Unwillingly to school (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Hardman is Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education. On July 1st he opened his heart to a meeting of teachers at Dorchester; the Observer thought it important enough to accord a splash heading “New School Time Table.” Stressing as he did the urgent need for “co” ordination between hand and brain, and the high importance of inducing “delight” in the pupil while acquiring culture in its best sense, the words of the Secretary were a signal advance in the right direction; at least the ghost of Robert Lowe who flung his brutal “Board Schools” and scornful words in the face of the Working Class in 1871 has been well and truly laid; it may be hoped the Dorchester audience of Prime Minister Lord Rosebery’s “captains and guides” grasped the full significance of Hardman’s speech.

But alas! even today the gulf between the aspirations of the advance guard in education and the possibilities of fulfilment yawns discouragingly. That gulf can only be bridged, when a New Society (Socialism) has swept away the inevitable evils that must frustrate educational effort under the Capitalist System, in spite of the good intentions on the part of reformers.

It would be folly to deny that there has been a notable diminution in the lads and lassies who creep unwillingly to school; there has been a welcome and growing comradeship between pupil and scholar; there has been a definite, if slow, distrust of the Examination Myth—Hardman himself gave a sour glance at it.

But after all. Education in the long run is governed by political considerations; it was by no odd freak of history that in ancient Greece the Spartan youth was trained to a super-Fascist "hardness,” while the Athenian youth (of the privileged classes, of course), was trained to enjoy Homer and Aeschylus; tradition counted, it is true, but the outstanding fact was that Sparta had no walls, and no sea barrier.

Fifty years ago, Margaret McMillan, the pioneer of Nursery Schools, wrote an enthusiastic Clarionette: “You teachers do love the Grind.” They did, and unfortunately even on the plane of mere amelioration, a lamentable number still do. In the last War, a London school found itself sharing the dubious hospitality (morning and afternoon shifts) of a Secondary School in a South Coast town. An elderly member of the latter staff proudly expressed his determination (a siren wailing applause) to carry through "his” Final Somethings, come weal, come woe. "I’ll stick to the deck, said he, so they stuck him on deck with glue,” as an irreverent youngster of the London School afterwards remarked to his colleagues.

A pitiful handful of school reformers are gallantly striving to keep alive private schools where the child is the centre of the picture, where Wordsworth’s “blind authority beating with his staff the child that might have led him” no longer applies. Happy kiddies! but, with relatively large staffs, etc. these schools are expensive, and therefore for the children of the well-to-do only; further. Government grants are a far-off contingency when “a daily act of public worship” is laid down as part and parcel of grant-earning. This type of school is different.

There has been a spate of loose talk about "equality of opportunity” since the last Education Act, a new version of the old Napoleonic bilge about marshal’s baton and private’s knapsack. It is pretty apparent that the vast mass of pupils attaining Grammar School status will never attain the prize dangled at the top of the greasy pole; the unwholesome preoccupation of youngsters to reach a prescribed goal, the abiding dread of failure, failure itself, entails sheer tragedy for many a sensitive plant in Shelley’s garden. Face the fact, too, of the working-class parents scraping and sacrificing to come somewhere near the school’s requirements in clothing alone; face the fact of much prized “traditions” which are a veritable hot-bed of snobbery, spite of good intentions; face the fact of a child gradually sensing a growing divergence in speech between himself and relatively uneducated parents. It is easy to brush these things aside, to attribute exaggeration to a sketchy outline of potential child torture.

It may well be asked here: what is the remedy, granted the picture is even moderately true? The S.P.G.B. has no hesitation in replying—that only by removing the causes of evil can a final remedy be accomplished. Quinine is a benign alleviator of malaria—elimination of the foul pools with their disease carrying insects is the recognised scientific remedy. The evils inherent in the Capitalist system which, spite of pietistic mouthing, elevates material success to a major virtue, can at its best endeavour but alleviate the worst horrors of infant torture which marked the period of mine and factory hells. And it is worth calling to mind that there were Christian apologists in that period who affected to believe that "wholesome toil ” was a good thing for the pitiful little broken and disfigured scraps of humanity.

The achievement of Socialism will and can be only accomplished by the Working Class; the main appeal of the S.P.G.B. is therefore to that class, but it may not be irrelevant to point out that everything in the educational garden of Eton and Harrow and their kind, as far as pupils are concerned, is not lovely; bullying, even if not of the order of Tom Brown’s schooldays, is not unknown—"worse remains behind.” Socialism would be a happy change for many a sensitive school- tie kiddy.

Hardman means well—as does his chief, ex-schoolmaster Chuter Ede, despite a lapse occasionally into the hectoring Trade Union leader when condescending to speak to his late co-workers. But fine words butter no parsnips, indeed buttery sentimentalism adds to the rough pack of the unthinking worker a new element of dangerous slipperiness; Sir Peter Teazle’s “O damn your sentiments ” seems to meet the situation.

To Working Class fathers, the S.P.G.B. makes this special appeal: even if you fail to realise completely the dire meaning of wage-slavedom for yourself: if you have but imperfectly grasped that Capitalism entails a harassed and inhumanly overworked wife, at least give a thought for your children, your bidden guests. The joy of life, childhood laughing as it goes, faces “ in which sweet records meet, promises as sweet ”—these can be a realised aspiration under SOCIALISM alone.

Augustus Snellgrove

Greasy Pole: Farmyard Politics (2004)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Greg Dyke, ex-Director General of the BBC, has changed his mind. About Tony Blair, that is – although in the circumstances in which he was winkled out of a job which was supposed to make him one of the most powerful men in Britain, he has probably had second thoughts on quite a lot of other issues. Dyke first met Blair sometime around 1980 when Blair was a fresh faced, posh speaking young barrister who nevertheless wanted to ‘serve his country’ by being a Labour MP. “The Labour Party,” Dyke advised him, “needs another barrister like it needs a hole in the head” – which did not prevent Dyke helping Labour get another hole in the head by donating £5000 to Blair’s campaign for the party leadership.

   

That was then; this is now, when Dyke thinks Blair, in spite of his promise to introduce a new sort of politics, is really “just another politician and in some ways worse than those before him. He was either incompetent and took Britain to war on a misunderstanding or he lied when he told the House of Commons that he didn’t know what the 45 minute claim meant”. Regular readers of the Letters column in the Guardian, which seems to operate as a kind of counsellor’s couch for disappointed Labour voters, will know there are many who agree with Dyke. These are people who also supported Blair under the impression that Labour meant a different type of politics; instead they have got something which in many important respects is indistinguishable from the Tories. And Blair seems intent on supplying plenty of evidence to support the case against him.

1960s

For example on 19 July he made a speech grandly titled a Five Year Strategy for Crime, which purported to look back on the consequences of the 1960s and what the Blair government plans to do to repair the damage caused by that supposed time of “a huge breakthrough in terms of freedom of expression, of life style, of the individual’s right to live their own personal life in the way they chose”. Blair argued that law and order policy then focussed on the offender’s rights, protected the innocent and understood the social causes of criminality. But now:

“Today, people have had enough of this part of the 1960s consensus . . . they do want rules, order and proper behaviour . . .

They want a society of responsibility. They want a community where the decent law-abiding majority are in charge, where those that play by the rules do well; and those that don’t, get punished.”

That speech might have been made by John Major back in 1993 when, conveniently overlooking his affair with Edwina Currie, Major audaciously decided to lecture the rest of us on the need to get Back to Basics. He called for a revival of “the instinctive values of neighbourliness, decency and consideration for others”. He wanted the criminal justice system to “blame a little more and understand a little less”. Blair’s speech might also have been made by Michael Howard who, shortly after Blair shared his thoughts on crime and society with us, informed us that:

“Conservatives will stand up for the silent, law-abiding majority who  play by the rules and pay their dues. We will put their rights first.”

