Enoch Burke: a tale with no end in sight
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh
8 September 2024
Enoch Burke arrested.
Enoch Burke is back in the headlines. Once more he turned up to his place of work where he is engaged in a dispute with his employers. He had been ordered on repeated occasions by the courts not to approach his place of employment and has been jailed on a number of occasions for refusing to obey the courts instructions.
There are a number of points that jump out on the issue. The first one is that he is being jailed for contempt of court. Contempt of court is an arcane and reactionary piece of legislation. There is no due process and no right of appeal. It has been used by the state on numerous occasions against striking workers and the left. Former Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins and then councillor Clare Daly were jailed for contempt of court over their refusal to give assurances that they would not take part in bin charges protests.(1) The Rossport Five anti-Shell protestors were also jailed for contempt of court and spent 94 days in jail.(2) Now, arising out of the Enoch Burke case, there has been some discussion on the use of contempt of court orders in legal circles.(3)
The legal niceties aside, there are important political issues at stake. Burke has been jailed because he refuses to not turn up at his place of work, where he is in dispute with management. His utterly reactionary religious views, his image and some of the tactics used by his family, or antics as some may put them, have made him an easy target for the media and the subject of mockery. The Waterford Whispers has developed a logo for its merchandise Enoching: to repeatedly turn up where you are not wanted. But that is exactly what striking workers do all the time. They turn up outside their place of work to picket it. In some cases, workers have been victims of a Lock Out. That is what happened to the Debenhams’ workers. They company shut them out. That time the Gardaí tried to use Covid legislation to stop the workers picketing the company.
Now we have for the first time perhaps a well-established principle in law, that a company, in this case a school may seek to have an employee they are in dispute with banned from turning up at their place of work in order to work, in the case of lock outs, or at some point it may well be used to against striking workers to prevent picketing. So far, the left has gone along with this due to the issues surrounding Burke’s case rather than the matters of law which will be used against them at some point in the future as it has been used in the past.
Burke to be very clear, is in dispute with the management at the school over his refusal to use preferred pronouns for a student at the school. This student is a minor and his family were unaware that it was their child at the centre of the dispute for a long time, until it was information from the courts made them aware of it.(4) The child in question had apparently not even asked to addressed by the pronouns the school was insisting on teachers using. There are a whole host of other issues where something similar may arise, causing problems for teachers. It is not limited to this one issue and a principle has been established so far that schools can impose ideological norms on teachers and this is the heart of the matter. An anti-scientific view of the world, as equally reactionary as Burke’s own religious beliefs, is being imposed on teachers around the country with the message that you will lose your job if you don’t toe the line and you may end up in prison if you engage in a labour dispute. It is noteworthy that the school processed its dispute with Burke in record time, something many schools have failed to do in cases of serious concern.
Notes
(1) Irish Examiner (19/09/2003) TD jailed over bin charge protest. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30114169.html
(2) Irish Examiner (30/09/2005) Rossport Five released from prison. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30223251.html
(3) Irish Times (23/04/2024) Contempt of court law is a ‘minefield’ requiring urgent overhaul, says Supreme Court judge. Mary Carolan. https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/04/23/contempt-of-court-law-a-minefield-requiring-urgent-overhaul-says-supreme-court-judge/
(4) Irish Independent
(16/03/2023) Parent of transgender student in Enoch Burke row expresses
safety concern for their family. Shane Phelan. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/parent-of-transgender-student-in-enoch-burke-row-expresses-safety-concern-for-their-family/42390736.html?errorCode=0