Jewellery and Dress Codes (redux)
21 Sep, 09 | by Iain Brassington
It must have been a slow news day: a nurse is seeking legal advice after being told by her employers that she wasn’t allowed to wear a necklace at work. What’s so - ahem - special about this is that it’s a crucifix necklace:
Mrs Chaplin has sought advice from the Christian Legal Centre (CLC).
Its founder, barrister Andrea Minichiello Williams, said patients would be “astonished” at the trust’s actions.
“You cannot separate a person’s faith and motivation from other areas of their life, including what they do with the majority of their time: work.
“Unfortunately an aggressive, secularist, politically-correct agenda is being driven in the NHS and other public sectors at present.”
The CLC said it intended to assist the nurse in exercising her human rights.
Human rights? Um… nope. You might have a right to religious practice (and even then, it presumably can’t be more than a right to practice your religion in private, can it?), but I can’t for the life of me see how wearing a crucifix is central to anyone’s religious practice - rather, it’s an advertisement of faith, and there’s no right to proselytise or advertise. Moreover, talk of “an aggressive, secularist, politically-correct agenda” just looks foolish - which is appropriate, becasue it is. A hospital is a secular institution, dammit. So’s the NHS. It’s not about pushing a secularist, PC agenda: it’s about being secular and not having to bend to the non-secular.
What seems particularly disingenuous about this is the way in which the CLC presents this as an attack on Christianity, rather than a simple application of a rule about jewellery. The Daily Fail seems particularly keen to present the story in that light:
Christian nurse removed from frontline duty for wearing cross necklace
screams the headline, before churning out the same quotations as the BBC (which makes me wonder whether the journalists reporting the story for either body have done more than recycle a CLC press release). However, across at Tabloid Watch, MacGuffin points out that
[i]f [the story had] read ‘Nurse removed from frontline duty for wearing necklace’ would anyone be interested? No. But that is the story.
Or, rather, the non-story. Would an NHS trust be justified in forbidding Christian jewellery? Nope. Would it be justified in forbidding certain kinds of jewellery across the board? Um… yes. Obviously.
Finally, the nurse in question does herself no favours:
“Everyone I have ever worked with has clearly known I am a Christian - it is what motivates me to care for others,” she said.
To which the obvious retort is this: do you mean that, were it not for your religion, you wouldn’t care for others? That the non-religious are somehow uncaring? Really?
Hi, Iain.
It might be worth noting that Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (presumably the key right under issue) states:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”
This is, I think, capable of a broader interpretation than you allow (though I imagine you’d maintain that wearing a necklace is not a manifestation of belief). And anyway, as is the case with other ECHR rights, there is qualification:
“Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
So there we are.
John Coggon
September 21st, 2009 at 11:58 am
Thanks for this - the ECHR interpretation does seem a bit broader than I’d thought. But only a bit - and I think that the moral point stands however you cut the legislative pie.
Iain Brassington
September 21st, 2009 at 12:54 pm
The critical question is, do we insist symbols of relgion that violate a dress code be removed unless said religion requires it ie: a headress/burqa, yamika or sikh wrist bracelet?
if found to violate a specific health and safety code, it is understandable such as the case where Kirpans are not permitted on planes. but what if said religious implements violate dress codes that are based on uniformity but not safety?
Jay Coba
September 21st, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Jay - Good question. My inclination here is that there is no religious injunction so strict as to mean that it can’t be bent if public health is at risk - that is to say, if maintaining a particular part of the dress code puts others in definable danger, my hunch is that most believers’d recognise that they have not only a reason, but a compelling reason, to abandon that item of dress, or to find some way to minimise the risk. Moreover, I think that they’d have the support of most religious authorities (assuming that the permission of a man with a beard - because it invariably is a man with a beard - is important).
If - and this is hypothetical - a person insists that they cannot modify their practice, then I think there’s scope for some heel-digging here: I think it’d be permissible to say that they can’t do the job. That’s not unreasonable.
The uniformity point is an interesting one. Through gritted teeth, I can accept that people do have all kinds of weird and wonderful beliefs, and that there’s a ceteris paribus reason to accommodate them if and when possible. With that in mind, it should be possible for uniforms to be a bit less than uniform, and we see that sort of thing in everyday life anyway. For example, school uniforms can be modified to accommodate a headscarf, and I don’t see why a medic’s costume couldn’t do something similar (after all, a scarf does at least keep hair out of the way, so might serve the same function as the hat worn by the girl on the deli counter…). Bluntly, a dress code oughtn’t really to have to be that restrictive to begin with.
Iain Brassington
September 21st, 2009 at 10:16 pm