Within weeks we will see the extraordinary spectacle of toffs in red coats breaking the law while some Tories egg them on. The fox-hunting shenanigans put me in mind of an early political experience. In 1985 I joined the Children’s March for Jobs, leading 100 pupils in a walkout from my comp.
We headed to a rally in central London, marching under a red flag. On the way, incredibly, two mounted Metropolitan Police officers charged at us in a narrow backstreet near Victoria Station and we had to scramble behind parked cars to avoid being hurt. Our reward? Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader of the day, labelled us ‘a bunch of dafties’. I took it personally, although the jibe was probably aimed at the Militant figures behind the national protest.
Although we felt let down by Kinnock, he needed to say what he did. The Opposition can’t be seen to endorse lawbreaking and chaos. And if children marching out of school are one form of chaos, huntsmen defying the will of a democratically elected government are surely a more malevolent kind.
The Tories would do well, for their own sake, to distance themselves from the lawbreakers. But some will find it hard. And they have form – in recent years, Tories have offered a sympathetic ear to non-payers of the BBC licence fee and to hauliers blockading oil refineries. Fathers4Justice have demonstrated the appetite of the 24-hour media for lawbreaking stunts. Politicians may applaud the message but they gain nothing from endorsing the means.
There aren’t many reasons to vote Tory. But the party’s policy on excluded schoolchildren is one. Labour has flip-flopped. After 1997, the Education Department continued with an old Conservative policy of trying to reduce permanent exclusions. But now ministers are giving heads powers to increase exclusions.
It was hard to trust the Tory government on state schools. At one point, not a single member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet entrusted their own children to one. Labour ministers use the state sector – with a few dishonourable exceptions – but, naturally enough, avoid schools with poor records on discipline.
It is the bright kids whose parents can’t play the system who end up with the misery of lesson after lesson disrupted by pupils with behavioural problems who cannot be helped in mainstream classes. Unless comps can be made to work for the brightest, support for grammars and assisted places will persist. The Tories have identified the problem and their proposed solution will appeal to many parents. Labour must not be outflanked.
Tony Banks was characteristically honest in his admission, as he retires from the Commons, that he finds it ‘tedious’ to deal with voters’ problems. No doubt other MPs feel the same way but would never admit it. The media were predictably unkind – descriptions ranged from ‘graceless’ (Anthony Howard in The Times) to ‘ungrateful prat’ (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Evening Standard).
But the harshest assessment of Banks’s career came from Ken Livingstone, who said of his one-time ally in 2002: ‘Tony is clearly very bitter and I don’t think that’s simply about me.
I think that’s exactly what’s wrong with British politics, that someone like Tony, who has real ability and devotes his life to politics, comes to the end of their political career and they are able to look back on two years as chair of the general purposes committee of the GLC, two years as chair of the arts committee and two years as sports minister. That’s six years in relatively minor roles.’ Ouch.
What is the point of mission statements? If, say, council refuse collectors adopt a grandiose mission – ‘Cleansing streets and spirits’ – it sounds absurd. If they pick a down-to-earth form of words – ‘We empty bins’ – you wonder why they bothered.
So why the fuss about rewriting Clause Four, the nearest thing Labour has to a mission statement? I voted in 1995 to keep the original one, with its pledge to secure for workers the full fruits of their industry. Now even Tony Blair’s new version is under attack from the Fabian Society.
Instead of another rewrite, why not just scrap it and adopt Herbert Morrison’s dictum: ‘Socialism is what a Labour government does’?