The Labour Party keeps a promise

The language of socialism

If all sorts of things in Rachel Reeve’s Budget gets the Labour Party condemned for breaking promises made only this year, surely, in fairness, her putting VAT on private school fees should get it praised for taking the first step towards keeping a promise Roy Hattersley made 51 years ago? There may not be much to commend in breaking promises only just made but to set out to keep one that’s 51 years old! What’s commendable if not that? That half a century is too short a time for the Party to forget its promise to abolish private education surely shows that it has a sense of honour and means what it sings when it sings that it will keep the red flag flying here? (The leopard may not have changed its spots but who would want it to?)

Roy Hattersley (of blessed memory) made that promise to the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools, at the Cambridge University Union, on September 7, 1973. When he came to the end of the speech, he said he felt that he had, above all else, to leave his audience with no doubt what his party intended. It intended to abolish private education. It intended to prevent private schools obtaining public funds. And it intended to prevent them obtaining private funds too. It would not compel a parent to send his children to a state school. (You see how wrong Orwell was?) It would only make it illegal for him to pay the fees of a private one. It intended to make fees and gifts to private schools illegal. It intended to abolish private education.

Why? Because—in the first place—private schools get more than their fair share of “the available resources”. And, it being the more and the less that count—the more that makes education better, the most that makes it best—that alone was reason enough. But in the second place, and worse—worse because, worse than having more is having an idea of a better that can’t be strictly measured by more and less—private schools hamper “the pursuit of equality”—not just the equality of amounts (though, that too) but that sort of equality that will obtain, in part at least, when no school is free to be “socially divisive”—equality of esteem.

The real trouble with private schools is not that they are rich—or, as Mr Hattersley had it, that they get a disproportionate share of scarce resources—but that they are private. Being private, they charge—and thus create a distinction, a division, between those who do and those who do not pay. And, being private, as long as they make a profit, their headmasters are free to accept, and to reject, whomever they please on whatever grounds they please and to have taught at their schools whatever they please, however they please. They are outside the power of the state.

By force of circumstance and by intention they bring it about that some have more esteem than others. In a cant word Mr Hattersley did not use, they are elitist. So they have to go. And Mr Hattersley’s party intended and still intends to see (as Ms Reeves reminds us) that they go. With all the pleasant superiority of a hangman, Mr Hattersley urged not just the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools but the whole nation “to concentrate its collective mind” on what his party intended (and, Ms Reeves  reminds us, still intends).

Now, concentrating my own mind on it 51 years later, it seems to me that Mr Hattersey’s, evidently, still extant promise threatens more than the interest of the Association of Preparatory Schools. It threatens the  interest of us all. We all have an interest in the existence of private schools—even those of us who have never been near nor by one. It is in the interest of all that any be free to found and maintain schools with their own money on their own principles. It is in the interest of all that any might and some do attend such schools. No matter how good, no matter how varied state schools, no matter how indirectly the state runs them, no matter how benign the intentions of the state’s servants towards them, there must be other schools. There must be schools for those who can’t or won’t fit into the state system. There must be schools belonging to private men and run by them according to their own likings, schools that aren’t part of a system at all. There must be schools which declare private intentions. Not just for the sake of those who maintain them but for all our sakes. It is in no one’s interest that the state—any state not just one run by the Labour Party—has a monopoly of education. 

To intend that the law forbid us to maintain private schools, differing from state schools in the ways and by the degrees we want them to—to forbid us no matter how bad we might think state schools, no matter how good and decent our reasons, no matter how bad state schools might in fact be, or come to be, no matter what we might be or come to be and want for ourselves and our children different from what the state provides; no matter what or anything at all except to intend a state monopoly of education willy-nilly of anything we might intend—is a bullying intention which in itself shows the state cannot be trusted to have a monopoly.

It is an intention, moreover, that it would be difficult to form in any very considerate or delicate language. And it is something to be grateful for that Mr Hattersley didn’t even try (that he didn’t think it worth disguising his spots). He spoke carelessly of the interests of the men and women he was addressing and he spoke carelessly of the general interest. And, really, when he was careless of the one, why should anyone have expected him to be careful of the other? If he were careless of the interest and feelings of people sitting in front of him—present to his five senses—why should anyone have expected him to be less careless of anyone else, people present only to his mind, as an abstraction, “the general public”, “the nation” or, worse (and more likely), “society”?

