Ruth Swailes and Aaron Bradbury, co-authors of a bestselling book on early childhood, were told by the organisers of a government-sponsored event for childminders and nursery workers, which they were due to speak at in March, that the DfE planned to cancel the conference just days before it opened because they were deemed to be “unsuitable” headline speakers.
The event was eventually allowed to go ahead after Swailes and Bradbury threatened the department with legal action, although a senior government official was present to “monitor” what they said.
Speaking to the Observer, Bradbury, principal lecturer in early childhood studies at Nottingham Trent University, said: “I received a phone call from the organisers saying there were some concerns about us being speakers. The DfE had decided we were unsuitable because we had been critical of government policy.”
He said: “To be told that we couldn’t have this debate felt like we were living in a dictatorship, not a democracy.
“We were due to talk about nurturing and early child development. It wasn’t some covert stuff about infiltrating Russia.”
One modern languages expert, Carmel O’Hagan, uncovered an email from DfE officials accusing her of having “an axe to grind” on Twitter, now rebranded as X, and an Excel spreadsheet in which the department detailed who she interacted with. She described the emails among officials about her in her 37-page file as “puerile” and “spiteful”.