Among all this competition for votes Blair ignored the fact that during much of the alleged wild days of the 1960s when, he now thinks, the foundations of a seriously irresponsible society were being laid, his party were in power. They achieved that position not by respecting human decencies and behaving responsibly but by misleading the voters. Labour’s 1964 election appeal was based on the assurance that prosperity would come through an increase in productivity arising from technological development. The Tories had apparently overlooked this but Labour were led by the ravishingly clever Harold Wilson, who had graduated in economics at Oxford. After harnessing the technological revolution Wilson would put George Brown in charge of the economy at the Department of Economic Affairs and the rest was easy. The problem was that capitalism is not susceptible to being managed in that way. Wilson’s facile assurances were exposed and his government descended into chaos and crisis. One of Wilson’s senior ministers said “The trouble with Harold is one hasn’t the faintest idea whether the bastard means what he says even at the moment he speaks it”. Another agreed: “The tragedy of Wilson was that you couldn’t believe a word he said”. It was not a shining example of a government driven by a desire to play by the rules – unless it was those governing the methods used by political parties to get power over capitalism – and behave responsibly about their electoral promises.

Fettes

Meanwhile, how was the young Tony Blair surviving in those times of  moral peril?  From 1966 to 1971 he was a pupil at Fettes school, said to be the Eton of Scotland. It was the kind of educational establishment to have a strong appeal to the Blair of 2004 for the headmaster, a Dr. Iain McIntosh, was a disciplinarian and an ardent opponent of the “liberalising” influence of the 1960s. Fettes had a system of fagging, under which the younger boys had to be servants of the seniors. (Blair resented this but was praised by his senior for making “particularly good toast.”) Flogging by masters and senior boys was in force, with Blair the occasional victim (once at the unusually advanced age of 17). It must have been a proud moment for the headmaster when, after a game of hockey against a nearby borstal, the Fettes boys and the young prisoners compared their respective regimes; the borstal boys were sure they had the easier time.

   

Blair did not willingly submit to the Fettes regime as a valuable lesson in morality, which would stand him in good stead when he was later lecturing the rest of us from the eminence of Number Ten. He was in fact something of a disruptive influence in the school, persistently questioning and opposing the rules and procedures there. His housemaster assessed him as “the most difficult boy I ever had to deal with”. A fellow pupil remembered that “Masters were very worried about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and Blair looked like all three”. When he was 14 he ran away – simply walked off the train his parents had put him on to go back to school and made his way onto a plane at the airport – he said to fly “to somewhere like the Bahamas” – but the plan came to nothing because he did not have a boarding pass.

   

There were masters at Fettes who enjoyed Blair’s nagging and questioning as stimulating. Well there have been many others who have been bemused by his charm into accepting his flexible “principles”. Some of these people are ministers in his government. Others are just ordinarily deluded voters. This was the kind of tolerance – if that is the word – which helped him be accepted into Derry Irvine’s chambers when he was looking to become a barrister, a favour which has been repaid since. It slid him up the greasy pole, at first as a by-election candidate in the hopelessly Tory stronghold of Beaconsfield and then into the safe Labour seat at Sedgefield. It was not an obstacle to his climb that he joined CND, after he had been advised that the “more badges” he accumulated the better his chances of getting on in the Labour Party – advice he accepted with alacrity. It has seen him into Number Ten and keeps him there, in spite of the exposure of his deceits and the fact that in all important respects – in his policies, his speeches, his phraseology – he more and more resembles the Conservatives who are supposed to be his opponents.

Animal Farm

If it is impossible to discern any significant differences between the Labour Party and the Tories, that is because there aren’t any. On the basic issue of how to run the capitalist system they are thoroughly agreed that this must be done in the interests of the ruling class, which means that both of them in government must impose policies which are against the interests of the majority, while assuring us that they are doing something else. They must both define the problems of capitalism in terms of ruling class interests and offer “solutions” which at best are little other than palliatives. It is not a matter of chance that as they try to deceive the working class the party leaders use the same words, the same phrases. It is rather like the final passage in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, when the animals outside the farmhouse observe the pigs who have taken control of the farm inside, enjoying a raucous get-together with neighbouring farmers. As the evening wears on “the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which”. That is what Greg Dyke and all those disgruntled Labour supporters are witnessing now; will they cling to Labour or will they consider the alternative to the cynical mess of capitalism’s politics?

Ivan

Political Notes: It’s an honour (1983)

The Political Notes Column from the August 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s an honour

There has never been any reason to believe that Harold Wilson had designs to abolish himself so there must be some other explanation for the fact that, although when he was prime minister he announced that no more hereditary peers would be created, now that he is out of parliament he is reported to have accepted — to have wanted — such an honour for himself.

Of course this may be yet another — if especially obscure — example of Labour Party gradualism, of the theory that capitalism will eventually find itself ended through a succession of near-imperceptible steps. It is something over fifty years since the Labour Party announced that one such step would be the abolition of the House of Lords and Wilson's stated preference for the creation of life, as opposed to hereditary, lords was greeted as a gradualist move in the process of abolition sometime.

This enthusiasm — Labour supporters starved of real progress, have had to learn to exist on such contemptible crumbs — must have been dented when the police began to take a deep interest in several of the eminences so recently ennobled by Wilson.

Capitalism can do very nicely — as it does in places like America, France and Russia — without the tradition of dressing people up in funny clothes, pinning bits of ribbon and metal on them and giving them funny titles. Which is not to say that the system does not have some picturesque rewards for those who have given it special service.

Harold Wilson was one of these. He came to power through a skilfully worded pledge that working class problems could easily be conjured away through something called the technological revolution; that the micro chip would alter the basic nature of capitalism. Predictably, he and his government were soon bogged down in crisis. Their fine promises were forgotten as they grappled to deplete workers’ living standards. When they lost power they were thoroughly exposed and discredited and since then no more is heard of the harvest to be reaped from the white hot technological revolution. By any standards, a notable achievement by Wilson. He fully deserves his honour; capitalism has looked on him and found him to be good.

Head count

The debate over the restoration of the death penalty was loaded with moral considerations and much talk about the ethics of the judicial taking of life and the right of society to respond to a murder by itself murdering the killer. Almost everyone who took part agreed that this was a very important issue because with human lives at stake a careful and informed discussion was necessary. When it was over and the votes had been counted everyone could go home congratulating themselves for playing their part in such a highly charged occasion with full regard to their grave responsibility.

But what sort of problem were they talking about? If the death penally is restored so that it applies as it did before the Homicide Act of 1957 — before the introduction of degrees of murder — there will be about one execution a week in Britain. If a Bill goes through in this form, something like 60 people will die who would otherwise survive to serve a life sentence.

Now there is no denying that the death penalty is a disfiguring barbarity. There is no denying that the vast majority of murders can be said to be some sort of response to the inhumanities which capitalism imposes on its people, and which it expects them to survive with patience and conformity. But in comparison to the tens of millions who die each year through the simple fact that capitalism can’t meet the needs of the human race, the numbers who might be despatched by the hangman in Britain are insignificant. If MPs. and others who were convinced that they were arguing about moral issues, about the sanctity of human life, were sincere why are they so consistently able to ignore this massively greater death toll?

The answer is simple. The apologists for capitalism can discuss an issue like the death penalty, with its strictly limited scope, without ever needing to consider the wider and deeper responsibility of this social system for the problem. The whole thing can be talked out in terms of ethics, religion, insignificant reforms; when it is over capitalism is left undisturbed.

This is a much more comfortable way of approaching an issue, than one which might call into question the basics of society, their effect on people and the fact that this social system must degrade the people who keep it in existence. As so often happens, the debate on the death penalty was really about granting capitalism yet another reprieve.

Up school

Margaret Thatcher has not made her name as a political tactician of historic subtlety so perhaps she was unaware that, by sacking Francis Pym, she was depriving some of her opponents of one of their most cherished illusions. Pym's departure from the government meant that, with the exception of the increasingly ridiculous Lord Hailsham, there is now not one Old Etonian in the Cabinet — to say the least, an unusual situation for a Tory government and one to cause consternation in London's clubland.

It has always been a favourite left-wing pastime to tot up the numbers of Tory ministers who spent their schooldays at Eton and Harrow and to produce the result as proof that a Conservative government is in the hands of a small, privileged, self-perpetuating clique. At times, there seemed to be something to be said for this theory. Harold Macmillan, for example, seemed to go out of his way to give some top jobs, not just to Old Etonians but to those who were related to him. The lesson we were invited by the left wing to draw from this was that a government full of such high born people could not possibly understand, and deal with, the problems of the “ordinary” people and that we should therefore vote for a party with a less exclusive background.

