Councils must appeal against the ban on prayers before meetings.
English council meetings are not particularly spiritual affairs, but the ruling by the High Court that they have no right to hold prayers before meetings has all the hallmarks of an act of drive-by desecration. The National Secular Society, a pompous but media-savvy body to which only a tiny proportion of the population belongs, has executed a neat little manoeuvre. It threw its weight behind the complaint brought by Clive Bone, an atheist former member of Bideford town council, who claimed that his human rights were infringed by prayers before meetings. Yesterday Mr Justice Ouseley dismissed this particular argument – but went on to issue the extraordinary ruling that local authorities have no powers under the 1972 Local Government Act to hold prayers.