On Missing The Point

In one of his latest comments, Mr Charles writes : 'PH entirely misses my point. I was not arguing for the rights or wrongs of Grammar Schools. I was asking him to tell us how he would sell their reintroduction to the voting public.'

But I dealt precisely, in detail and at length with that issue. I only mentioned the possibility that he really didn't grasp that grammar schools were better, in case this was his problem.

I do sometimes wonder if people such as Mr Charles make any serious effort to  read what I write here. For likewise Mr Charles says : ' If PH really believes that those of us on the left believe we have had things "our way" for so long, he is monstrously deluded. Every Labour government since Attlee has betrayed its founding principles.'

But I didn't say the left *believed* it has had things all its own way. I said (emphasis added by me) : 'They *have* had things their way for many years now.'

The Left's strange ability to believe that it is still an outsider rebel faction, far from power, long after it has taken over the establishment, is one of the principal features of the argument I have been making ever since I published 'The Abolition of Britain' (and ever since my critics started not reading it, while thinking that they had) in 1999.

I recall particularly making fun of the fact that the horrible Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, one of the most repressive state apparatuses on earth, has an official radio station called 'Radio Rebelde' (Rebel Radio) . This seems to me to be a good metaphor for the Left's difficulty in taking responsibility for, and taking satisfaction from, its accession to power. A few years ago the editor of the Radio 4 'Today' programme paid me the great compliment of delaying the 8.30 news Bulletin, so that I could continue my debate with Lindsey German, of the 'Socialist Workers' Party', in which I tried (yet failed) to explain to Ms German that she and her comrades had much to be pleased about in modern Britain.

The fact that the Secretary of State for Defence (himself a not-very-apologetic ex-member of the pro-Soviet Communist party)  had just quoted Antonio Gramsci in an interview (and only I, of those in the studio, had realised this) seemed to me to be a good example of how it takes an ex-Bolshevik to grasp what's going on. Things have surely changed a bit, if Britain can have an ex-Communist, Gramsci-quoting Defence Secretary.

If The Left don't like the anti-sovereignty, liberal intervention policy of the Blair and Cameron governments, then they haven't understood the founding principles of their own movement. Or perhaps they just don't like the look of the 'abolition of national borders' when they see it being done. Actually this has often been the problem for sensitive leftists.

They will the end of a socialist, secularist, internationalised, egalitarian society – but they dislike the means necessary to bring about this Hell-on-Earth, when they find out in too much detail what they are. The charming Nikolai Bukharin was quite happy for all kinds of repression to be used against non-Bolsheviks after the Russian revolution. But he was surprised and shocked when the same thing was done to him by Stalin a few years  later, in the same cause.

I can, by the way, think of few British governments of modern times which have fulfilled their manifesto commitments more fully than did the Attlee Cabinet of 1945-51. For better or worse (and often for worse) they did what they said they would do, and did it so thoroughly that Churchill himself didn't dare reverse it in 1951. Similarly, the 1964-70 Wilson government conducted a moral and social revolution of vast dimensions. And the Blair-Brown government likewise hugely expanded taxation and the public sector, shrivelled our national independence, adopted liberal interventionism on a large scale and blanketed the country in political correctness. If, after these three eras of profound change, a leftist person thinks himself betrayed or ignored, then I can only imagine he doesn't understand politics, economics or diplomacy has no interest in culture or morals, or is simply half asleep. But as we see here, there are such people.

One of the many things to be said for my brother Christopher is that at least he is prepared to look the consequences of his beliefs in the face, and acknowledge them as essential to what he desires.

And so he thinks (though he still hesitates over several points).

The problem with most Leftists is that they are in the grip of a dogmatic faith, and therefore cannot think. And so they must twist reality to suit the dogma, for they would be bereft if they had to accept that their dogma is wrong. That is why they all believe this self-serving fantasy that they are poor, sad excluded minority figures, when in fact their ideas dominate the country.

Mr Gibson says ; 'I went to a comprehensive. I achieved straight A grades at A level, went to get a 1st class honours degree, Master's with distinction and a PhD. Stop generalising!'

Two points. In a devalued education system these grades and qualifications do not necessarily mean what they would have meant in a system that was not dependent on comprehensive state secondary schools, and hadn't needed to lower its standards to conceal the decline in quality, as we have done (see John Marks, 'The Betrayed Generation').

Indeed, were Mr Gibson a regular reader here he might know ( see *index*!) that the devaluation of all examinations, all grades , including  A levels and University degrees is often discussed. Thus his experience proves nothing. Second, while I have no doubt that comprehensives destroy the educational hopes of many who go to them, some people have such natural gifts, and such strong backing from home, (and attend one of the comprehensives that is less bad, less disorderly and less hostile to learning than the majority) and can therefore obtain a reasonable education in spite of being forced to attend a bad school.  It is Mr Gibson who is generalising.

If Mr Wooderson can direct me to research showing that secondary moderns were worse for social mobility than comprehensives, I will examine it and comment on it. I have not heard of it. In fact I am often struck by how little is written about these schools ( some of which, by 1985, were offering A level courses and getting pupils into University) . But I would point out that secondary moderns were not *designed* to achieve social mobility. That was the job of the grammar schools.  It would seem to me that you would have to take both sorts of schools together, and compare their joint results with those of comprehensives.

On the question of private tutors, etc, I have no doubt that some parents will always use private tutors. The financial incentive for a parent in a grammar school area is huge.  Mr Anthony Blair, for instance, did so, even though his sons were at one of the best state schools in the country. I believe many other socialist politicians do the same, rather than admit that comprehensives are inferior to selective schools. This is only one of many hypocritical actions they undertake, to conceal this truth from themselves and others (a recent edition of BBC Radio 4's 'The House I Grew Up In ',  featuring Toby Young's recollections of his education, under the influence of his egalitarian anti-grammar school father Michael, provides an example of this which is both poignant and infuriating).

But if in every area of the country there were grammar places available to between 30 and 40 per cent of children, obtained not by a single exam but by (as I advocate, see *index* !) the German system of mutual agreement between parents and teachers, with second chances at 13 and even 15, I doubt if it would happen very much. I don't think it does in Germany. Perhaps any Northern Irish readers might wish to comment on whether such tutoring is common there. I have no idea. But my guess is that, while it happens, it is not remotely comparable to what goes on in Kent and Buckinghamshire.

Tutoring was not unknown in the days of the eleven-plus, and it will not die out entirely if we reinstate a national grammar school system covering the whole of England and Wales. But the current situation where heavily oversubscribed grammar schools, within commuting distance of the capital, are overwhelmed by demand, is a result of the *abolition* of selection in neighbouring areas, not of its existence where it survives. It gives no indication of the operation of a national selective system.  This too has been discussed many times before (see *index* !).