A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 19th January 1998.

W F Deedes’s remarks on republican moves in Australia (Note-book, Jan. 12th) reflect the resigned and spiritless approach to things British which has dominated the conduct of our affairs from Suez to Mrs Thatcher.

Unless those of British descent who are still in the majority in Australia, envisage their virtual disappearance, the population of Australia will never be more than a tiny fraction of that of their huge neighbours to the north.

Of course, it makes as much sense for Australia as for Britain to build friendly relations with its geographical neighbours, but in a shrinking uncertain world, family ties are going to be at least as important, probably more.

It would be an unnecessary unmitigated tragedy if Australia were to break the symbolic link with its British heritage.  It would encourage all those who wish to diminish us both, at a time when Australia is the third highest investor in a Britain revitalised by Mrs Thatcher’s repudiation of the old defeatist ways.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 7th May 1994.

The assurance by Mr Patten, Education Secretary, that the national curriculum proposals will ensure that children of all ages will get a very sound grounding in factual British history (report, May 6th) is unlikely to be borne out in practice.

It is important to recall why Mrs Thatcher was so insistent on having a national curriculum.  This was because influential sections of the schools’ educational establishment could not be trusted to deliver an education which would both foster in our children a proper pride in their country and equip them to prosper in the modern technological world.

These objectives, while matching the sentiment of the majority of voters, of all parties, are directly opposed to the views of that education establishment, whose agenda is far more concerned with promoting multi-culturalism and feminism than with the real educational needs of our country.

Thus, as Anthony O’Hear himself noted some years ago in your newspaper, in the music curriculum there is an “obsession with African drumming, Latin American dancing and other exotica, but no mention of Purcell or Elgar”.

Similarly, as I found when a member of the earlier Schools Examination Assessment Council there was a consistent steer to judge content by its supposed effect on girls’ preferences rather than by its actual significance to British industry.  It follows that if something specifically British is not actually nailed down in the compulsory elements of the history syllabus, the chances are that it will not get taught.

Here we can see precisely what is worrying Mr McGovern, of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority.  The prescribed list is essentially history sociology, while everthing specifically British is optional.  The name England does not appear.

Moreover, the political, economic, aethetic, social, cultural, religious, ethnic and gender perspectives referred to by John Keegan (article, May 5th) must be embedded in the key elements of the subject.

The Authority’s commentary on the forthcoming report states that these key elements provide the main objectives for teaching, learning and assessment.

What our children need is a straightforward chronological account of the great landmarks and people in our history.  Mr Patten should draw up the list and tell them to get on with it.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 17th September 1990.

Mr MacGregor’s repeated declarations that A-level standards will not be compromised (report, Sept. 11th) have an understandable air of desperation.

Here are some facts about recent A-level standards from the Joint Matriculation Board which has generally been regarded as maintaining standards better than most.

In the opinion of the examiners, the 1988 applied mathematics paper was easier than 1987’s; 1989’s was about the same as 1988’s, but registered a drop from 53 to 46 in mean mark.  In chemistry, 1989’s paper “was easier than previously as a result of a deliberate attempt to set ‘can-do’ examinations”.  In pure mathematics in 1989 “greater emphasis was put on . . . practical applications” to disguise generally simpler questions by comparison with 1988’s paper, which was in turn generally simpler than 1987’s.  The vital but difficult subject of calculus was further reduced in 1989.  Nonetheless, the qualifying marks for each grade in the combined maths papers were lowered by comparison with 1988 and the number of A grades increased from 17-20 per cent of candidates.

Who in Mr MacGregor’s department is instructing the examining boards to lower the standards in this way?  Who in his department has given the Schools Examination and Assessment Council the right to try to force into A-level syllabuses matters which have nothing whatever to do with the subjects, but represent the obsessions of the feminist and race lobbies?

Mrs Thatcher is presiding over an educational catastrophe: the very people who should have been removed from the system at the time of the Education Reform Bill have been given carte blanche to wreck it.