The language in which Mr Hattersley couched that intention of his party’s was coarse and brutish; it was the language of someone coarse in intelligence and coarse in feeling, the language of someone who, about everything that really matters, was stupid, stupid, that is to say, not just for thinking (though that too) but for living. It was the language of someone who might easily have been a Minister of Education and didn’t know what an education was. It was careful of nothing, delicate towards nothing, tender and considerate of nothing. It went out to the real condition and circumstances of the life of no one. It was the language of a man whose vital sympathies had died on him, who was, to all intents and purposes, dead (from the neck up certainly but elsewhere too).

This is a fair sample of it:

It goes without saying that the direct grant would be withdrawn. The direct grant schools ought to be part of the non-selective system ... All these adjustments [removing the charitable status of public schools and personal tax concessions on school fees etc.] can be made comparatively simply ... On the supply side of the equation the removal of all income from public sources would reduce the independent schools’ revenue by about 16%. On the demand side it is frankly impossible to calculate the net extra cost which parents would incur. As a deterrent to independent education it is certainly more significant. ... And there is a second method by which I think the numbers in the independent sector can be reduced and should be reduced. ... There are many independent schools which will fail the tests we set for the maintained sector. They clearly cannot be allowed to continue in business. What that amounts to is a new, and meaningful, system of government recognition. All that will, of course, leave us with a reduced but still substantial independent sector ... many of the ancient foundations will remain. Their end will come in many forms. I am personally opposed to an Act of Parliament which requires a parent to send his child to a maintained school, but I see no objection to presenting a Bill which prohibits both the charging of fees for full-time education and the subsidy of full-time education by public companies or private individuals. ... If I had to choose between ending independent education or starting an adequate programme for education priority areas there is no doubt which I would choose. But, fortunately, Parliament does not work quite like that. The reduction in independent school numbers is easily accomplished. It will concentrate the nation’s collective mind on our intention to complete the process when more urgent tasks have been accomplished.

We might concentrate our minds on two features in particular of his style (they go naturally together and aren’t peculiar to him): the tone in which he told his listeners he intended to injure them, which is crisp and managerial, and the general character of his vocabulary and phrasing, which is brutally abstract. (Re-reading it now, fifty years later, isn’t it also the tone of someone play-acting, Hattersley performing—especially for his own benefit—being-in-charge. Isn’t there some Captain Mainwaring in it too—the Captain Mainwaring that is always there in socialist politicians?)

It is altogether to the point that Mr Hattersley should have told those men and women that he intended to take away their livelihoods briskly. He had his intention; it was for them to note it. What he intended, he intended lightly and easily. It was all a matter of reckoning methods and calculating results: “it goes without saying ... these adjustments can be made comparatively simply ... on the supply side of the equation ... on the demand side ... frankly impossible to calculate ... as a deterrent certainly more significant ... and there is a second method ... many independent schools which will fail ... clearly cannot be allowed to continue in business ... of course ... their end will come in many forms. I am personally opposed to ... but I can see no objection to ... but fortunately ... the reduction is easily accomplished ... it will concentrate the nation’s collective mind.” What a coarse-minded brute and how revealing of the character of socialism. It’s the mentality of an English Soviet.

Although the effect of Mr Hattersley’s speech must have been to insult his listeners, there is nowhere to be seen in it any intention to insult. Those effects of meaning and tone aren’t the effects of having an intention but of not having one—of not having an intention and of not having much more besides—proper feelings, manners, intelligence (that sort of intelligence that shows in feelings and in manners), a real language of one’s own, a real personal self to be and to have a language of one’s own. All that talk of adjustments and calculations and methods and equations is the talk of someone who isn’t anyone in particular and can only talk to others, who are, as if they aren’t either. That is the real truth of the matter—that Hattersley wasn’t anyone. And it’s a truth made plain by the Hattersley idiom—the idiom of someone who is no one. It is composed of nothing but abstractions and aggregations, nothing but the faintest, most remote abstractions and the biggest, most homogenised aggregations. It isn’t a real language at all, not a language for talking about the real world in, the world inhabited by real institutions and real people; it’s a shadow language for talking about a shadow world (well, he was Shadow Secretary of State for Education at the time), a world inhabited by nothing but abstractions and aggregations. It’s the language of someone who isn’t anyone in particular for talking about a world without body or particularity, a world with no one in it. It was fitting that Mr Hattersley should later have become our man in “Europe”.