Unhappily for this theory, we had the experience of Labour governments, many of whose ministers had not only not been to public school but had sometimes had very little formal schooling at all. Some of them were fond of reminding us of this, by applying an eccentric pronunciation which removed aitches from where they should be and stuck them back on where they should not be.

Jimmy Thomas was one such eminence; another was Ernie Bevin. Their place in political history is assured; they were zealous workers for the interests of the British capitalist class at no matter what cost to the class of their origin, the class which can't send its children to Eton or Roedean and which suffers the effects of the social system which Thomas and Bevin helped to administer.

Thomas, after a spell drunkenly contemplating the deepening misery of British workers in the slump of the late twenties, saved his miserable skin by joining the National government with the Tories and the Liberals. His aristocratic friends were much amused by his comical terminology. Bevin, among his many other achievements, saw British workers committed to the slaughter of the Korean war and the start of the British nuclear weapon programme.

The familial and social beginnings of the people who run capitalism is of absolutely no account. It is working class acquiescence in the system which is important. Without that the leaders would be impotent and redundant and we would have a society free of conflict and privilege.

Blogger's Note:

On the subject of capital punishment, this issue of the Socialist Standard also had a longer article on the subject: British rope trick

Greasy Pole: A Kick in the Worst Nightmares (2012)

The Greasy Pole column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few weeks ago Nadine Dorries, obsessively thespian Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, sneered that David Cameron and George Osborne are two arrogant posh boys who don’t know the price of milk.  This was aimed to hit Cameron where it should hurt – his determined campaign to convince us that being an Old Etonian heir to a posh-boy family fortune need not get in the way of his being sympathetic about the emergencies of survival confronting what he and his clique condescend to call decent, hard-working people and their families. And as for what it costs to get some milk onto those stricken meal tables – well, he knows all about that from his regular shopping trips to Chipping Norton with his intimidatingly aristocratic and solvent wife. It would probably be comforting to Cameron in promoting this self-image if he led a party churning out that same cant. But many Tories out there in the wide world insist on having other ideas: to be governed by harshly nostalgic concepts about society and who should represent them in Parliament.

SAS Training

The Honourable Jacob William Rees-Mogg is undoubtedly posh but says he does not regret it. He is the son of Baron Rees-Mogg whose time in career journalism peaked with his editorship during 1967 to 1981 of The Times, when he was a regular source of material for Private Eye. Jacob, who was gratifyingly precocious, wrote his first letter to the Financial Times when he was twelve and went first to Eton and then Oxford before spending 15 years in the City in his firm called Capital Management. It was unsurprising that he should have ambitions about getting into Parliament. 

This required him to survive an SAS-like training by first standing in the kind of Labour seats where Tories had become the rarest of species. His first such venture was in 1997 in Fife Central, which could be characterised by the fact that it had been the last constituency to elect a Communist Party MP – in 1935 and 1945 – and where unemployment stood at 9 percent. His campaign, feeble as it was, could not have been helped by his canvassing with his nanny (who had, he said, come to Eton “ . . . to change my sheets every week and bring me anything I needed”) and his unwavering accent (“. . . whatever I happened to be speaking about the number of votes in my favour dropped as soon as I opened my mouth”). As for the result, ‘obliterated’ would be a more useful word than ‘defeated’ and he hung on to his deposit by a whisker. He was given another chance at The Wrekin – a key seat – in 2001 where the outcome was close enough to give him some optimism about his future in politics.

Cosy Electioneering

This optimism seemed to have been justified in May 2006 when he was selected by the Tories in North-East Somerset as their candidate for the next election. The fact that his sister Annunziata was selected soon afterwards as the candidate for the adjoining Somerton and Frome might have made for cosy family electioneering except that the effect was seen by those closer to the scene as rather less comfortable for Cameron. One correspondent likened the selections as “a kick in the cobblers … for Cameron’s new-look Tories”.  After Rees-Mogg had compared pupils of state schools to “potted plants”, a friend admitted that he was “not an expert media performer”. That same year he strayed into the field of economics with his analysis that it was “…about time we had a recession”.  The remark was not apparently based on any world-wide assessment but on the assumption that it would not affect his gold stocks. In March 2009 he was again instructing us on economics and finance when he sent round his constituency a newsletter mentioning the “crashing pound” and “soaring unemployment”, The newsletter’s content was revealed to have been substantially lifted unacknowledged from an article in the Sun – of all newspapers – by Trevor Kavanagh, the Associate Editor.

Another Rees-Mogg effort at leafleting, ironically entitled Honesty On The Economy, contained a picture of him as the candidate talking to “a lady in Midsomer Norton”. The implications of that title were intriguing because that “lady”, assumed to be a constituent, was in fact an employee in his London office, allowed to make a 206-mile round journey to take part in that feeble deception. Another photograph probably intended to prove his credentials as a devoted countryman tackling a farmyard stile (in a smart city suit) looked as if he had been caught out urinating on the obstruction rather than climbing over it. Considering Rees Mogg’s obdurate tendency to attract such damagingly negative publicity it was little wonder that during the 2010 election – he won the seat in North-East Somerset by 4914 votes – The Times saw him as threatening to turn out as “David Cameron’s worst nightmare”.

Strategies

Well, in his public appearances Cameron does now convey the impression, too often for his own reassurance, of being under a degree of stress typical of a political leader striving to dress up his party image – the presentation of outworn, discredited policies – as the offspring of fresh and effective thinking. This dismal aspect of managing our lives is part of what is called politics, a politics in which there is also Rees Mogg, known as “a toff beyond caricature”, struggling to assert his obsolete style of the privileges of capitalism against those already in operation in Westminster. A clash between these two methods is not due to any divergence of principles, for they are solidly together in support of this cruel, stagnant society. Anyone concerned with a valid remedy for progress must stand aside, and move on from this sterile squabble in which our lot is to be kicked where it most hurts.

Ivan

The Passing Show: ’Ardies’ ’At (1958)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

’Ardies’ ’At

At the Labour Party conference the executive only narrowly escaped defeat on a motion which advocated the integration of the public schools in the state system. This would mean the end of public schools as we know them, and the speakers who called for this won the applause of the conference. The executive finally succeeded in getting the motion rejected only because the majority of those old props of the platform, the union block votes, was behind them.

But what difference would it make to our society, which rests on the exploitation of the many by the few, if every public school was closed down tomorrow? Some Labourites seem to come near to believing in this connection that if we all dropped our H's and spoke with provincial accents we should have taken a stride forward towards Socialism. It reminds one of the people who, when asked why the Labour Party claims to be Socialist, recall that Keir Hardie turned up at the House of Commons in a cloth cap, and seem to think that it clinches the argument. But the important thing is not how you dress, but what you do; not how you speak, but what you say.



Miss Bacon’s Dislikes

Even the speakers from the platform had to join in the general denunciation. Alice Bacon, M.P., who replied to the debate for the executive, said, “we all detest and dislike the public schools.” If by “all” she meant all the people in the Labour Party, the statement is not true. Many leading Labourites not only went to public schools themselves, but send their children there as well. The reason is simple and obvious—they think that children get a better education at public schools than they do at state schools. The equipment and accommodation at the average public school is much better than it is at the average state school, teachers at public schools get more social prestige and higher pay, so teachers with the highest academic qualifications tend to go to them, and most important of all, a teacher at a state secondary or grammar school often has to take a class of thirty-five or forty, while his public school colleague can concentrate on a much smaller number. Naturally those Labour leaders who can afford it send their children to public schools.

Under new management
But the question goes much deeper than this. Even supposing that we had absolute equality of opportunity—which is impossible in a Capitalist society—even supposing that no member of the ruling class could give money or shares or a better education to his children, and that while the Smiths and Browns provided the Capitalists of this generation, the Joneses and the Robinsons provided the Capitalists of the next (again, impossible, but let it pass) even supposing all this, we should have exactly the same society that we have now. So long as we have a Capitalist society—part private and part state, like the Conservatives want, or a little-less-private and a little-more-state like the Labourites want—we will have the exploitation of the mass of people, the working class, by a small minority, the ruling class. To support Capitalism while demanding equality of opportunity is like supporting burglary, provided everyone has an equal chance to become a burglar. Equality of opportunity in our present society simply means that each generation of Capitalists would have different names from the last lot. But who in the world cares what they are called? To alter a familiar line, a sewer by any other name would smell as foul.


