A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 15th September 1987.

The spectacle of the Dewsbury parents as you put it (Thursday), is not a dismal advertisement for parent power, but a dismal advertisement for local authority power.  Instead of questioning the parents’ motives you should question the local education authority’s.

It is crystal clear that the authority’s refusal to admit the 26 mainly English children to Overthorpe school is not due to logistical considerations (whatever that means) as you claim, but to the authority’s wish to reduce the preponderance of Asian children at Headfield school.  The Dewsbury parents decline to have their children used for this piece of social engineering.

It is only the Alice-in-Wonderland world inhabited by the media and the education service in this country which finds the parents’ attitude difficult to understand or accept.  Were the parental choice prerogative promised in the Conservatives’ manifesto already law, the spectacle you so piously deplore would not have occurred because the local education authority would have not had power to prevent the children going to Overthorpe school where it is  admitted there is room for them.  It is only pride of power on the part of the authority which prevents their acceding to the parents’ request.