Politics and Education
November 28th, 2012
Preface
Objective of my contribution to these fields
The objective of my letters, speeches and pamphlets in the linked fields of Politics and Education over a period of 30 years, has been to stand up for Britain, its native peoples and their achievements, in particular by
- opposing the decline of collective discipline and educational standards in Britain’s schools, and the insertion of multiculturalism into national curricula at the expense of British history and culture, and
- to advance the cause of British manufacture as the necessary foundation of a successful economy and source of national pride[1].
For over 15 years from 1984-2000 mine was virtually the only consistent voice in the national press opposed to the destruction of key parts of our national identity and sense of well-being by the following linked causes
- the mass immigration, now in millions, of non-British peoples;
- Britain’s membership of the European Union which has deprived her of control over essential parts of her law;
- the rampant defeatism and incompetence in the leadership of much of British industry which has seen essential industries closed down;
- the campaigns, both terrorist and political, to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom;
- militant egalitarianism which has led inter alia to
- the destruction of 1300 grammar schools and their absorption into substandard comprehensive schools;
- the promotion of homosexual “marriage” and the explicit depiction of homosexuality by the BBC;
- the deliberate lowering of academic standards in the public examination system;
- a systematic gender/ethnic favouritism – the promotion of women and ethnic minorities to major public positions and the public sector generally on the grounds that they are “under-represented” in these occupations.
As shown in the right-hand panel, I have expressed my views and analysis of these subjects in five ways: letters and articles in the national press; individually published papers and pamphlets; replies to the electors of Suffolk in the British General Election of 2010, speeches to numerous bodies, and papers and posts on the website Britain Watch.
Among a number of sympathetic letters editors, I am particularly indebted to David Twiston Davies of the Daily Telegraph, who for 14 years up to 2003 gave space to my views. The 130 letters and articles on these subjects published in the national press, and five major pamphlets published by Prosyma Research Ltd[2] and the Campaign for Real Education[3] are grouped chronologically under the 9 categories listed in the right-hand panel. They can be accessed by clicking on the relevant buttons. Where not obvious from its contents, each letter is preceded by a short commentary on the context. Industry letters are to be found via the Industry & Economics page.
My public speeches and addresses to specific organisations are listed under “Speeches” and the texts accessed through links to Britain-Watch.
Confusion and Chaos in the Governance of Britain
As described in numerous articles on Britain-Watch and elsewhere, my view is that Britain is now the worst governed of the major OECD industrial countries with which it may reasonably compare itself. No other country has quite the measures of chaos which have afflicted Britain since the election of the Labour government in 1997. The numbers speak for themselves: Government budget deficits of around 10% of national income in the last three years 2009-11; a balance of trade deficit spiralling upwards from zero in 1997 to over £1,000 per person in 2011 (within which a goods deficit of almost double this); somewhere between 3 million and 5 million immigrants and asylum claimants (nobody actually know how many to the nearest half million); manufacturing industry on which two-thirds of our exports depend allowed to decline from 20% to about 10% of national income in 2011[4]; ten years of dithering over energy policy in the face of the completely known facts at the beginning of the Blair government in 1997, i.e. that North Sea oil production would peak around the year 2002 and halve by 2010[5]; that all but one of the nation’s nuclear power stations would have to close by 2023; that in acts of supreme folly the Blair government signed up to emission targets for our coal stations that will see 40% close by 2015, and make their replacement by gas-fired stations illegal under the EU’s 2020 emission limits.
Yielding to continual green lobby prodding, the Blair, Brown and Cameron governments’ only contribution to Britain’s terrifying energy predicament is to encourage the building of around 13,000 wind mills, apparently oblivious of the fact that due to the well-known high pressure weather pattern, the winter months of January and February are periods of very low wind speeds resulting in almost no wind-based electricity generation[6].
The reasons for this chaos in the heart of Britain’s affairs are many in detail, but boil down to two which are always present in any field of policy.
(1) The literal incompetence of a civil service to formulate and manage any reasonably complex project because of an almost complete absence of relevant experience and qualifications[7]. The present governing Cabinet, while displaying gifts of character and intelligence, are all, with two outstanding exceptions[8], learning on the job which with an average incumbency of about 12 months means no long-term learning at all.
(2) The confusion of political objectives at the deepest level: the sentimental moralist view which pleases the perceived interests of various groups – ethnic minorities, birds, the poor (variously defined), foreigners especially those from Africa, asylum seekers of every hue, environmental campaigners, EU laws, all these and more are put ahead of the interests of the British nation as an enterprise, ahead even of native British working class people especially those in the old industrial areas on which the citification of the British economy has had its most destructive effect in terms both of jobs and the concomitant expansion of the benefits class.
The most salient of my publications and speeches on these two failings are to be found on the right-hand panel.
Battle against the Maastricht Treaty and the Abandonment of Sterling
To be continued . . .
The Educational System in Britain
The 1944 Education Act was taken through parliament by the late R A Butler in the wartime Churchill government (1940-45), who was later Chancellor of the Exchequer in Churchill’s peace-time government (1951-55), was held on all sides at the time as heralding the greatest improvement in the nation’s educational history[9].
The Act established the state-funded tripartite system of grammar schools, technical schools and secondary modern schools which accounted for about 93% of children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland followed a different path which has continued through to the present day.
By the 1960s there was considerable pressure, mainly in Conservative voting areas to abandon the tripartite system in favour of the Comprehensive school to which all state educated children (about 93%) would go. There were good social and educational reasons for this, but none so powerful to justify the wholesale destruction of the grammar schools, which were reduced in number from around 1,500 in 1960 to 164 in 1980. Many of these schools were genuine world class beacons of excellence educating all classes but mostly the children of the skilled working and more junior managerial classes[10]. Here is the story of one of them:
The Grammar School
To be continued . . .
Endnotes
[1] Sections 1 and 2 of this website show what I have been able to contribute in this regard.
[2] Registered Office: Unit 5, Brunel Business Court, Eastern Way, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP32 7AB
[3] The late Nick Seaton, 18 Westlands Grove, Stockton Lane, York, YO31 1EF, the Chairman and galvanising spirit from the foundation in 1987 until his untimely death in 2012. www.cre.org.uk
[4] This continued an historic trend which gathered pace as a direct consequence of the deregulation of the City of London by the Chancellor Nigel Lawson in the Conservative Thatcher government of the 1980s.
[5] This peak itself was a direct result of the previous Conservative government’s policy of encouraging maximum extraction rates to maximise the Treasury tax revenues. By comparison Norway established an investment fund for oil revenues which now gives Norway financial resources comparable with Kuwait and China.
[6] See Bush and MacDonald’s Secure Energy Strategy and Green Energy Strategy compared.
[7] The Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet have come almost entirely from “talking” backgrounds: PR, Media and Think-tanks. The highest ranks of the Civil Service have no-one with any project management experience and achievement whatsoever.
[8] Michael Gove at Education and Iain Duncan Smith at Welfare. Thankfully they have both been allowed to serve in their Cabinet posts for the full five-year parliament 2010-2015.
[9] 1944 Education Act.
[10] i.e. social classes D, C1, C2, some B, in today’s sociological classification.
To see posts on these subjects written from 2009 on Britain-Watch click on European Union.