The Socialist Answer

Of course, there would be no public schools in a Socialist society. It would be impossible for one child to be huddled with forty others in a badly-ventilated room opposite a soap factory, with the teacher wondering how he can keep up the instalments, while another is in a class of ten or twelve, in an airy room in pleasant surroundings. In a Socialist society, the members of it would determine what education would best fit children for living, and the children would have equal opportunities to benefit by it. But those Labourites who call for the abolition of public schools in our present society are confusing, as they so often do. the effects with the cause.


The Methods of Colonel Grivas

There are some facts about Cyprus which seem to have been forgotten.

Colonel Grivas, who is the head of Eoka, has a long history of extreme right wing activity, and of willingness to resort to violence to achieve his ends. It would not strain an over-used word to call him a Fascist.

Grivas took the opportunity of the feeling aroused by the announcement by a member of the British Government in the House of Commons that Cyprus could “never” be given its independence to begin a campaign of terrorism in the island, which still continues. This campaign is directed not only against the British, but also against Grivas's political opponents among the Greeks, who make up more than eighty per cent, of the island's population. Grivas has killed more Greeks than he has Britons. This fact has been repeatedly stressed by the British authorities. Some of the Greeks have been killed by shooting, others by being beaten or hacked to death in circumstances of revolting brutality: both men and women have been murdered.

A Death in Famagusta

In early October a British woman, the wife of a soldier, was shot dead in the streets of Famagusta. At the time of writing it is not known who did it. Eoka have issued leaflets denying responsibly, and the authorities say that if it was an Eoka gunman, this is the first British woman killed by Eoka. However, it seems more likely to have been done by Eoka than by anyone else.

This was a most deplorable crime. The woman had five children, the youngest being still in arms. What happens to the children now? Inevitably the crime must have a terrible effect on them. There is a saying that if you educate a woman, you educate a family: and there is a grim sense in which it is true to say, if you kill a woman, you kill a family.

More Deaths in Famagusta

As soon as the crime was known, a body of British troops descended on the district of the town where the murder, as it happened, had taken place. Famagusta is not a large town, and in it numbers of Greeks have been killed by Eoka because Grivas did not like their politics. No doubt in this district there were many Greeks who have had friends or relatives shot or otherwise brutally done to death by Eoka.

The British troops cordoned off the district, and proceeded to arrest every young man they could find. Within hours a thirty-year-old Greek was dead from suffocation, having been thrust into an army lorry with many others who had the misfortune to live in the area; an eighteen-year-old Greek was also dead, in circumstances which have not yet been revealed; a British soldier had been accidentally shot dead by one of his own comrades; ambulances were running shuttle services carrying injured Greeks from the temporary compounds where they were being “questioned" by British troops; no less than two hundred and fifty Greeks had been treated for injuries (“only" sixteen had been retained in hospital, said an official spokesman—"only" is an interesting word to use in this connection); and a twelve-year-old girl, having seen the “questioning” in progress, ran away in terror and died of shock. Apart from this the material damage, such as car-windows and shop-windows smashed in, was considerable.

These figures of casualties are those given by British official sources: unofficial sources put the numbers of dead and injured higher. (At first even an official spokesman said five Greeks had died during the operations, according to The Observer. October 5th, 1958, but subsequently he admitted less.)

Revenge—on whom?

If the dead and wounded Greeks, down to the twelve-year-old girl, had all been proved members or supporters of Eoka, then the British ruling class could claim that their soldiers were taking revenge—assuming that revenge, rather than the usual claim of “justice,” is to be the British aim in Cyprus. But the victims of this military brutality were simply those Greeks who happened to live in the area—people who, the British authorities admit, are terrorised by Grivas and have suffered more in the way of Eoka killings than the British themselves.

Broken heads, but no violence

Sir Hugh Foot, the Governor of Cyprus, one of whose duties theoretically is to look after the welfare of the citizens under him, issued a statement after these events saying “Our first obligation is to stand against violence,” but made not even the most perfunctory expression of regret for the activities of the British troops. Presumably death and injury do not come within his definition of violence when the sufferers are only Greek Cypriots. The War Minister, Mr. Soames, has denied that the troops concerned were out of control; for which one can only conclude that the things they did were not objected to by their officers and commanders. Mr. Soames said that he was very satisfied with the conduct of our troops in Cyprus (Manchester Guardian, October 7th, 1958). According to a BBC broadcast, Mr. Duncan Sandys, the Defence Minister, claimed that he was proud of the way the British troops had behaved.

Pride—and prejudice

Couldn't you have said, Mr. Soames, that you would have been even more satisfied if the British troops had injured only two hundred, say, of the local inhabitants, instead of two hundred and fifty? Couldn't you have said, Mr. Sandys, that you would have been even more proud if the soldiers during these operations had caused the deaths of only three people, say, instead of four?

How satisfied, how proud, can you get?

Alwyn Edgar

The Labour Party Conference (1958)

From the November 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labourites went to Scarborough this year, but having arrived, they had nowhere else to go. Why should they? Apparently Labourites have not yet grasped the fact that after the 1945 term of office they had no claim to be considered in the eyes of the voters as an alternative government. In 1945 they went in on a wave of post-war enthusiasm. They put into effect what was for Capitalism a necessary reorganisation of certain sectors of British industry via nationalisation. They initiated the necessary policies for restoring the debilitated condition of the post-war economy and bringing the social services in line with the requirements of Capitalism.

What else was left in their political ragbag? Only dull odd remnants which did not show up so well with the more brightly coloured Tory jumble sale, and now to vary the metaphor the Labour Party’s only appeal to the voters: “Play the game, you chaps, you’ve put the other side in twice, let us have a turn at batting.”

Nationalisation, which was once the great plank of the Labour Party, is now a heap of sawdust and shavings which was quietly swept up. Even the 50 odd year Labour project, land nationalisation was rejected. Nationalisation, which once helped to float S.S. “Labour,” is now in danger of sinking it. Nationalisation rouses no enthusiasm among electors and is a source of disillusionment to the Labour rank and file.

The slogan of the Labour Party should be. “Divided we stand—United we fall,” for it is only when there are internal conflicts within the Labour Party is it at one with itself. It is only when it has a vociferously organised element demanding a more militant approach and offering vague threats about storming the citadels of privilege, which give the Labour Party the semblance if not the reality of being different from the Tories. It is only this which raises the pulse and tingles the blood of the hard core of the rank and file and makes them believe that the movement has not yet lost its ideals. Without this there is despondency and gloom and the Labour Party is divided against itself.

At Scarborough there was no Mr. Bevan riding cap- a-pie against Mr. Gaitskell. Instead, they sat on the same steed with Mr. Gaitskell in front holding the reins and Mr. Bevan behind, not even pulling the horse's tail. The Bevanites without their leader and shepherd would only utter a few piteous sheep-like bleats.

Mr. Driberg, the conference chairman, wanted a new public face—he called it an image—different from the public face of the Tories. But there was nothing at the conference which could lead anyone to any other view than that the parties were “ identical twins.” And even if the Labour Party went in for political plastic surgery or whitewashed their “public face,” it would still have the same old dirty Capitalist look.

On Education the Labourites were at one with the Tories. They want smaller classes and more teachers. So do the Tories. If and when they were returned to office Labourites said they would take steps to overcome the teacher famine. But they never concretised what these steps would be. The one thing it seemed was not mentioned in order to overcome the shortage was improved conditions and wages. Labourites want the “ best education,” it’s only the educators they want on the cheap.

They proposed to abolish the 11-plus, but were still going to keep the rat race of competitive scholarships going. They, like the Tories, are anxious to scoop off what they call the cream of working class children essential for the technical and commercial needs of Capitalism, their so-called educational proposals simply want to make the cream scooping more efficient and bigger.

The conference also voted against the abolition of Public schools. Many moons ago Labourites used to refer to them as seminaries of ruling class education. Now it seems they are of some value to the community. Perhaps if only for the reason that many prominent Labourites have gone there in the past and many more future Labour leaders might take advantage of them at the present. It may be that “On the playing fields of Eton the elections of England are won.”

