A HIGH SCHOOL marching band has been banned from taking part in a London festival — because education officials in Florida fear they may be caught in a terrorist attack.

The 140-member band from Fort Myers High School was forced to turn down an invitation to take part in London’s 2007 New Year’s Day parade after their school chiefs ruled that they would be “safer in America”.

Herb Wiseman, high school consultant for Lee County, Florida, pointed to the July 7 Underground bombings to counter protests from students and parents who argued that Britain was no more dangerous than the US. “What happens if kids get on a train that blows up? We don’t have trains blowing up in America,” he told the Fort Myers News-Press.

“We’re leery of loading 140 students onto an aeroplane and flying across the ocean to London where they just had a terrorist attack. We don’t think that it’s worth the risk.”

James Browder, Lee County’s district superintendent of schools, was also involved in the decision to ban the £150,000 trip, though he has approved a trip by Fort Myers High pupils to Atlanta — scene of the 1996 Olympic bombing that killed two people and injured more than a hundred.

Organisers of the London parade, who have invited groups from all over the world, offered to fly both men across the Atlantic to put their minds at rest, but they refused. Bob Bone, the parade’s executive director, said: “Here is an educator that seems to delight in the knowledge that he is ignorant of the facts. London is not a city under siege.”

He added that Fort Myers — a seaside resort visited by 80,000 British tourists a year — was not exactly a safe haven itself. It had an above-average crime rate and was prone to catastrophic hurricanes and other severe weather. “Fort Myers’s murder rate is several times higher than that in London and you are three times as likely to be the victim of rape or violent crime in Fort Myers,” Mr Bone said.

Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida, has also joined the row — on London’s side.

The US State Department does not warn Americans against travelling to Britain, he said. “I wouldn’t want to have kids in London that were going to come participate in some kind of festivity in Florida be told that it was unsafe. It’s a two-way street. If you believe in travel and if you believe in tourism in your own state, you shouldn’t be using it as (an excuse) unless there’s a legitimate concern — and I’m not aware of any.”

The ban has angered pupils, who had started fundraising for the trip. Ethan Lapham, said: “It’s more probable to be struck by lightning or be murdered in your sleep, than to fall prey to an attack by al-Qaeda terrorists. There is no better time to show these terrorists that we have no fear of them. Instead we are forced, through the cowardly acts of our superiors, to hide in shame.”

FORT MYERS

Population 52,162
Total reported crimes 4,710 (9,029 per 100,000 population)
Murders 15 ( 28.8 per 100,000)
Rapes 40 (76 per 100,000)
Robberies 302 (579 per 100,000)
Aggravated assaults 619 (1,290 per 100,000)
Weather Hurricanes batter Fort Myers every decade — and it is getting worse. Hurricane Charley hit in 2004 and Hurricane Wilma in 2005

Sources: Fort Myers Police Department 2004 crime figures

LONDON

Population 7.2 million
Total reported crimes 1,022,329 (14,199 per 100,000)
Murders 196 (2.7 per 100,000)
Rapes 2,427 (33 per 100,000)
Robberies 38,998 (541 per 100,000)
Aggravated assaults 200,820 (2,789 per 100,000)
Weather London features in the Met Office’s records of extreme weather.
In a month in 1890 the Borough of Westminster recorded no sunshine at all

Sources: Metropolitan Police Feb; Met Office

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