Hunt's phoney war of words with Gove

When the smoke has cleared in the exchange between Michael Gove, the education secretary, and Tristram Hunt, his Labour shadow, over how to assess the First World war as we approach its 100^th anniversary, we are back almost exactly to where the major parties were in August 1914.

On August 5, the Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith informed parliament that Britain was  now at war with Germany. The Tory opposition backed his statement as did the Labour Party. A vote on an emergency war budget was carried unanimously in the House of Commons the next day.

A little over four years later, 15 million soldiers would lay dead on the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East, sacrificied in a war fought for the division and redivision of the world and its resources by the major imperialist powers.

Of course, Hunt doesn’t see it that way. Why would he? Historian Hunt is concerned only to defend the right to view the conduct of the war critically against charges from Gove this is unpatriotic. Otherwise Hunt is an enthusiast, noting with pride in the Observer that “appeals by trade union leaders to oppose German aggression, particularly against Belgium, led more than 250,000 of their members to enlist by Christmas 1914, with 25% of miners volunteering before conscription”.

Yet, less than two years before, as war loomed, the socialist Second International, of which Labour was a member, unanimously adopted a manifesto at a Congress in Basel, which declared unambiguously:

“It would be insanity for the governments not to realise that the very idea of the monstrosity of a world war would inevitably call forth the indignation and the revolt of the working class. The proletarians consider it a crime to fire at each other for the profits of the capitalists, the ambitions of dynasties, or the greater glory of secret diplomatic treaties.”

The manifesto insisted that if war threatens to break out, it is the “duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries” to exert “every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective”. Further, the manifesto urged:

“In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favour of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.”

These fine sentiments were swiftly abandoned, swept aside by a wave of crude nationalism and patriotism that Labour and the trade union bureaucrats joyfully went along with. Ramsay Macdonald, a pacifist opposed to the war, was quickly replaced by Arthur Henderson as Labour leader.

A similar course was adopted by the powerful German Social Democratic Party. Workers were despatched to fight for the Kaiser and the Fatherland while their counterparts in Britain were told that there was nothing more glorious than sacrificing their lives for King and Country.

Needless to say, the Second International collapsed as a result of these great betrayals.

By the end of August, the Labour Party and the TUC had declared an “industrial truce” for the duration of the war and lent their support to an all-party recruitment campaign. By May 1915, there were three Labour MPs in the Coalition government, with Henderson in the cabinet.

Soon, however, strikes broke out in munitions factories and the shop stewards’ movement was founded. As the slaughter in Europe reached new heights, enthusiasm for the war drained away and the government introduced conscription 1916. The punitive terms imposed by France, Britain and the allies at the end of the war contributed to the causes of the Second World War 20 years later.

So Mr Hunt, spare us your phoney war of words with Gove. When all is said and done, you and your party leaders down the ages share a major political responsibility for the horrors of the 20^th century (as well as the devastation of Iraq in the 21^st). History could have been different if ordinary working people had been led by lions and not tame political donkeys.  

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Why teachers have had enough

The two main teachers’ unions, representing about 500,000 teachers, today begin a series of rolling strikes culminating in an all-out national strike for one day before the end of the year. They have simply had enough and it’s easy to see why.

Nowhere is the lack of democracy that is a feature of our age more apparent than in education. Education secretary Michael Gove has shut his ears to the education experts, the teachers themselves, their unions and most parents too. 

In line with what is happening in most other workplaces, Gove wants every teacher to take on more duties, work longer for less pay and agree to lower pensions. And he plans to dismantle the national pay bargaining system which is a direct attack on the unions.

Head teachers will get more power (and money) while the teachers themselves, at the sharp end, get pay cuts. They are expected to toe the government line, swallow their principles, and carry on teaching in a set-up that they most of them think should serve all children better.

And they are not consulted or listened to. Such is the arrogance of this Tory Party. They know best.

The Labour Party’s answer? Shadow minister Stephen Twigg’s speech at the recent party conference was almost pure waffle. There was nothing on the pay and conditions of teachers, nothing on performance-related pay, so impractical and unpopular with teachers.

And, of course, there was no commitment to return the new academies and free schools to local authority control — which would restore some fairness to the system. No surprise there as New Labour introduced academies in the first place. On the role of teachers to help work out Labour policy on education, there was not a word.

“Our vision of one nation is one of high aspirations for all,” said Twigg. “The Tories will tell us that we shouldn’t aim high for all. That’s what makes them conservative. Out for the privileged few. Wrong choices, wrong priorities. But as the progressives of British politics, we reject their defeatism. One nation is about high aspiration. On childcare. On the forgotten 50%. On higher education. Opening up power wealth and opportunity....”