The debate on the Hydrogen Bomb was not as explosive as the year before and as a result there was less political fall-out. That the Hydrogen Bomb would be an issue was fairly obvious because as there were no domestic issues which really divided them from the Tories, whatever differences there were had to be exploited in other fields.

As usual, there were those who opposed the manufacture of the Hydrogen Bomb and wanted this country to join up with other countries in a sort of non-nuclear club. Their motives like their thinking were confused. They don't want to abolish armaments, they merely want the time-honoured, decent and humane armaments, like tanks and bombers, liquid fire and atomic artillery.

Apparently none of the anti-H. B’ers. were prepared to cut all N.A.T.O. commitments. And so, in the event of this country going to war in alliance with the U.S.A., Hydrogen Bombs might still be dropped on “our behalf,” but at least we would not have made them. Surely this is a piece of moral perversion.

 

It was left to Mr. Gaitskell to say what we had ourselves said a year ago, that if America and Russia went it alone, no one could predict the outcome. And even if there was an attempt on the part of British Capitalism to isolate and get other countries to isolate themselves from military commitments with U.S.A. Capitalism, its effects might initiate an even more ruthless policy by American Capitalism, and in turn by Russia, and with it increased strain and tension. The notion that this country could escape a possible holocaust is a piece of dangerous and delusive thinking.

The left wing idealists might also ponder the fact that the abolition of the H.B., if it were possible, might well increase the probability of war.

And if some of the same well-meaning idealistic left-wingers were to take the ideas to their logical conclusion and opt for military isolation from America that, it is pretty certain, would lead to economic isolation, too, and its effects on British Capitalism would be quite disastrous. Such is the unreal world in which many of the would-be militants of the Labour Party live.

The Labour Conference agreed then by a big majority to go on manufacturing the Hydrogen Bomb. But with a broad sweeping humanitarian gesture it decided to suspend testing them. And in this way they sought to assuage their guilt

But at the very moment certain people raise their cry for the abolition of the H.B., other countries have decided to have a bash. France, Sweden, Switzerland and China have derided to take steps towards joining the nuclear as against the non-nuclear group. Soon it will be unfashionable for a country not to have an Hydrogen Bomb.

Perhaps the U.S.A will give a small Hydrogen Bomb to Israel as a token of friendly relations and Russia might do the same for Nasser, and Nasser with an Hydrogen Bomb can hardly be conducive to one's peace of mind. No doubt the Hydrogen Bomb chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance, and there's nothing the Labour Party can do about it.

The Conference at the end went through their usual emotional purging by singing the Red Flag. Then the delegates went home, but why did they ever leave their homes in the first place?

Ted Wilmott

The Passing Show: Class co-operation (1962)

The Passing Show column from the April 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class co-operation

In a society where ten per cent. of the people belong to the owning and ruling class, and where the other ninety per cent, belong to the propertyless and working class, it is obvious that there is a continuous conflict of interest between the two. The owning class live on the surplus value extracted from the workers: the workers have to wage a ceaseless struggle to maintain even a part of the value of their work for themselves. In such circumstances it is a truism to say that the more the owners can fool the workers into believing that there is no conflict of interests, the happier—and richer—the owners will be. Just as the slave-owners used to push the view that really the slaves and their masters were all working together for the good of society, so there is an endless barrage of propaganda from the ruling class in our form of society that employers and employed should all co-operate “for the good of the country." When one investigates what this “co-operation” means, it is what one would expect—the workers must never strike, must at all times devote all their energies to their employers' interests, and must, of course, never be so vulgar as to ask for a wage-increase, or for that matter even oppose a wage-cut. if the employers decide it would be "in the best interests of the country."


Dozen awkward chaps

Propaganda to this effect is, of course, as common in state-capitalist industry as in private capitalist concerns. And according to a recent article in The Times, this propaganda has been very successful at the Littleton Colliery, in the Cannock Chase coalfield. “It has been nine years since anything worth calling a strike happened at Littleton, which employs about 1.900 men." The employers, apparently, are very satisfied with conditions at Littleton:

. . .  the miner's understanding of life beyond Cannock has also been broadened by television and National Coal Board propaganda. Thirty years ago the rather more desk-hound managers on the Chase were very much "the other side" to colliers, and they themselves reflected the narrowest of points of view. Today Littleton's young manager. Mr. G. A. Schofield, calls his union president (Mr. Richard Owen) “Dick", and Mr. Owen says: “We have about a dozen awkward chaps among 1,900, but all the rest understand we have to make coal pay its way."

One should, of course, be chary of accepting the estimates of the supporters of capitalism of the extent to which the workers have been duped by the propaganda put out by employers, whether directly, or indirectly, on the mass media such as television. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly a shrewd stroke by the employers to win over trade union leaders to their way of thinking.


Good old days
In fact, supporters of capitalism not infrequently regret the days of the Labour Government of 1945-51, since when Labour was in power trade union leaders were heard preaching “co-operation” even more frequently than they are now. The economist Graham Hutton wrote to The Times (8/2/62) on this very theme:

I think of those whom Labour and Tory Governments marshalled between 15 and 10 years ago to organise the productivity drive: Arthur Deakin, Lincoln Evans, Jimmie Crawford, Tom Williamson, Ted Fletcher, Vincent Tewson — these from the unions and T.U.C.—and the leaders of our industry from the F.B.I. B.E.C.. etc. I recall the Ashorne Hill conference a decade ago to discuss between what we all then agreed was a misnomer, namely, “both sides of industry”, their representatives' unanimous conclusions from the 66 Anglo-American Productivity Teams’ visits to the U.S.A. between 1947 and 1952.

Ah, happy days, when the employers and trade union leaders were not only reaching unanimous conclusions about the way industry should work, but were even agreeing that it was wrong to speak of “two sides" to industry! Former Labour ministers can take comfort from the fact that their efforts when in power towards “co-operation" in industry are still remembered with affection by such supporters of capitalism as Graham Hutton.


Social gulf

Despite what trade union leaders say, however, the facts of capitalism as daily revealed at the coalface, the factory bench, and the shop counter, mean that the class struggle continues. Sir David Eccles, Minister of Education, in a speech on February 8th. admitted as much, and had to relegate the ideal of co-operation between the exploiters and exploited to the distant future:

He told the Conservative Women's National Advisory in London that these (fee-paying) parents should consider the long-term future of their children in a society which would either he united socially or still hampered by the “we” and the "they" complex that so bedevilled industrial relations.

While admitting the effect, however. Sir David went astray when he came to explaining the cause:

Sir David said that one of the chief instruments which created the social gulf in our society was the system of education. Nine-tenths of all children went to maintained schools and the remainder—the bosses' children—to the independent fee-paying schools.

This is an error into which Labourites fall even more often than Conservatives. The divided system of education in our society is not the cause of the “social gulf,” but one of its effects. The class division, the social gulf, is not caused by the fact that the “bosses' children” (in Sir David’s words) go to special schools: but by the fact that there are bosses. For if in any society there are bosses there must also be the bossed: the one group cannot exist without the other, any more than horse-riders can exist without horses. Sir David must resign himself to the existence of the social gulf so long as he supports the system which gives birth to it; for it will be with us until capitalism makes way for Socialism.

Alwyn Edgar

Running Commentary: Like no tomorrow (1984)

The Running Commentary column from the January 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like no tomorrow

For some reason it was offered as a criticism of The Day After that it told us something we already knew — that a nuclear war would bring unprecedented destruction and suffering. In fact, as many commentators pointed out, the reality will be far worse. One estimate is that in a 220 megaton attack on Britain 80 per cent of the population will die. Everywhere it will become frighteningly cold and dark, as the nuclear dust blots out the sun and brings a new Ice Age in which people in the mass will starve or freeze to death.

Perhaps the most chilling part of the Film was in the build up to the holocaust — the palpably heightening tension, the strained faces listening to the news, the first announcement of the use of “tactical" nuclear weapons, the missiles blasting out of the silos, trailing smoke across the sky behind a washing line, released when servicemen opened a red box marked “Gently”. It was too close to experience for our comfort — too close to Berlin 'in 1948, Korea in 1951, Cuba in 1962 and to the numerous other international crises when the world might have been under threat of having no tomorrow.

