Use of the strap has often been associated with Roman Catholicism, especially in those schools run by various Irish orders. However, not all RC schools used the strap. In London they mostly used the cane, e.g. at Cardinal Vaughan RC secondary school in West Kensington (catchment area also including Shepherds Bush), which was caning boys on their bottoms well into the 1980s because the ILEA’s 1981 ban did not apply to voluntary aided state schools. Curiously it was the Irish immigrant parents who first started complaining about this, whereas the Poles and Italians who were even then numerous in that part of London didn’t seem to object at all.