Blah, blah, blah.  

Labour would make a few tweaks to the education system here and there, and some small policy changes such as wrap-around-care of pupils from 8.00am to 6.00pm, but would not challenge the Tory grand plan.

Gove’s ambition is the fragmentation of state education into competing schools, some with fancy new names and extra money, and some destined to become “sink schools”. Some would be able to select their intake of new pupils, others would end up with the so-called problem children, mostly the poor, and those on free school meals.

A few would have to teach to the narrow and prescriptive national curriculum, while the new academies and free schools, like the public schools, can ignore it.

The idea of having a co-operative family of schools in a region or of providing a good community school in each catchment area, is simply not on the agenda of the three main parties. It is the “global race”, the necessity of keeping UK PLC competitive and more profitable than the next country, that drives everything, including education policy.

Private schools are the model the Tories are heading towards. They, together with high-achieving state schools, can select the future entrepreneurs and scientists that the capitalist economy needs. The rest can join the race to the bottom.

There are other models of education, of course, that can be developed through practice and discussion. In a different world, they would set out to develop the talents and aspirations of all children, not for capitalism or the nation but for themselves and humanity as a whole.  

Peter Arkell

The incorporation of Labour

The assimilation of Labour into accepting the Tory Party’s narrative is moving at such a pace that it is no wonder that David Cameron finds his party ahead in the polls.

In virtually every major policy area, Labour’s own views are hardly distinguishable from those of the government; on crime, immigration and anti-terror laws, Ed Miliband’s crew are actually to the right of the ConDem coalition.

Only this week, Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, claimed that the benefits system had “skewed social behaviour”, provided “unearned support” and run up an unsustainable housing benefits bill.

In an articlefor the Guardian, Byrne called for “fresh thinking” and an abandonment of the party’s “old agenda”. In practice, Byrne and Labour are backing Iain Duncan Smith’s “welfare reform” bill.

On education, where Michael Gove is busily breaking up what remains of the comprehensive schools system, there is tacit backing from Labour. As the astute Tory commentator Peter Oborne
notes: “Gove is the first post-war education secretary to challenge effectively the power of the teaching unions – and move against an educational establishment that is constitutionally opposed to excellence and high standards. Amazingly, he seems to be bringing the Labour Party with him.”

Similarly on the economy. The ConDems have insisted draconian cuts in spending were made necessary partly because of the failed economic policies of the Blair/Brown governments. Shadow chancellor Ed Balls originally rejected this simplistic, half-truth.

Now, according to Oborne, even Balls agrees with “the need for drastic cuts in public spending” and only “the relatively minor detail of timing” is in dispute. “In all essentials, Ed Miliband’s Labour Party now accepts the fundamental economic insights of the Cameron Coalition.”

No surprise then that Miliband, propelled into the party’s leadership by the three largest trade unions in the hope he would be their prisoner, is struggling to find a coherent strategy that differentiates Labour from the Tories. Enter Lord Glasman, a founder of so-called Blue Labour and a Miliband advisor, whose statements on immigration could have come from the right-wing of the Tories.

Just to make sure Miliband gets the message, Glasman has told him that “there seems to be no strategy, no narrative and little energy” at the top of the party. Glasman urges the termination of what he terms “an unhappy and abusive relationship with the unions” and to end being identified with the interests of public sector workers.

Miliband is almost there. He opposed last year’s strikes in defence of public sector pensions and there are reports that he intends to reduce the reliance on trade union funding (Rod Aldridge, the former chief of outsourcing firm Capita who donated £1m to Labour was given a knighthood in the New Year list. One of Miliband's newest advisers is Andrew Rosenfeld, the property tycoon who has also given £1m)

Glasman is kicking at an open door when he urges Miliband to “leave behind stale orthodoxies and trust his instinct that change is essential”.

Oborne’s view that the “facts of life are Conservative” and that Labour has accepted this is, of course, used to damn what he terms the “Left” which he identifies with the 13 years of Blair/Brown governments.

This is historically inaccurate as well as misleading. New Labour long ago accepted the facts of corporate-driven globalisation and came to believe in a “new paradigm” of a crisis-free capitalism, with uninterrupted growth and riches for all. It was a view shared by many economists and politicians around the world, including the present Tory leadership.

The “facts of life” are actually those of an economic and financial system in profound crisis globally and not principally because governments spent too much. Reliance on credit/debt was the only way to sustain ever-growing consumption and, more significantly, profit levels.

