British worker fired after condemning Oct. 7 massacre, Hamas

The worker, a maintenance engineer, said that the incident has made him “think twice” before expressing his views in public.

By JNS

A sewerage system worker in Britain was fired after condemning Hamas on the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre anniversary.

Damon Joshua was immediately suspended and later dismissed by the Severn Trent water company following a post he made on the company’s staff intranet website, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.

Joshua wrote, “One year ago our valued partners and friends, Israel, were horrifically attacked by a group of violent and disgusting terrorists. I can say with confidence today that the vast majority of STW’s employees stand in solidarity with our Jewish, Israeli and Zionist colleagues against the evil of Islamist terror,” while attaching an image of the flag of Israel to his post.

The post was taken down shortly afterward, following internal complaints that “the terminology being used includes very derogatory words” and “is very one-sided,” according to the report.

“The post reflects poorly on Severn Trent’s reputation as a diverse and inclusive company,” one complainant remarked, according to The Telegraph.

After a disciplinary hearing, his managers informed Joshua that “this offence is in relation to a protected characteristic, specifically religious belief” and dismissed him for gross misconduct.

He was further told that “the language used in the post caused offence to [three] employees with different perspectives, particularly those with Muslim or Palestinian backgrounds.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, Joshua remarked that there is a “big difference” between Islamist terrorism and Islam. “Not all followers of Islam are Islamists and the attack was perpetrated by Hamas who are an Islamist terror organization,” he added.

His managers said that “the wording in the post explicitly suggests support of a particular geopolitical stance,” while his claim that the majority of STW staff supported Israel “creates exclusion and assumptions of solidarity.”

A STW spokesman said, “This is a complex employee relations case and it’s important to be clear that this is not the whole story nor an isolated incident.”

He went on to say, “And whilst it’s not appropriate to discuss the detail of an individual case, this relates to ongoing misuse of an apolitical work forum and the expression of views on a range of emotive topics, despite having been previously informed that this was not the appropriate forum to do so.”

The Telegraph cited sources within STW as saying that Joshua’s post was part of a wider pattern of him expressing opposition to a number of company initiatives, such as South Asian heritage events, LGBT inclusion days, and diversity and inclusion workshops.

War on free speech

Joshua, who is a maintenance engineer, said that the incident has made him “think twice” before expressing his views in public.

“There is a whole war on free speech in this country at the moment. Lots of people know it but are too scared to stand up against it,” he was quoted as saying.

Speaking about the episode, Joshua related, “It happened in a matter of hours. I made the post at 7:50 [a.m.]. I got a call from my manager at 10 or 11 telling me that it had been taken down. At 1 p.m. I got called to a meeting room on the site that I was working on. My manager and her manager were there and I was suspended.”

Joshua, who has since found a job elsewhere, suggested a disparity between office-based staff and field workers. “I did frontline work in the production areas. It’s not a very nice job dealing with sewage. … There’s a massive difference between office and production. So I think they looked down on me.

“They’re slightly snobbish. They sit in their brand-new headquarters at their posh desk with their expensive office chairs. It’s different when you’re working on the actual site,” he said.

Ben Jones, director of case management at the Free Speech Union, which represented Joshua in his STW case, said: “We’ve dealt with 3,500 cases but the facts of Damon’s are particularly shocking. Sacking somebody for condemning Hamas is one of the most egregious cases of cancel culture we’ve seen,” The Telegraph reported.

Stephen O’Grady, a legal officer with the Free Speech Union, told JNS in December that legal interpretation of “racial or religious hatred” under the Public Order Act 1986 amendment, enacted in 2006 (RRHA), stirs a lot of debate in Britain.

Criticizing a religion is fair game under the law, he stressed, “but with regard to Islam or antisemitism, [how do you know] what is hatred against a race and what is criticism of a religion?”