Why Christianity is on the ropes in Labour's Britain

Filled with authoritarian zeal, Labour now openly talks about creating "a new social order". In this Orwellian world, our history is forgotten, our identity traduced and our liberties destroyed.

At the centre of this remorseless campaign against our national heritage is the growing persecution of Christianity by the Labour state machine.

The transformation in the standing of our national religion has been truly remarkable.

Only a decade ago the Christian faith was still seen as one of the central parts of the fabric of our civilisation. But 12 years of socialism have changed all that.

Driven by the twin Marxist ideologies of equality and multiculturalism, our political masters regard Christianity as a threat to their creation of a diverse society where the state is all powerful and Britishness an anachronism. So they are determined to marginalise the faith.

Like all bureaucrats whose existence depends on submission to reigning political orthodoxy, the commissars of the modern British public sector have proved only too keen to do the Government's bidding.

As a result, symbols of Christianity disappear from public life, while believers have been hounded and isolated.

R ECENTLY two cases have highlighted this mood of deepening intolerance from state officials towards Christians.

In one, an experienced community nurse, Caroline Petrie, was suspended from her job in Somerset after offering to say a prayer for an elderly patient.

Such a gentle act of compassion is now regarded by the state as a disciplinary offence.

Only after a public outcry was Mrs Petrie reinstated.

Just as disturbing is the second case, where Jennie Cain is now facing the sack from her job as a receptionist at a Devon primary school after being caught up in an outrageous row about her faith.

Ms Cain had privately sent an e-mail to some Christian friends asking them to pray for her five-year-old daughter Jasmine who has been scolded by a teacher after discussing the existence of heaven and hell with a classmate.

 Somehow, headmaster Gary Read got hold of a copy of the e-mail, probably through an eager little sneak who, like spies in communist Romania, are all too common in modern British life.

Now Ms Cain is facing an investigation for professional misconduct. So many aspects of this episode are appalling: the contempt for Ms Cain's privacy, the ridiculous bullying by the school and the bizarre reaction to a young child's interest in philosophical questions about the afterlife.

Worst of all was the comment of the headmaster Gary Read saying that he "wasn't happy about Jasmine making statements about her faith". Those grim words sum up the bigoted attitude that now prevails.

Tragically, other sectors are taking their cue from the Stalinist jobsworths who want to airbrush Christianity out of public life.

Recently the producers of the ITV soap Coronation Street were filming a wedding scene in a Cheshire church. Without any sense of irony, they asked the vicar to remove the cross from the altar because "it might offend viewers".

The vicar told them it was bolted down so, in their determination to keep the dangerous symbol off our screens, they covered it up with flowers and candles.

What is so sickening are the double standards. While agents of the state discriminate against Christianity, they show craven submission towards the demands of militant Islam.

Christian symbols are outlawed, Muslim rituals celebrated.

Nurse Petrie is suspended for offering prayers, yet in mid-Yorkshire in 2007 nurses were told to move the beds of Muslim patients five times a day so they would face Mecca.

When Channel 4 made a programme exposing the activities of Islamic hate preachers in Birmingham, the producers found themselves investigated by the police and Crown Prosecution Service for stirring up racial hatred.

Another graphic illustration of the state's willingness to collude with the Islamic fundamentalists was provided by the experience of Julia Robinson, the popular headmistress of a Sheffield primary school.

When she took up the post two years ago, she tried to promote integration among the pupils by abolishing separate assemblies for Muslim and Christian pupils.

Instead, she introduced one multi-faith assembly. A tiny group of Muslim parents objected to Ms Robinson's move towards unity, demanded the continuation of their separate assembly and then accused her of "racism".

To her dismay, Ms Robinson was forced out and the school was left in chaos, broken by a lethal mix of dogma and pusillanimity.

The Government pretends surrender to Islam is a sign o f religious tolerance. This is nonsense. The acceptance of the Islamification of Britain is unprincipled, pathetic cowardice. Instead of upholding our freedoms, the State caves in.

That was evident last week, when the Home Secretary banned Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP and fierce critic of Islam, from entry to Britain.

She took this decision because she was terrified of the reaction of Muslim extremists. Once more, bullying triumphed over democracy.

That is the story of our times and it is why Christianity suffers badly in this once great country it helped to build.