Was The Day After an argument for unilateral nuclear disarmament or for the Heseltine policy of eventual disarmament through eventual agreement while the powers meanwhile build up their nuclear arsenals? Of course, CND claimed that the film made their case for them, forgetting that it portrayed the culmination of the international rivalry which is endemic to the capitalist system. CND have no concept of what is needed to end that system, although to end it is the only way in which the world will be rid of war and all weapons of war.

Heseltine is a different case. He and his party make no bones about their support for the social system of division and conflict, the system which makes a priority of killing and destruction. No nonsense from the Defence Minister about the urgency to avoid the ultimate, overwhelming catastrophe; he stands unashamedly for capitalism and for the interests of the British ruling class, at whatever the cost to the rest of us.

But beneath their superficial differences, at their core CND and Heseltine stand for the same thing. They all support capitalism although in varying degrees they may seek to evade some of the effects of the system. By confusing the issue, by pretending that capitalism can be controlled and reformed into benignity, they each in their own way aggravate problems such as war.

If The Day After told us anything it was of the desperate urgency of the work to overthrow capitalism and to replace it with a society which will not know war. That is not one of the facts which can be devalued as something everyone knows already. If it were more widely accepted, the future of the world would be more secure and tomorrow would be a matter of happy anticipation instead of fear.


One for the rich . . . 

In court seven teenagers admitted that over fifteen months they made 28 raids on local restaurants, breaking in to steal drinks, food and cigarettes; they also asked for 30 other offences to be taken into consideration. The value of their hauls totalled £1,435; they were ordered to pay £1,527 in fines, compensation and costs (Guardian, 30 November 1983).

The culprits were pupils at the exclusive Darlington School in Devon, where parents pay £8.000 a year each for their keep and “education”. The payments ordered by the court must have made quite a dent in the pocket money of the accused. No doubt this will be made up by doting parents who, not long ago, howled for the dismissal of the then headmaster of the school who had warned them of under-age sex, burglary, vandalism and drug taking among the pupils, and they had objectcd to some “unsuitable” pictures of his wife which had appeared some years ago in a magazine.

No prize is offered to the first reader sending in the most likely punishment which the court would have doled out if, rather than being the pampered offspring of the rich, the offenders had come from the streets of Brixton.


Glasses and classes

How is a member of the working class to be recognised? Lord Curzon, the archetypal High Tory of his day, thought that it was by the colour of our bodies; he had no idea, he remarked as he watched some soldiers bathing in an Indian river, that the lower orders had such white skins.

Ridiculous Labour MP Frank Dobson has recently suggested another method. He fears that it might be possible to spy out a worker — or at least one of the more impoverished among us — by the style of their glasses. In the House of Commons debate last November on the government proposals to end the opticians' monopoly on the sale of glasses (which Labour MPs might have been expected to welcome) Dobson expressed the reservation that making glasses available outside the National Health Service might mark out anyone who is unable to afford other than the NHS article.

This is gradualism gone made. Will Labour MPs now fight to eliminate variety in spectacle styles, arguing that this new equality would be a step on the road to the revolution? More to the point, are there not other ways in which a worker can be distinguished?

There are. first, the places where we live. None of them is ever likely to be featured in those advertisements by the posher estate agents in Country Life. Then there are the clothes we wear; mass produced articles such as would chill the blood of the discreet tailors patronised by our masters. What about the food we eat? Whatever Robert Carrier is paid to say on TV, there are more than subtle differences between the fare on sale in Tesco and what can be ordered, by those who can afford to. from Harrods.

But above all there is the way we get our living. The fundamental, ineradicable distinguishing mark of the workers is the fact that they live through selling their abilities to an employer for a wage. The size of that wage does not vary significantly from the point of being enough to reproduce the worker in terms of renewing mental and physical energies and in the sense of bearing future wage slaves. This is the root of our poverty, the hall-mark which identifies a member of the working class and which is expressed in sub-standards in what we can afford to consume.

This hall-mark cannot effectively be obscured or concealed, no matter how some workers may try by pretending to a life style which is not actually available to them. Indeed it is futile and reactionary to make such efforts, for if workers faced the reality of their poverty they would thereby be taking one of the first steps to its abolition.

And then there would be another way in which a worker could be recognised — by their class-consciousness and their activity in the struggle to establish a classless, povertyless society.


Keep off the beach

When the bombs went off over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and tens of thousands of people died, we were consoled that there was a positive side to this unprecedented event. Nuclear power is a source of energy which could be used to produce electricity, endless and safe and cheap. It could be an age of new prosperity. Nuclear power, said the authorities, was good for us.

There were some doubters who muttered inconveniently about the dangers, that there was such a thing as radioactivity which could leak and that an accident at a nuclear power station could lead to frightful consequences. The authorities were reassuring. There would be no accidents; the designers would see to that. Radioactivity was easily controllable. Nuclear power was good for us.

Well, since those innocent days there have been incidents like the Three Mile Island melt-down and the leaks at Windscale, which have blighted the surrounding land. Now the sea too is under threat, as the nuclear waste discharged from Windscale comes ashore as a menacing oily slick, polluting the fish and the seaweed and the beach itself. Nuclear power, the authorities still tell us. is good for us. Meanwhile we must stay off the beaches while they try to expunge the memory of the incidents by renaming the power station which will henceforth be known as Sellafield.

The history of nuclear power is one of the search for a source of cheap energy. This search did not happen in the interests of human beings but for the sole reason that the owning class are concerned that commodities should be produced as cheaply and reliably as possible. Cheap, reliable production means more competitive goods; it means a better chance of capturing markets, of more assured profits for the owners of the means of life.

In this process the welfare of human beings is of lesser consequence. The search for profit and capital accumulation has a sordid history of pollution, to the point of killing people and destroying elements of the environment. Nuclear power stations are a typical phase in that history. In a sane society, based on human interests, nuclear power would be of vast benefit to the world; free of the restraints of production for profit, it would be safe in its method and its design. It is capitalism which makes of it a polluter and destroyer, so that at places it is unsafe to walk on the beach, to pick up a pebble, to touch the seaweed.

Nuclear power may well be good for us. It is capitalism which is bad for us.

The classroom struggle (1980)

From the September 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

My schooldays were recent enough to remember and they were not the happiest days of my life. The compulsion to pay attention to pompous lectures about what is “right” and what is “wrong”; the competitive tension of examinations whereby friends become rivals for an advanced position in the employment queue; the deceit and ignorance upon which much of modern learning is based. I learnt three important things while at school how to hide from authority; how to read a good book while pretending to be listening to the teacher; and above all, how to rejoice in the abnormality which is officially scorned by the system of mass education.

The message of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is for all members of the class which owns little more than its ability to work and is therefore forced to sell its labour power to an employer in order to live. We do not discriminate between young members of the working class who are still being trained for wage slavery and those who have graduated from education into full-time exploitation. It is your common class position to which we appeal, not your age or your experience. To become a socialist does not require grey hairs or five “O” levels, but an understanding of the society you live in and a commitment to change it. If you are still at school, you can contribute towards making a better future for yourself no less valuably than any other worker; you will find no discrimination on the basis of age in the socialist movement.

1. THE PURPOSE OF COMPULSORY SCHOOLING

Schools are not there so that young people can freely learn and be turned into informed, mature human beings. Only the liberal educationalists who earn their bread and butter out of the blackboard jungle perpetuate the myth that education is about freedom and fulfilment. Schools exist to train you for your class role. Because the vast majority of people are destined to be wage or salary workers the job of schools is to give us training in working class skills and values. Boys are taught how to make things from wood and repair cars; girls are given a basic training in domestic skills. They teach us to read (good for machine instructions and understanding the lies of the newspapers), to count, add and subtract (necessary for industrial workers), to know about geography (through the nationalist eyes of the British ruling class) and history (where content is selected and, by careful emphasis and omission, the past becomes the story of kings, lords and war victories instead of workers, peasants, strikes and revolutions). They teach us to keep fit in a competitive form of warfare called sport. And they are legally bound to teach us religion (the only compulsory subject) so that we will accept their class morality.

