29-07-2025
Inside the Sussex school built on conspiracy theories
Even the most rational, evidence-based person has at least one conspiracy theory that they secretly harbour. Mine is that conspiracy theorists who rail against the establishment and the 'deep state' are actually deep-state actors working for the establishment. How can they not be? They are so abject at promoting their own cause, so effective at driving even the most conspiracy-curious back into the comforting embrace of Big Brother, that some of them surely must be plants.
So it was with We Are Not a Conspiracy School (Radio 4, Tuesday), an investigation by documentary-maker Darryl Morris into the Hope Sussex Community – the title of the programme tells you the accusation that the home-schooling network/community hub/'group of like-minded people' is facing.
Set up during the pandemic by former BNP activists Matt and Sadie Single, along with former West End performer Katy-Jo Murfin, Hope Sussex is intended to be an alternative to mainstream education. Hope stands for 'Home of Positive Energy'.
Morris, admirably, wanted to get beyond the lurid headlines about anti-vax crackpots teaching children to fight back against the British state and 9/11 being introduced to impressionable young minds as an inside job. He managed to secure a rare interview with Murfin and the Singles and found three friendly, personable people with deep and understandable reservations about the British education system.
A single frazzled 20-something teacher trying to give gold-standard education to a class of 30-plus children with complex individual needs? What parent wouldn't want to take their child out of the bear pit of sensory overload that is the modern British school, especially if that child is visibly struggling?
The trio behind Hope Sussex made many strong points – children should be taught to research not regurgitate, critical thinking should be promoted above rote learning – yet Morris did not have to push too hard to keep finding red flags.
Morris had a cold when he arrived at the interview, but Murfin and the Singles chortled that 'they didn't believe in viruses'. Murfin talked eloquently about the benefits of homeschooling, before quoting David Icke and talking about 'totalitarian tiptoe'. When Morris brought up 9/11, Matt launched into a long-debunked theory about the temperature at which steel melts. Schools, he said, teach 'sexual degradation'.
They are, they insist, teaching all theories, not just the ones accepted by the mainstream, and as such are raising children who are open-minded, questioning and shrewd. Yet it is very clear which rigid world-view they are passing on to their children – one of paranoia, of not trusting any media or politician, of believing that government is a nefarious force.
A glance at their social media shows recent events at Hope Sussex include talks by Kate Shemirani, the 'natural health' advocate and struck-off nurse whose daughter Paloma refused treatment for her cancer and died months later, and a festival sponsored by the conspiracy theory website UK Column ('The Antidote to Mainstream Propaganda'). Matt calls the pandemic a 'plandemic'.
Murfin and Sadie might want to encourage Matt away from media opportunities in future. When they spoke warmly of needing somewhere to educate their children, somewhere with outside space, Matt dived in: ' Our space, where you can lock the gates and, '[others] are not permitted here'. Any kind of authority. We are raising our children as we see fit, you are not welcome or wanted.'
Morris, like every other outsider, was not allowed on the grounds of Hope Sussex. Outside are CCTV cameras and signs warning off trespassers. 'It's overwhelming, sometimes, the sense of love and selflessness that comes from people in the community,' said Sadie. We'll have to take her word for it. Unavoidably, at times, they sounded like a cult.
The great sadness is that they have a point. We shouldn't passively accept everything our government does, we shouldn't live a life devoid of individual thought and research. And our education system is at breaking point. How wonderful it would be if 'like-minded people' in the UK were able to do something to change that, to create an innovative school system that worked for everyone. If our only other option is Hope Sussex, however, I am mainstream brainwashing all the way.
