What was supposed to have been a personal triumph for British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw turned into a huge diplomatic fiasco and a high-profile nightmare for the Foreign Office.
LONDON: What was supposed to have been a personal triumph for British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw turned into a huge diplomatic fiasco and a high-profile nightmare for the Foreign Office. Condoleezza Rice, touted to be the most powerful woman in the world, was forced to sneak into a school in Blackburn through a back entrance to avoid protests from schoolchildren and their parents.
The US Secretary of State’s embarrassment was heightened as it came just after the symbolic highlight of the reciprocal visit to Straw’s home tome, the visit to a local mosque was cancelled at the last minute amid fears of protests from both Muslims and the Stop the War Coalition.
Protestors, mostly second and third generation Muslims from Gujarat and Maharashtra, chanted “Condi go home” outside the 1,200-pupil Pleckgate High School in Blackburn in Northwest England, as they waited for Rice to arrive.
Security personnel instead guided the US Secretary of State and the Foreign Secretary to a back entrance and escorted them in without being seen by the protestors. “If she can talk the talk then she should have walked the walk,” said 16-year-old student Asma Patel outside the school, disappointed that Rice used a back door.
Scores of parents at Pleckgate High School were very angry when they found on Thursday that Rice would be visiting their children’s school and kept their children at home as a mark of protest. “I don’t want her in my home town,” said 33-year-old Rabiya Adam. “I didn’t send my children to school because I don’t want her preaching to them what she did in Iraq.”
When questioned by the media about the protests Rice said, “I have no problem with protests. People have a right to protest in a democracy, and I have no problems with people exercising their democratic rights.”
As Rice left the school police prevented protesters following her. Hanif Dudhuala, a member of the community forum at Pleckgate, said, “We have been told that Rice would like to talk to protesters. If that’s true, I would ask her to turn her words into actions so we can raise our concerns to her.”
Blackburn is also Straw’s parliamentary constituency and where a fifth of voters are Muslim. Many had come here from India in the early 1950s to work in cotton mills.
Straw had hoped to use Rice’s visit to show his close association with moderate Muslim opinion. Blackburn has 300 mosques and has mainly avoided associations with Islamic extremism, and moderate Muslims are strongly represented in local civic bodies. Despite the backlash against the Iraq war Straw has been able to hold on to his Blackburn seat in the last election.
Rice’s trip to this low-key town was a reciprocal visit for taking Straw to her hometown of Birmingham Alabama in 2005.
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