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		</div><p>A judge in England is set to reconsider an order barring protesters objecting to the teaching of LGBT lessons demonstrating outside a Birmingham primary school.</p>
<p>Bosses at Birmingham City Council took High Court action after weeks of protests at Anderton Park Primary School against the teaching of certain aspects of relationship education.</p>
<p>Following an initial hearing in London, a judge imposed an interim order with an exclusion zone barring protesters from outside the school gates on May 31 – while children were on half-term holidays.</p>
<p>The order was made against three individuals, the protest’s main organisers Shakeel Afsar and Amir Ahmed, and parent Rosina Afsar, as well as “persons unknown”.</p>
<figure id="attachment_133642" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-133642" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="size-full wp-image-133642" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/462F28AD-2732-4910-8E90-7EC776ADE781.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="450" data-wp-pid="133642" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-133642" class="wp-caption-text">Amir Ahmed, Rosina Afsar and Shakeel Afsar, who have been demonstrating against relationship education materials used at the school</figcaption></figure>
<p>However, as protesters were given no warning of the council’s application, a new hearing got under way at the High Court in Birmingham today to hear their views.</p>
<p>The school’s head teacher Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson has been in court along with about 30 of the protest supporters.</p>
<p>She previously branded the protests “toxic and nasty” and has allegedly received threats since protests began.</p>
<p>Mr Afsar has denounced the making of threats.</p>
<p>He has repeatedly claimed the “peaceful protests”, often featuring a megaphone, are being held because the school’s head has not properly consulted with parents about their concerns the relationships teaching is not “age appropriate”.</p>
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<p>Mr Afsar has also claimed the school’s teaching of particular relationship education materials is “over-emphasising a gay ethos”.</p>
<p>Ms Hewitt-Clarkson said she has met with parents who have had concerns.</p>
<figure id="attachment_133643" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-133643" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="size-full wp-image-133643" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/4DD32E9A-E6A9-4846-8C63-0BC1A381AC5C.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="400" data-wp-pid="133643" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-133643" class="wp-caption-text">Anderton Park head teacher Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson arriving at the court hearing</figcaption></figure>
<p>The interim order had barred protesters from gathering or encouraging others to gather outside or near the school, distributing leaflets and from making offensive comments about staff on social media.</p>
<p>The fresh hearing was set to examine the separate issues of whether the interim injunction should stay in place in its current form, ahead of considering a full trial of the issues surrounding the injunction.</p>
<p>Mr Justice Mark Warby QC set a date for that trial, estimated to take two to three days, to be held between July 22 and July 31.</p>
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<p>Turning to the interim injunction, which he will rule on later today, the judge then asked for legal submissions from both the council and named defendants.</p>
<p>Barrister Jonathan Manning, setting out the reasons for the local authority seeking its interim injunction, said: “The aim was not to prevent people expressing strongly held views about issues of equality and education in schools.</p>
<p>“It is to protect the school, by virtue of small number of roads around it, from behaviour which on any basis it is submitted is unacceptable and intolerable”.</p>
<figure id="attachment_133645" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-133645" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="size-full wp-image-133645" src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/F8B5E169-AD47-4DCD-8096-CCB4659585AB.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="400" data-wp-pid="133645" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-133645" class="wp-caption-text">Protesters outside the exclusion zone earlier this month</figcaption></figure>
<p>He added it was “no part” of the council’s case that the “defendants’ views were unacceptable to be aired”, but that demonstrations had got “totally out of hand”.</p>
<p>Mr Manning said the “urgency” and “the risk of further escalating conduct” had forced the local authority to act quickly – and not give the usual three days’ notice to defendants that an injunction was being sought.</p>
<p>The council’s barrister said there had been talk in literature of a “national protest” outside the school, leading to the education chiefs closing early on the last day before the May half-term.</p>
<p>Mr Manning pointed out, as a result, that protesters “brought forward” their protest on the last day of school on May 24, to “coincide” with the earlier hometime for children.</p>
<p>He added that counter-protesters putting up placards in support of the LGBT community at the school “had eggs thrown at them”.</p>
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<p>Mr Manning said Ms Hewitt-Clarkson had described the protests, in her witness statement, as being “volatile, aggressive and intimidating behaviour by Mr Afsar and his colleagues”.</p>
<p>He added it had therefore been “a combination of matters that led to a no-notice application”.</p>
<p>Mr Manning said there had been some remarks around the protests, claiming people at the school were “paedophiles” and had “a paedophile agenda”.</p>
<p>The defendants’ barrister John Randall QC, responding, claimed some of the evidence before the judge was full of “selective highlights” from the council’s witnesses.</p>
<p>He added: “We are told by claimants’ witnesses that police officers attended ‘almost daily’, ‘on numerous occasions’, ‘on most days’.</p>
<p>“Yet there has not been a single arrest for any public order offence, let alone for any form of assault, and that is no coincidence.”</p>
<p>He added: “The picture painted initially – and the evidence now before you is, in my submission, a misleading and seriously exaggerated picture which crucially suggests that the demonstrations or protests, call it what you will, have crossed the line into non-lawful demonstration.</p>
<p>“Whereas in practice it would require a snowflake sensitivity to regard these as terrifying or threatening demonstrations.”</p>
<p>The hearing continues.</p>
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