Courtney, like all Bilton School students, had been encouraged to wear ‘traditional’ outfits for Culture Day, and to ‘proudly represent their heritage’, including their ‘nationality or family heritage’.

You might say Courtney’s outfit was not exactly ‘traditional’, inspired by Geri Halliwel’s famous Union Jack dress from the 1997 Brit Awards. But that was clearly not the issue. What the school’s instructions really meant was that she should dress as any nationality or heritage, so long as it’s not British. According to Courtney’s father, Stuart Field, the school also turned several other pupils away at the gates on Culture Day, including a boy with a St George’s flag, a boy with a Welsh flag and a boy dressed as a farmer with a checked shirt and a traditional flat cap.

Courtney’s school also stopped her from giving a speech about what being British meant to her. ‘In Britain’, she would have said, ‘we have lots of traditions including drinking tea, our love for talking about the weather and we have the Royal Family’. ‘We have amazing history, like kings and queens, castles, and writers like Shakespeare.’ It also praised British humour, ‘our values of fairness and politeness’, and fish and chips. Not exactly Enoch’s ‘Rivers of Blood’, is it?

Exit quote: “The school has since issued an apology, but this is hardly an isolated incident. Far too many British institutions see any expression of patriotism, no matter how mild or innocent, as a problem to be contained.”