Party pieces
EDUCATION STUART MACLURE
Going to party conferences is something every- one ought to do once. I cannot recommend day trips to Blackpool in October as a form of pleasure travel, but the experience of watching the two main parties discuss education is never wholly without interest.
Political philosophies emerge in splendid caricature when simplified for presentation on the big stage of the Winter Gardens. In educa- tional matters, this means that for Labour, Tawney is still the guide: no matter what the motion says, the debate is about equality and privilege. Ironically this usually releases mean and envious spirits. The loudest cheers are re- served for attacks on private schools and grammar school selection, and parents who try to get advantages for their children, or who give them a head start just by being disgustingly bourgeois in the first place.
For the Conservatives, education turns out to be about getting on in a competitive society. Charitably interpreted, this means social mob- ility. In conference hurlyburly it more crudely emerges as gaining and preserving class ad- vantages. The loudest cheers are reserved for grammar schools and selection—the devices by which go-getters get going. Over the past fifteen years all this has gained prominence. Whereas the Tories used to regard education as rather vulgar—getting on depended on character, thank God, not brains—the technocrats have had their way as much with them as with Mr Wilson's followers. The hall is full of computer analysts and statisticians. Education can no longer be left as an afterthought. Instead it has a ritual importance even when there is no start- ling new policy to debate.
Both parties had quite good education de- bates. At the Labour conference Alice Bacon was even allowed to give some news and tell the conference that there would be legislation between now and the next election to force Tory LEAS to go comprehensive. Unfortunately she did this in language so opaque that it re- quired frenzied briefing to bring home to re- porters the import-00er statement. As a pro- nouncement, it was ably designed to give the maximum encouragement to the faithful while saddling Mr Short with the minimum com- mitment.
It was, somehow, typical of the occasion that this non-announcement—it means next to noth- ing unless there are the capital resources to back it up—and the unceremonious rejection of the Newsom scheme for integrating the public schools, were the two main planks in Miss Bacon's reply for the National Executive Committee. Compared with the traumatic events of the past twelve months—the post- ponement of the raising of the school leaving age over which a Cabinet Minister resigned, the savage cuts in school building, the stringent measures to hold down education spending over the next two years—Miss Bacon's speech was largely irrelevant. But it had the sovereign merit of meeting the conference on its own chosen ground by taking a swipe at privilege (Newsom) and striking a blow for equality, which, how- ever naively, is what the comprehensive school represents in political shorthand. In many ways, however, it was the Conserva-
fives who had the more exciting time. Their education debate came after a different Lind of ritual—a session devoted to a balloted motion on the territorials. Considering that enough people had voted in the ballot to project this on to the agenda, it was remarkable how little enthu- siasm it aroused. But when the education debate opened all was different. The conference hall filled up. It soon became clear that the discus- sion would be lively and acrimonious even if, predictably, it took the form of yet another attack by the diehard defenders of the grammar school on Sir Edward Boyle's softness on the comprehensive issue.
The party managers had chosen a harmless motion combining an attack on the govern- ment's education cuts with support for primary schools as 'first priority' and a defence of the right to buy private education. In his opening speech, the proposer, Mr Marcus Fox. from Shipley, turned to Sir Edward and wagged his finger at him, 'You are not my pin-up boy' he said—a somewhat crude expression of opinion which brought tumultuous applause from the anti-Boyle faction.
The real trouble, of course, came when Mr Angus Maude, angered at the cavalier manner in which his own amendment had been dis- missed by the programme committee, urged the conference to throw out the motion—not be- cause they disagreed with it, but as a dramatic way of saying something else: that Tory- controlled local education authorities should keep their promises and defend their grammar schools to the last ditch rather than submit to bluff and blackmail from Mr Short. As all the pundits said the next day, it was a splendid piece of conference oratory, passionate, stirring, direct. It was a call to action, and to action on a favoured front, the defence of the grammar school and the ladders which it offers to those who are destined to get on.
Sir Edward Boyle fought back skilfully and held his end up like a middle-of-the-order bats- man who has to dig in against some pretty hostile bowling. He gave no ground—repeating what the Tory policy statement had to say about there being general agreement that eleven is too early to select children in to separate schools. He attacked 'botched up' schemes as vehemently as anyone. But he ended on a note of defiance.
It was no good, he said asking him to meet socialist dogmatism on education with an equal and opposite Conservative dogmatism. For in education it was dogmatism itself which was the enemy. 'I'm sorry,' he said, at one point,
'if this is not sufficiently right wing for some or left wing for others. I think I am putting what is the sensible view educationally and it is my belief that in the long run this is going to be the right view politically.'
It was excellent stuff—though splendidly in- appropriate for Blackpool jamboree—and went a long way to explain why Sir Edward Boyle is widely respected outside his own party. My
impression was that he emerged at the end undefeated, having treated the conference more
seriously than it deserved. But the occasion showed once again that if Mr Heath has any regard for him, he must now allow Sir Edward Boyle his release from education and an oppor- tunity to turn his undoubted talents elsewhere —say to foreign affairs. He has done his stint educating his own party—and remarkably suc- cessfully, all things considered. Right now, Sir Edward's probably a bit too reasonable and a lot too well-informed to be an acceptable knock- about opposition spokesman on education.
Previous page