So the credit crunch and financial meltdown was an expression of this permanent, inner-tension between production and profit that lies at the heart of capitalism. And the result is not just the wiping out of vast areas of capacity, leading to mass unemployment, but the integration of Labour into the ConDems’ desperate strategy to turn things round.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Market destroying state education

Coalition measures to encourage the creation of more academies and “free schools” point are creating a market for learning, destroying at a stroke the right of all children to a decent state education.

This market takes the form of setting up, in each area, a number of different types of school, all in competition with each other for students and exam results.

Where once there was a community of comprehensive schools, cared for by a single authority, there are now academies, free schools, technology colleges, comprehensive schools and church schools, all in competition with each other.

This chaotic free-for-all, trumpeted by the Tories for giving parents the freedom of choice, is in fact leading to a two-tier or even three-tier education system that guarantees unfairness.

The academies have private sponsors though they are funded directly by the state, the free schools are run by private outfits (often churches or businesses) and they all have different selection criteria, a situation which quickly leads to a polarisation

As is often the case with Tory policies, the impetus and the pioneering work for this unfair system comes from New Labour. It was the Blair government that turned its back on the comprehensive model towards a return to the old divisive grammar school/ secondary modern system, but with different names.

New Labour set up academies in the secondary sector and encouraged the growth of so-called faith schools. The Tories have seized on the idea, inviting any school to apply for academy status. Many of the strongest secondary schools, as well as some primaries, have done exactly that. Michael Gove, the education secretary, has recently announced that the “weakest” 200 primary schools will become academies in September 2012, thus undermining early-school education.

It is usually the head teacher, supported by the governors, who decides to convert to academy status because they see financial advantages for the school, and because they will have some control over selection – i.e. they can select unfairly, and can keep out problem children and those on school meals.

Parents and the teaching staff (who, unbelievably are not amongst those groups that the government suggests should be consulted) often do not agree. Conflict follows. Teachers and parents at Haverstock School, in Camden, North London, succeeded last week in forcing the head teacher and the governors to abandon their plan to become an academy.

The school, which boasts both Milliband brothers as former pupils, is a high-achieving one, but the prompt formation of a protest campaign forced a rapid re-think by the head, who said the school was not willing to be at the centre of a politicised debate for a long period.

For the Tories, breaking up state education has obvious advantages. As a pamphlet produced by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers points out. Instead of a national education service, locally administered, the ATL says, we are moving towards a national service, privately administered, funded by the taxpayer, but with all democratic accountability lost.

Private companies can move in, and many are queuing up for a slice of the action. Babcock Education made £23.6 million out of education in 2009, and has dreams of running a chain of 1,000 schools. ARK (Absolute Return for Kids) which calls itself a “philanthropic co-operative” runs eight academies and was set up and run by hedge fund managers.

The other great advantage for the Tories of creating academies and free schools is that they operate under private school legislation. They are not bound by any national or local agreements with the teaching unions. The considerable power of the unions can be gradually eroded, teacher’ pay cut, while head teachers become “fat cats”.

State schools are being re-organised to benefit the middle classes and churchgoers. As the private companies move in, looking for profits even if they are charities, so the life chances for children living in families on or below the poverty line plummet.

Peter Arkell

Coalition walking a tightrope

That the first serious opposition to the government’s cuts programme has come from within the Tory Party rather than from the usual quarters, reveals the not only the depth of the financial crisis but mounting problems within the Coalition itself.

In office for just two months, the Lib Dem-Tory government is facing all sorts of stresses and strains and you would not put your money on it lasting the scheduled five years. The axing of the school building programme by education secretary Michael Gove has prompted a furious response from within the Coalition.

Last night, Lib Dem Scottish Secretary Michael Moore criticised Gove over the fact that the announcement on the cuts was replete with errors, leading some schools to think mistakenly they had been reprieved. Three Tory MPs have denounced Gove and one threatened to lead a march on Downing Street of parents, students and teachers!

Ian Liddell-Grainger, Tory MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset, attacked plans to halt three schools in his constituency and put three others under review. “If I have to stand outside Downing Street and say, 'Can we please have a chat?', then I am more than happy to do so," he said. Teaching unions have organised a lobby of parliament, to take place on Monday 19 July – a date which coincides with the second reading of the government's Academies bill.