Mr Hattersley’s speech (like Mr Starmer’s and Ms Reeves’s’—there’s continuity for you) is not a real speech at all; it is not the speech of a real person and it is not speech about the real world. It had lost touch with not just our but Mr Hattersley’s own daily life (the real part of his life, the part that wasn’t just being Labour-party-spokesman on something-or-other). “Education” figures in it but not any knowledge of particular schools or particular teachers or particular pupils. No knowledge at all of what it is for anyone in particular to learn anything in particular from anyone else in particular. Instead there is that big, blank abstraction “education” and its slightly smaller but equally blank, equally abstract sub-divisions “the maintained system”, “the maintained sector”, “the independent system”, “the independent sector”, “the selective system (or sector)”, “the non-selective system (or sector)”. And what matters about schools in either “system (or sector)” is their “share of resources”, their “teacher-pupil ratio”, their “standard of provision”, their “social mix”, whether or not they have “a representative intake”. Education has been “used” to pursue “equality of opportunity”, it must be “used” to pursue “equality” itself—by politicians having, for instance, an “adequate programme” for “Education Priority Areas” and “completing the process of accomplishing a reduction in the numbers” of schools that are “socially divisive”. There is the “supply side of the equation” and there is the “demand side”. There is this “method” and that “calculation” and that “adjustment” to be made. There are parents, and they are either “higher-income” or “lower-income”; and there is “the nation’s collective mind”.

What a dismal, flat monotone of a language! A monotone full of categories and classes of things, infinitely divided and sub-divided, but empty of things themselves. A monotone in which nothing is ever talked of in the singular. In which nothing is ever talked of at all but groups and categories and classes. And not any groups, any classes. Not those we can have real personal knowledge of like the rich and the poor. Classes we can only know statistically, like “higher-income” and “lower-income parents”. Classes we cannot know except as statistics, classes we cannot belong to except as statistics, classes that haven’t any existence outside statistics. Classes really without members: “so-and-so-income parents”—with nothing of the parental about them. The monotone of someone who wants the ultimate reference of all words to be not things but numbers. The monotone of the utilitarian and the scientific. That monotone in which standards are measured by a number, representativeness by a number, independence by a number, priority by a number, adequacy, equality, justice by numbers. That monotone in which the idea of equality and the idea of justice are the same as the idea of everyone having the same amount, of the “share of resources” not being “disproportionate”. That monotone in which everything is reduced to having and amounts had and to be had. The abstract, materialist monotone which, then and now, is the monotone of the higher-educated everywhere, on the Left especially but on the Right too. That mark of a new barbarism and a new philistinism. That mark of a new sort of top-doggery. The top-doggery of those trained to wag at numbers and bark at everything else. The modern top dog of all classes and schools of thought. The modem barbarian, a barbarian without any rude, vulgar life in him. The barbarian deracinated. The barbarian as goose. The cackler of abstractions. The modern educated.

The comment that followed Mr Hattersley’s speech showed how representative a thing it was and how up-to-date it is. The editor of The Guardian thought the next day that “Mr Roy Hattersley had the gift of expressing himself with a trenchancy and a clarity that made him one of the more attractive speakers and writers in politics today;” and then turned praise of Hattersley into praise of self by disclosing that whatever the Hattersley gift was he had it too, and more abundantly:

It is quite true that public schools and preparatory schools are socially divisive. It is equally true that, by some of the fiscal and other methods Mr Hattersley describes, he could squeeze many parents out of the private sector and bring their children back into maintained schools. This influx of the more financially pressed customers of the private sector would put just the political pressure on the government for improved state education that Mr Hattersley looks forward to.

This, of course, is where priorities come in—and Mr Hattersley would know about the importance of those if he would read his Nye Bevan, a real radical who got things done rather than just talking about them. Education is ultimately a matter of resources …

And the abolitionists who wrote to The Times, they had it too On the 11th one said:

The most important thing is that the state system is deprived of the custom of some tens of thousands of middle class people who, if they educated their children within it, would press for the higher standards and extra resources it so badly needs.

