Mike Fairclough resigned from the job he had held for 20 years at state-funded West Rise Junior School in Eastbourne in November 2022 after being investigated by the council three times.
Mr. Fairclough told The Epoch Times he had no choice but to resign after East Sussex County Council refused to rule out investigating him again—even though he was cleared of misconduct on each occasion.
He will take his former employers to a tribunal later this year, where he will be represented by leading civil liberties barrister Paul Diamond, with the support of the Free Speech Union.
Father-of-four Mr. Fairclough said he raised his concerns in “as moderate a way” as he could, but he regarded it “as part of my professional duty to speak out against the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination to children—in fact it (was) my legal duty as well.”
He said he tried to stick to agreed facts on the risk-benefit analysis of the vaccines for children, rather than trying to lead parents—who might feel confused and conflicted—down any “rabbit holes.”
“Children are at an extremely low risk from serious COVID-19, the vaccines pose known risks, there’s no long-term safety data for the vaccines, and anyone can still catch or spread COVID-19 when vaccinated against the virus. That was all anyone needed to know.”
“I was investigated on three consecutive occasions so there were three anonymous whistleblowing complaints to my employer,” he said.
He was told that the first complaint came from a group of retired medical professionals who had seen his Twitter posts, and another was made by a “group of concerned parents”—but not parents at West Rise.
‘Treated as a Potential Terrorist’
The final time he was investigated followed a referral from the Department of Education to Prevent—part of the government’s counter-terrorism policing strategy. After being cleared of any misconduct, he asked his employer for assurance that he would not be investigated again.The local authority refused to rule out further investigation, which Mr. Fairclough believes was “their attempt to silence me through the complaints procedure.”
Mr. Fairclough’s legal case against his former employer rests on four separate grounds. He is claiming he suffered discrimination on the grounds of his belief in critical thinking, as holding a “philosophical belief” is a protected characteristic under law in the same way as holding a religious belief is.
“I have a philosophical belief in critical thinking, freedom of speech, and safeguarding children,” he said.
“Put really simply ... if I think that something is potentially harmful to a child then I will express my opinion about it, and I think that that’s traditionally how effective safeguarding works.”
His case will mirror that of sacked ambulance operations manager Paul Bailey, who is taking West Midlands Ambulance Service to a tribunal, with the judge having already ruled that the claimant’s philosophical belief in homeopathy and bodily autonomy qualifies as a protected characteristic.
The belief must be proved a core and consistent part of a person’s life, with accepted examples including humanism, atheism, spiritualism and veganism.
Some legal experts and free speech advocates have warned that relying on statutory law, such as the Equality Act, risks undermining the basic assumption under Common Law that free speech is absolute and therefore should not need to be “protected” through statutory instruments.
‘Duty Bound to Make a Protected Disclosure’
The third part of his claim relates to the local authority preventing him from making a “protected disclosure” as he believes he had a legal and moral duty in his position to raise the alarm to potential harm being caused to children.The fourth part of the claim is for constructive dismissal because he believes his employers made his position at the school untenable.
“It got to the point where I couldn’t live like that, knowing I would have to undergo these quite horrible investigations,” he said.
He is applying for headteacher roles but said it is difficult as he is “regarded as a controversial figure” even though statistics show that most UK parents agree with him, as they chose not to allow their children to take the COVID-19 jabs.
“In the 9-11 cohort ... 89.5 percent did not receive a single jab despite the multi-million-pound media campaign and all the pressure,” he said. “And less than 50 percent of the 12-15 cohort received it.”
“I never had a single complaint from any parent at the school, as far as I know,” he said. “Parents supported me. I ran that school for 20 years as the headteacher, and I did quite controversial things, all the way back to 2010.”
These “controversial things” included keeping a herd of water buffalo on the school site, teaching the children how to handle shotguns, and how to skin rabbits and light fires, in an effort to get them more in tune with the natural environment instead of being on a screen all day.
He said the local media and local authority were enthusiastic about his unconventional methods, “right up until the moment I began speaking out about the COVID-19 jabs.”
‘Privately, Colleagues Agreed With Me’
He believes people are “massively self-censoring” about many things, including vaccination and gender ideology, which led him to draw comparisons with classical mythology and the need to have courage like the characters in the Greek and Roman stories.“I have lots of headteacher colleagues (who) have privately told me that they agree with my stance, but they can’t speak about it because they have said they are scared about losing their job,” he said.
East Sussex County Council said in a statement to the Epoch Times: “We are aware that Mr Fairclough has made a claim to the Employment Tribunals. The county council has submitted a defence to the claim and it would be inappropriate for us to comment further.”
