Basically I lost my job at Oxford Brookes University because I had a nervous breakdown. And I had a nervous breakdown because I had been racially harassed in the area where I lived – New Marston, Oxford – with gangs of kids shouting “Paki” and making monkey noises at me till I couldn’t even face taking my own little child to the park, and with adults joining in from time to time. Most white people don’t seem to know or care about what goes on in the poorer areas of Oxford, and that includes both management and union at Oxford Brookes. I’m taking Brookes to the Employment Tribunal (in Reading, hearing on 7th-8th July), so I can’t really go into the details of the case yet. But the union didn’t show even a flicker of sympathy for what I’d been through.

The interesting thing is, I finally got to the stage where I told the union that if they didn’t apologise for how they’d treated me, I would publish my correspondence with them on the web. Then they FREAKED! One union representative, Ann Black, who is also a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, wrote to me saying “I assume you have already copied this to , all of whom figure by name, as I and others may wish to make a collective response.” A collective response! A lovely collective of management and union! Doesn’t that warm the cockles of your heart? And a few days later, I did indeed get a letter from management’s solicitor, trying to warn me off publishing the correspondence. So nice to know that unions can cooperate with employers, specially when it comes to making sure that sacked employees keep quiet about what has been going on. See my website if you want more details.