Schools have always been the property of the ruling class and they have always served to inculcate into the mass of people the ideas of the rulers. The first schools in England were in the sixth century and their purpose was to train monks and priests to spread propaganda about those parts of the Bible of use to the feudal ruling class. The Roman Catholic Church, which controlled European education in the Middle Ages, was so fearful that literacy might be used to examine any ideas but its own that it officially supported a policy of mass illiteracy. The following extract from a letter from Pope Gregory to Bishop Desiderina of Gaul illustrates such fear of the power of literacy:

“A circumstance came to our notice which cannot be mentioned without shame, namely that you, our brother, give lessons in [Latin] grammar. This news caused us such annoyance and disgust that all our joy at the good we had heard earlier was turned to sorrow and distress, since' the same lips cannot sing the praise of Jove as the praise of Christ. Consider yourself how serious and shocking it is that a bishop should pursue an activity unthinkable even for a pious layman. We have already in hand the granting of your request, easy in mind and untroubled by doubts, provided that this information which has come to us shall have been proved manifestly untrue, and you shall not be shown to spend your time on the follies of secular literature.”

The Pope was right to fear the consequences of mass literacy, for it was the invention of the printing press and the growth of literature in the vernacular which contributed greatly to the popular dismissal of Catholicism in the sixteenth century.

The growth of industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth century produced a requirement for a workforce educated in the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic). At first, the ruling class was slow to perceive its economic needs and some of them had a medieval fear of educating the poor:

“It is doubtless desirable that the poor should be instructed in reading, if it were only for the best of purposes that they may read the Scriptures. As to writing and arithmetic, it may be apprehended that such a degree of knowledge would produce in them a derelish for the laborious occupations of life.”
(Justice of the Peace, 1807. Quoted by R. Williams in The Long Revolution)

Robert Lowe MP, Vice President of the government’s Education Department in the 1860s, was in favour of educating the poor, but not for philanthropic motives:

“The lower classes ought to be educated to discharge the duties cast upon them. They should also be educated that they may appreciate and defer to a higher cultivation when they meet it, and the higher classes ought to be educated in a very different manner, in order that they may exhibit to the lower classes that higher education to which, if it were shown to them, they would bow down. . . ."
(Primary and Classical Education)

The modern comprehensive school fulfils this role admirably. Young workers are taught practical skills to enable us to 'discharge the duties cast upon’ us. The importance of punctuality (getting to work on time), not talking while working, passive obedience to authority, ability to memorise so-called facts, and repetition of dogma are all part of the preparation for wage slavery. They teach us history, but not our history from our angle. State education is an attempt to nationalise the minds of the working class.

It is not only in Britain and the West that education serves the needs of the ruling class. In Russia, China and the other state capitalist countries young workers are taught the virtues of employment, deference and nationalism, the only difference being that it is all done in the name of socialism. In Russian schools, where the boring memoirs of Tsar Brezhnev are now compulsory reading (like the Bible in Britain), many students have become cynical towards the elite bureaucracy that dictates over them—a cynicism they share with many young members of the working class throughout the world. Even in South Africa, where the racist system of apartheid has tended to blind capitalists to their economic needs, there is growing recognition by the ruling class that their overriding objective must be to produce profitable wage slaves, regardless of colour. Harry Oppenheimer, South Africa’s leading industrialist (he is head of De Beers diamond and Anglo-American gold mining combines) is reported to have urged the Botha government to get rid of apartheid in education:

“. . .  Mr. Botha must bring the electorate to recognise that racial discrimination and free enterprise are basically incompatible . . .  the education issue threatens to prevent the rapid and peaceful development of the country because it creates an ‘acute and growing shortage’ of skilled workers.”
(Guardian, 14th July, 1980)

This is not to say that the existence of schools is a bad thing for the working class. If you use your brain to serve your own material interests, some of what you learn at school can help you. It depends on what you study, what conclusions you draw and how far you are able to sort out the prejudices from the facts. Literacy can be a powerful weapon, opening a path to the study of the world around you, but it can also be a path to a lifetime of Daily Express editorials and Harold Robbins paperbacks.

2. CLASS INEQUALITY IN SCHOOLING

Capitalist education is unequal and the introduction of comprehensive education has not eradicated that inequality. In the days when male children were divided up at eleven into manual workers-to-be who were sent to secondary modern schools to learn woodwork and arithmetic, and the potential managers and professionals who went to the grammar schools to learn Latin and Chaucer, it was the claim of liberal reformers that comprehensive education would remove such inequality. This idea was based on the popular illusion that education determines class, whereas in fact education tends to reflect class. Inequality still exists in comprehensive schools between the poorest sections of the working class and the less poor (who often imagine themselves to be middle class). In many areas two-level schooling has continued, with the better-off parents sending their children to the better equipped, less rowdy schools near to where they live, while the children of the slums and the council estates end up in the worst schools.

The real division in education is not within the working class, but between the state education provided for the workers and the paid public schools for the sons and daughters of the parasites who own the means of living. Still Crabbe’s dictum applies:

To every class we have a school assign’d;
Rules for all ranks and food for every mind.

We have described the purpose of working class education, but what about the public schools with their spacious grounds, academic excellence and conditioned snobbery? They teach young capitalists the exact opposite to what we learn in the comprehensives: we learn to follow, they learn to lead; we learn to save money, they learn to invest and spend it; we learn how to be brave soldiers, they learn how to be distant Generals; we learn to respect property, they learn to own and control it. The public schools teach people to be superior to those not in their class. Entry to the capitalist class is not determined by competitive examination, by having better minds or working harder or having more initiative than anyone else—it is simply determined by the ownership of inherited wealth. Eton and Harrow contain some of the biggest morons on the face of the earth, but they are morons with fancy clothes, big family homes, posh accents, daddies in the City and, above all, plenty of money to invest in the labour power of the working class.

One in five members of the present Conservative government went to one of three of the top fee-paying schools in Britain. An analysis conducted by C. S. Wilson and T. Lupton in the 1950s showed that Eton alone produced 30 per cent of Conservative Ministers, of the directors of large banks, of the directors of City firms, and of the directors of insurance companies. Eton, Winchester, Harrow, Rugby, Charterhouse and Marlborough between them produced between two-fifths and half of the holders of the above-mentioned posts. Jean Blondel, in his study of Voters, Parties and Leaders, points out that:

“The 25 to 30 per cent of old Etonians whom one finds in a Conservative cabinet, in banks, in the insurance companies, have greater influence than their numbers warrant, because, being old Etonians, they have more contacts. They supply information about other old Etonians who are influential in other walks of life; they are go-betweens, they are instruments of compromises in the sector of British political, social and economic life in which they are numerous.”
(P. 24)

While capitalists spend millions of pounds on getting their children a superior education, the government tells us that it must cut expenditure on schooling because it stands to reason that nuclear bombs must be a higher social priority than school books. In the present economic recession, which is an endemic feature of capitalism, you can expect your standard of schooling to markedly drop. The June 1979 budget cut £55 million from central government spending on education and the November 1979 White Paper on public spending announced a cut in real terms of £240 million for education. This will amount to the loss of 18,000 teachers in England and Wales and increased charges for—or the withdrawal of—school meals, milk and transport. This is happening at a time when, according to the Department of Education, there is a shortage of 4,000 mathematics teachers, 2,000 physical science teachers, 2,000 craft, design and technology teachers and 1,600 language teachers.

3. REVOLUTION, NOT REBELLION

Revolution is a mysterious term. Most of us are taught at school to understand it in relation to the capitalist revolutions of the past. The French Revolution of 1789 is most people’s idea of what revolution is all about: barricades, bayonets, blood, slogans, heroic leaders and a new regime, not much different from the old one. That is not what socialists mean by revolution.

By social revolution we mean a conscious change in social relationships from those based upon private or state ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution to common ownership and democratic control of the world around us. The socialist revolution will mean the instant abolition of class divisions, the wages system, private property, and the need for money. It is a big aim, but it presents the only alternative to the present world system of capitalism.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain states as a matter of principle that the establishment of the new social order can only be possible when a majority of the world’s workers consciously understand and want it. Once majority consciousness arises, nothing can stop the conquest of power by the working class.

