A Conservative councillor who suggested teachers should be sacked if they did not go to school yesterday has been slated for his remarks.
Responding to a social media post attacking teachers who stayed at home over coronavirus-related safety concerns yesterday, Wirral councillor David Burgess-Joyce said: “Should do what Reagan did when the Air Traffic Controllers decided to strike.
"He sacked those who didn't return to work. Had the desired result."
Defending teachers, Bora Oktas, from the National Education Union (NEU), said: “Wirral residents will be aware that this is not the first time that Cllr Burgess-Joyce has made ill-informed, intemperate and offensive comments on social media.”
Mr Oktas, the NEU’s North West regional officer, added: “Teachers have played an admirable and courageous role in protecting our communities from an alarming increase in local coronavirus rates.
“We wouldn’t want to detract from that by providing his latest nonsense with undue oxygen, other than to say that any pent up frustration he has about the regrettable situation the nation finds itself in would be better directed at members of his own party’s parliamentary front-bench.”
Since yesterday morning, which was the first day back at school after Christmas for many primary school children, it has been announced that all schools in England will be closed until mid-February as part of a third national lockdown.
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Cllr Burgess-Joyce, who represents the ward of Greasby, Frankby and Irby, sought to explain his comments today.
Speaking to the ECHO, he said: “We have a generation of children and young people who have a massive gap in their education caused by Covid-19. If it is safe to do so all teachers should undertake their roles.
“There are so many other important jobs in the NHS, supermarkets, utilities etc where we expect them to work to keep the UK going; why not teachers?"
The Tory councillor has made several other controversial statements in recent years.
In 2019, Cllr Burgess-Joyce was criticised for making offensive comments comparing Labour MP David Lammy to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the American white supremacist hate group, which has been responsible throughout history for the murder and persecution of black people.
He has since apologised for the comments.
Last year, Cllr Burgess-Joyce said that a proposal to review street names in Wirral associated with slavery was part of a “Marxist national coup”.