A paper is now circulating, proposing that honours degrees should be awarded in the sciences for work to the current second year level, because of the precipitate fall in university real entry standards, a proposal which if acted on would devalue all British degrees, past and future.

Only direct instruction to the examining boards to restore standards, the abolition of the SEAC, major changes in the Inspectorate, the removal of the “whole curriculum” ideologues from the National Curriculum Council and commencing A-level work at 15 rather than 16, will overcome this crisis.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 4th July 1990.

The Vice-President of the German Bundesbank said on the BBC Today Programme in February that “of course, a country which merges its currency completely cannot remain independent politically”.

These views are commonplace on the Continent, which is why monetary and economic union is seen as an immediate precursor to a United States of Europe.  Mr Ridley has only exploded the myth that there is any halt between our agreeing to monetary union with the rest of the EEC and our complete loss of status as an independent nation.

Monetary union and political union are effectively inseparable and the Government’s foolish pushing of the idea of a hard ecu is merely one more attempt to fudge the issue and avoid a split in its own ranks.

Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet should face the fact that the “unhappiness” expressed by commentators about Mr Ridley’s remarks is as nothing to the deep unhappiness felt by millions at the way a Government, faced merely with a barrage of words, rather than bombs as in 1940, cannot find the simple courage to say: “Whatever the rest of the Continent does, we will not take Britain down the road to political extinction.”

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 28th June 1989.

The juxtaposition of your headline “Thatcher to take first step on European union” and the photograph of the Queen opening the New Zealand collection of plants (June 24th) exactly captures the crisis now facing our country.

Despite the fancy words from certain Conservative politicians about sovereignty being out of date (tell that to the Russians or the Swedes), European monetary union is completely incompatible with the sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament, which is the way our country has been governed for 700 years.

Not long ago, British politicians of all parties would have erupted with fury at foreigners like Andriessen and Delors telling us what we must and must not do.  Yet today Mrs Thatcher is left by her Cabinet and party to fight alone, as if our continued independence from foreign domination was a personal idiosyncrasy rather than a duty laid on every Member by their parliamentary oath.

The incredible thing is that the British people pay huge sums of money for these humiliations, and these are sums which will grow rapidly if Delors gets his way.  If the British people’s patriotism and pride have been emasculated by years of media propaganda in favour of “Europe”, one might have thought they would still have had concern for their pockets.

Mrs Thatcher has made her view of our country’s future clear.  It is now long overdue for Mr Edward Heath and Mr Michael Heseltine to be asked: “Are you in favour of Britain ceasing to be an independent country in the way the world recognises it?  If not, at what point would you part company from Continental countries in their ambition to have a European state with its own president over our Queen, government over our government and laws over our laws?”

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 23rd March 1982.

Your leader on the Thatcher-Schmidt meeting (March 20th) is a disappointment to those who feel The Daily Telegraph generally sees the world as it really is.  The majority of people in this country have always seen the EEC as basically an arrangement whereby West Germany paid her way back to respectability and France received reparations which she felt she was entitled to.

That period is now past, but Britain has been foolishly entangled by soft-centre politicians into an arrangement whereby she pays ad infinitum for the Supreme Quango in Brussels which, as is the way with quangos, has grown mightily in ambition since its setting up.  Insofar as Britain and West Germany succeed in reducing their role of EEC paymasters, so the other countries, especially France, will lose interest in the enterprise.

Twenty-two years ago Britain and six other European countries which have prospered quite as much as the EEC countries since, formed a Free Trade Area (EFTA) in industrial goods.  On Britain joining the EEC, EFTA was linked to it, but without, of course, taking on board the huge task of modernising Continental agriculture and the nonsense of a common external tariff.

I believe the EFTA arrangement is still the right one for Britain to pursue and our withdrawal from the EEC would hasten its evolution towards this sensible form.  It is a dangerous situation that on present form only the Labour party will derive electoral benefit from such a move, the popularity of which will grow with the introduction of maroon passports and other symbols of an unwanted association.