The Coalition’s attack is broad-ranging and will hit every section of the community, whether they voted for the Coalition parties or not. For example, pensions minister Steve Webb is proposing that private sector pensions schemes drop inflation-proofing based on the retail prices index (RPI) and replace it with the much lower consumer prices index (CPI). A pensioner currently receiving £10,000 a year will be more than £800 a year worse off by 2016, according to one estimate.

Apparently the government is concerned that the remaining final salary scheme pensions could go belly up over the next few years and land the government with the cost of picking up the pieces. Cutting the value of pensions by adjusting them for a lower measure of inflation is the Coalition’s answer.

The Coalition is walking a financial tightrope and could fall off at any time. Debt payments alone on the national debt amount to £40 billion in 2010-11 – and are expected to rise to an astonishing £70 billion, which is about 15% of the annual state budget. The government’s own calculations about reducing the budget deficit are themselves based on wildly optimistic forecasts about economic growth.

On many measures, Britain is the most indebted country among the advanced capitalist countries. As the government admits in its latest budget report: “Between 2002 and 2007 there was a near tripling of UK bank balance sheets and the UK financial system had become one of the most highly leveraged [i.e. financed by borrowing] in the world, more so than the US.” British banks are, by the way, still desperately short of capital

The scale of the task facing the Coalition – which wants to “rebalance” the economy in favour of the private sector – is immense and, in my view, beyond its capacity. What they are proposing could only be carried through by force. The groundswell of opposition and discontent that is already building up throughout society will undoubtedly provide us with an opportunity to defeat the Coalition. Building a network of People’s Assemblies to unite communities and plan for a socially-driven alternative to the nightmare of the capitalist financial and economic crisis is key to winning this historic battle.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Tory plans will destroy state education

By inviting all head teachers in the country to re-invent their schools as independent “academies”, Michael Gove, the new Tory education secretary, is really tempting them to abandon the principles and traditions of comprehensive state education.

Taking all schools away from elected local education authorities will further disadvantage students with learning difficulties as well as those who are challenged by their background and social environment.

Furthermore, the second plank of the proposals, the so-called “free schools” that will be set up and run by parents and other groups, will almost certainly fall into the hands of private companies before long. Private profit-making companies are waiting, jaws agape, for just such an opportunity.

Of course, it was the previous New Labour government that opened the doors wide for Tory plans. Driven, as always, by the wishes of big business and the employers’ organisations, the Blair/Brown governments enforced an unpopular and restrictive national curriculum onto the schools. It went along with a regime of constant testing, league tables according to exam results and the gradual privatisation of services.

And it was New Labour who foisted 200 academies onto the education landscape, against the wishes of most teachers and their unions, as a kind of Trojan Horse, in order, principally, to de-stabilise non-selective, neighbourhood comprehensive schools.

The new Tory proposals develop naturally out of this introduction of the market into the education system and they also profit from the general disillusion and frustration of teachers and parents with the New Labour model. They will seem attractive to many at first sight. Head teachers of those schools that have been labelled as “outstanding” have been promised a fast-tracked process so they can become academy schools by September.

There is no evidence that semi-independent, state-funded academies raise standards compared with other schools. There is plenty of evidence to show that they are divisive and expensive. Private business, disguised as charities, has a key role in the running of academies. Some now teach creationism as a scientific fact in opposition to the theory of evolution.

At present academies are allowed to select up to 10% of their new pupils. With this power, which may well be extended, they are able to cream off the brightest pupils, altering the balance of all the schools in the area.

They will soon establish themselves as the school of choice at the expense of others in the area. The former two-tier system of grammar schools and secondary modern schools looms again, though the new names given to them will no doubt try to cover up the fact.

These new schools will not only have extra freedoms over admissions and the curriculum, but they will have control over salaries, introducing competition for the best teachers. This measure is a direct challenge to the unions, which presently negotiate pay agreements on a national level.

The two main unions have condemned the proposals. Chris Keates, of NAS/UWT, accused the government of breaking up state education. “It is essential that those who care about social justice, fairness and equality, who value public services and care about the future of state education, do not allow this to happen,” she said

Christine Blower of the NUT commented: "Creating academies on the scale proposed by the government will have the effect of transferring billions of pounds of publicly funded assets in the form of buildings and land into the hands of private sponsors … This is a retrograde step which will cause social division and planning gridlock...What is needed is a good local school for every child working within their local family of schools."

The question is: What will they do about it? If the union leaders are serious, they will order immediate ballots of their members with a view to challenging the coalition government’s plans with industrial action. Unions should build a united campaign with parents, communities and other public sector workers in the firing line. It's now or never for the teaching unions' leaders.

Peter Arkell