 The letter was bizarre, unsigned, incoherent, badly Xeroxed. Yet still, it sparked one of the biggest school scandals in British history. Government investigators descended on Birmingham. The country beefed up its counter-terror policy. By the time it all died down, schools were revamped, teachers lost their jobs. But what I always found suspicious about this whole affair is that this dodgy letter suggesting extremists were taking over our schools, nobody ever found out who wrote it or why.