I’ve known just two people with the Christian name Enoch. The first was Enoch Powell, who had a considerable intelligence but who in the end chose to throw his lot in with racism and unionism. The second was Enoch Burke, who is at this moment, to the best of my knowledge, in jail. Why? Because, while a teacher at Wilson’s Hospital School, he refused to address a trans pupil as ‘They’ rather than ‘we’.
A small but interesting point: in French, a plural pronoun (‘Vous’) is used to address a superior or someone you’re not well acquainted with; you’d use ‘Tu’ with friends or family. Mathematically it sounds daft to address an individual as ‘they’, but there is precedence.
Anyway, Enoch Burke was a teacher in Wilson’s Hospital School in Westmeath, but as he refused to do the plural thing with a single pupil, he was sacked. Burke considered this unjust, and has been showing up at the school for months, supported by his siblings. He has already served a period in prison for disobeying a court injunction to stay away from the school. He’s now on his way to or has arrived at prison again for refusing to observe the court’s judgement about staying away.
It’s an absorbing case and one in which I find myself split. On the one hand, addressing a student as ‘they’ rather than ‘you’ doesn’t seem that big a deal. On the other hand Burke insists he has the right to follow his conscience on this, and has acted accordingly. I think Burke is probably wrong but I have admiration for his refusal to bend, even if that means time in prison.
Burke, incidentally, has an interesting family background. They come from Castlebar, County Mayo. They are fundamentalist evangelic Christians. The parents Martina and Sean have ten children – Ammi, Elijah, Enoch, Esther, Isaac, Memima, Josiah, Keren, Kezia and Simeon. The father is a qualified electrician, the mother a qualified teacher. All of their children were home schooled and have Old Testament names. Isaac has a PhD in mathematics, Kesia wrote an award-winning paper on maths and physics. Enoch has a degree in theology and a second degree in history and politics, plus a Master’s degree in Education. Josiah has an MSc in economic history. With his brother Elijah, Simeon won the Mayo School’s Debating Competition in. 2020. Simeon also represented the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) in the final of The Irish times Debating Competition in 2020.
While my thinking would clash with theirs, I am filled with admiration for someone who’s prepared to lose his job and go to prison because of his beliefs. We might not need more people with opinions that chime with the Burkes, but we do need people who have the backbone and courageous principles on show in the case of Enoch Burke.
Jude, I agree with you on many things but Enoch is a fundamentalist Christian who has little regard for the turmoil this insane behaviour has on the pupil and pupils of the school involved.
He has rendered himself bankrupt and unemployed and unemployable as an educator for what?!
Too much attention being paid to him and having personally endured 13 years education of the ‘unchristian’ Brothers maybe a little less Christianity and a bit more of the carpenter’s son’s compassion might be better in the Irish education‘system’
However, Keep up the good work on the injustices in British Occupied Ireland
He should have move on with has life. he is a bigot…he much like jail.
I think that common sense would say that ‘they’ is plural. The only fundamentalist that I respect are fundamentalist Irish republicans and they are hard to find.
I too was educated by the Christian Brothers, and they taught me to be compassionate. Which is why I can’t understand how it is ‘principled’ to refuse to address people in the way they prefer.
I think you know you’re beat out, Jude, when even James hasn’t a good word to say about your piece…!
Hi Jude, I share your admiration of people who have the courage of their convictions – irrespective of whether or not I agree with them.
However, in this instance I think Enoch is also right not to go along with compelled speech. Anyone familiar with 1984 should think of the part that Winston Smith is forced to believe 2+2=5. Likewise, Enoch should be respected for not going along with an obvious – and a potentially harmful- falsehood.
Carl Duffy’s comment is spot-on.
Enoch Burke is an honest, principled and courageous man.
If a state with a liberal, democratic and republican constitution feels it must imprison him, something i rong with that state’s enforcers.
Amazing that Garret Fitzgerald, for instance, thought that Ulster Protestant Unionists could be converted to Republicanism by an agenda copied from Guardian or New Statesman Editorials.