On the 12th:

The public schools promote both economic and social inequality. They promote the first by giving those born in a higher class situation a better education than those born in a lower one, and they promote the second by separating children by parental attributes and, though to a lesser degree than in the past, by reinforcing differences in social status such as dress, manner, outlook, etc. In addition they represent a denial of equal opportunity by attracting a disproportionate share of physical and financial resources and by reinforcing social attributes which even in this present egalitarian climate command a degree of respect. They have also until very recently created and intensified class prejudice and thus promoted snobbery and social disunity.

On the 13th:

Critics of Roy Hattersley’s proposals for a national reduction and eventual abolition of independent education have had two things in common. They have not attempted to meet the criticisms levelled against private education in this country, and they have argued the case for the retention of their privileged status without the slightest reference to the needs of the educational system as a whole.

He (the Chairman of Blackburn Education Committee) followed that (one sort of Hattersley) with this (another):

To those of us who are deeply concerned with all the nation’s children . . .

On the 14th, from the Headmaster of Archbishop Holgate’s School:

. . . highly advantaged . . . less creative energy flowing into them . . . pragmatic response to a living situation . . . a meaningful education . . . true that society needs to be persuaded to invest even greater resources . . . but history cannot easily be undone . . .

On the 17th, from the Chairman of the Campaign for Comprehensive Education, the Headmaster of Thomas Bennet School:

We must strive for a fair distribution of resources—of teachers, materials and accommodation—among all our schoolchildren.

And so it went on, for a fortnight, there, on that topic; and goes on everywhere, on all other topics, still. Everywhere, forever, on all topics: Hattersley, Hattersley, Hattersley. Hattersley morning, noon and night. Hattersley for breakfast, dinner and tea. Hattersley poached, Hattersley fried, Hattersley baked, boiled and stewed. The nation’s head stuffed to bursting with Hattersley, the nation’s sense (as Pope says) lost and nowhere to be found.

The Hattersley idiom is the idiom of the modern educated everywhere, politicians and churchmen, journalists and teachers, the left and the right (but especially the left), from all walks of life. It is the idiom of all, very nearly all, public speech. That’s the way they all talk nowadays because that’s the way you do talk nowadays if you’re educated. That’s the way the educated are doing it nowadays. That’s the way they pick up at university. That’s what universities are for, to get people to talk like that. Because that’s how you get on nowadays, by talking like that. By talking as if you know it all, have got it all worked out. Have worked it out scientifically: “the maintained sector”, “the independent sector”, “the share of resources”, “the teacher-pupil ratio”, “the supply side”, “the demand side”, “lower (and higher) income parents”. The cackle of the modem educated, abstract, bullying and pompous.

Those who, like Hattersley, have been the most systematically educated—have had the largest share of resources, the highest standard of provision, the best pupil-teacher ratio, the most pens, paper, ink and accommodation—they are the worst educated. Their speech is the most corrupt, their speech the most in need of cleansing and freshening, their sympathies the coarsest and least discriminating. They speak a language that is neither homely nor literary. Not the language of a daily life and not the language of an old-fashioned bookishness close to the language of daily life. Academic. The language of a new academic bookishness that has no use for the old common language—the language of all of us from Chaucer to Dickens—and has no use for common sense or the common sensibility. A language which hides the world from view and hides ourselves from view. A language in which no thought at all is possible, no real thought and no real feeling. For most of the modern educated, their education has taken away from them any natural good sense they may have had and put in its place—and they are proud of it, it’s their one source of self-esteem (and jobs)—an unnatural arithmetical cant.

That was the state of the educated in England in 1973 and is the state of the educated in England (but more so) 51 yas later (and what has it helped to make the state of England?). And while there is nothing to be seen about that might better it, there is much that might make it worse. One thing is abolishing private schools and making state control of education complete. When private schools are abolished and made comprehensive, when the universities have lost what freedom from public control they still have, when everybody’s schooling is wholly in the hands of the state from infancy to graduation (and has been made compulsory from infancy to graduation), when no one is ever taught anything anywhere except in a school chained to a chain of responsibility going back to someone like Roy Hattersley—and when everyone speaks a language to match—then, the universal darkness of nothing-meaning and no-feeling (which Pope prophecies at the end of The Dunciad) will have buried all.