming to terms with the latest in a series of attacks on young people as a lone ideologue, with a history of involvement in a dangerous right wing group, once again targeted pupils at a state school in Central London.

Witnesses of the attack, which took place barely an hour after pupils received their GCSE results, described how the celebratory atmosphere suddenly turned as a crazed attacker entered the school gates and made a beeline for students discussing their grades in the playground. The man was seen accosting vulnerable pupils and scrawling letters over their foreheads with a permanent red marker. A number of pupils attempted to flee the scene but those who did escape attack were later caught, tagged and given ASBOs by officers from the Metropolitan Police.

One witness, who preferred to remain anonymous, explained her despair as the attacker roamed the playground: “At some point it [the pen] must have ran out, but he had these sticky labels, he must have prepared them earlier, it was definitely premeditated. He was relentless, pinning them down and plastering them with these labels, F here, D- there, snatching their mark sheets and sniggering. The kids were really weeping, it was awful.”

As the attacker fled, the shocked victims were taken away by Action 4 Employment representatives and assigned to Workfare initiatives across the country. The Headmaster and teachers at the school are inconsolable, but the accused, a Michael Gove, has refused to explain his motives in any coherent fashion, only stating that the attack was “radical but necessary.”

This was just the latest in a string of attacks and follows two similar ambushes. The first took place a week ago in Croydon where a man, matching the description of Mr Gove, was found defacing the congratulations cards of students as they received their A-Level results. The other incident took place in Basingstoke in June when poorly spelled, but neatly inscribed graffiti was found on the exterior of a school which had that morning received its SATs results for the academic year.

Unconfirmed reports are also emerging that a copycat attacker has been seen lurking around a hospital on Tyneside. The criminal, described by one young man as a “grey-haired manky codger”, was bursting onto cancer wards and rewriting patients’ test results. He could be heard repeatedly muttering under his breath, “if all the tests fail, then it’s up for sale.” Doctors and nurses later told of their bemusement at seeing the man terrifying patients and riding roughshod over their clinical work.

This epidemic of unhinged violence seems only to be getting worse. It must be stopped.

By Alex Charnley who Tweets from @alex_charnley