The tensions and contradictions of working class life under capitalism tend to lead more and more workers to question the status quo. This critical thought is essential, for once you start to formulate questions, you are half way to knowing the answers. But capitalism has an immense capacity for accommodating working class discontent and dissent and it is often able to convert challenging resistance into sterile rebelliousness.

The Labour Party Young Socialists, the left wing romanticists and campaigns for reforms have wasted the political energies of millions of working class youths. They have grown weary trying to do what none has done before them—to make the slaughter house fit for the cattle. In their late twenties the participants in the reformist movement grow tired and drop their radical poses, claiming to have grown out of such youthful fancies as wishing for a better world to live in. The system has converted them into regular channels of dissent and they end up as conservative, acquiescent workers.

It is not only into overtly political blind allies that young workers can be led. The so-called ‘alternative culture' is, on the whole, just another capitalist rip-off. You drop out of one oppressive way of life and into another. Escape via rock music or art is often at best merely pretentious and at worst an excuse for someone to get rich quick. Escape through drugs or alcohol is a boost to those who profit from human self-destruction, but ultimately serves to stupify workers and blind them to their condition. Youth cults have been used to make money out of despair, while regimenting youths into easily identifiable mass fashions: while the hippies sang of peace and love, the drug pushers dreamed of dollars; skinhead culture, with its frustrated racism and know-nothing nationalism, did its recruits little good in the dole queue; and as for the punk ‘New Wave’—what’s the use of walking around with a safety pin up your nose if you still face all the poverty and degradation of being a wage slave? Some young workers still turn in frustration to the empty skies and the empty churches for an answer, often ending up on the wrong end of the exploitation game in the Moonies, the scientologists or in a temple devoted to a guru. To really challenge the conservatism of this system, it’s not new cults we need, but liberated minds.

Mind liberation is not the same as women’s liberation (women wage slaves being exploited on the same terms as men). It means thinking about what is in your own material interest and joining with those in a common social position to do something about it. Punks, junkies and lefties can be well accommodated within the capitalist system. Socialist consciousness cannot be accommodated within capitalism: not until we have a system of society run in the human interest will socialists be content.

What, then, will be the position of young people in a socialist society? Of course, the social revolution will not alter human biology and make young humans look the same as older ones. Neither will it remove the need for those who are young to learn certain skills and acquire certain information as part of their development into adulthood. The difference in socialism will be that the young will no longer be conditioned from birth for class roles; no longer will those who are old have power over those who are young because they pay for them; no longer will education be only for the young, but instead will be seen as a lifelong process for all to enjoy the constant quest for knowledge; no longer will authoritarian discipline exist in schools, for the basis of socialism will be cooperative self-discipline; no longer will those being educated be forced to accept dogma in an uncritical fashion, for the need to inculcate norms into children will have disappeared.

Socialism will open up one new possibility which has hitherto been denied to the sons and daughters of the wealth-producing class: the right to be different, to assert individuality, to be eccentric and to be visionaries.

Steve Coleman

The Great Public Schools of England. (1904)

From the December 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

It should be mentioned at the outset that by the “Great Public Schools” are meant those open only to the members of the Public who have long purses or long pedigrees. They are institutions peculiar to England, where the sons of the propertied-class are taught to play games well, and to despise both healthy labour and those who are foolish enough to provide them with free education and free maintenance, while refusing to claim the same for their own children. For centuries past it has been the aim of all members of the capitalist-class to obtain places for their sons at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, or any other great public school, the mere mention of which is to stamp the youths as “gentlemen.” The majority of our “famous statesmen" have been educated at these “theatres of athletic manners and training places of s gallant, generous spirit"; and it is in these pleasant places that our rulers and owners have acquired that “education" which is so powerful a factor in fostering class prejudice. It will therefore be interesting to learn for what purpose they were founded.

In the 14th century, William Wykeham, the son of a small farmer, founded the first English Public School at Winchester; the Statutes declare that his purpose was to establish s school where a liberal education might be given to those who desired it but who were unable to pay the cost; they were to be pauperes et indigentes (poor and needy), and they were to be "clothed, boarded, lodged, and taught entirely free of cost"; further, 70 Fellowships at New College, Oxford, were to be reserved for them. The number of well-to-do scholars, paying full fees, was limited to 10! Well, in 1873 the “poor and needy” were being charged £60 a year, while 150 scholars were paying full fees.

The world-renowned Eton College was founded in the 15th century by Henry VI. The scholars, who were to be “pauperes et indigentes, apt for study and of good morals," were entitled to board and lodging, clothing and education, free of charge! It is needless to say that only the wealthy can afford or dare to send, their sons to Eton, and the founder would find it difficult to recognise his carefully formed, constituted, and endowed school in the present famous “patrician seminary." For high-class snobbery an Etonian easily beats all records, and those of some of the other public schools are hard to beat.

In 1512, Thomas Sutton was given permission to found the Charterhouse School for the free education and maintenance of poor children. The air of London proving unwholesome, the "poor children” now resort to Godalming, where plenty of good food and healthy exercise help to form those fine, strapping fellows that form such a contrast to the stunted growth of the slum dweller.

In 1567 L. Sherriff started a free school at Rugby, chiefly for Rugby boys.

In 1571, John Lyon, a yeoman, formed a school at Harrow for the "perpetual education of the poor children of the parish of Harrow, without any charge for the same." Harrow School, second only to Eton!

The Merchant Taylors' School was founded in 1560 for the free education of 250 boys, who alone should be eligible for some 50 Scholarships and Fellowships at St. John’s College, Oxford.

In Edward VI's reign many free schools were started, including Shrewsbury School, and Christ’s Hospital in London for the sons of the "very poor." Christ’s Hospital, indeed, has long been of advantage to the hard-worked city clerk and the ill-paid curate, but with its removal to Horsham, it will doubtless soon become, like Charterhouse, a place where the working-class will give free education and free maintenance to the sons of the wealthy.

St. Paul’s School was founded by the great Dean Colet, who ordained that it should be free to "153 children of all nations and countries.”

At Westminster School it was placed on the statutes that 40 scholars were to be educated free and freely boarded at the expense of the Dean and Chapter.

Dulwich College was founded by Edward Alleyn for the "free education of poor boys.”

Perhaps these notes on the charters of eleven of the most famous public schools will suffice to indicate the purpose for which they were founded and bow that purpose was fulfilled; of course there are many others whose origin and development were the same.

Although as long ago as 1855 the annual revenues of only four of these schools amounted to £74,000, gratuitous education is now practically non-existent; there are indeed at all the above institutions various scholarships, that often considerably reduce the fees, which vary from £80 to £150, but they are only to be gained by those who already have the qualifications of birth, influence, and education.

Among the boys, wealth and aptness for games are of primary importance, and those "apt for study and of good morals" have to endure the “ ragging,” so popular, too, at the Universities. It is incredible what suffering has to be endured by those who come to school to work or who refuse to join in the immoral practices so prevalent. The weak are oppressed, and the poor are treated with such contempt that they often run into debt to escape the stigma of poverty. Sham patriotism runs riot, and the daily attendance at chapel. engenders that sham religion which is seldom believed in but which proves of service in keeping in its place the working-class. The ignorance of the average public school boy astounding, and well accounts for the mismanagement of the late South African War, and in a degree, for the decline of British industry. Literature, top, may well become degraded when the leisured classes, can hardly write half-a-dozen lines in correct English.

The Rev. R. J. Campbell has denounced the working-class in a way that has even called forth remonstrances from most of the capitalist papers; no one, however, who knows anything of the "Great Public Schools” will deny that the boys, as a rule, are “lazy, unthrifty, improvident, immoral, foul-mouthed, and untruthful and sometimes drunken." “Betting and gambling" and “idle self-indulgence” are almost as prevalent in some public schools as in Park Lane.

This is the way in which the commands of the founders have been obeyed, and it is for this that the poor and needy have been so disgracefully robbed. The history of the “Great Public Schools” is symbolical of the history of the world ; the good things produced by and belonging to the working-class, stolen from them and devoted to luxury and riotous waste. It is to pot an end to all this that The Socialist Party has been formed, and there is only one method by which the Working-class may recover its possessions from the capitalist-class, and that is—Expropriation.

Sydney Chase