'Worst Minister since the War'

Last week I had a convivial lunch with a couple of broadsheet political writers, one on the Left and one a former Conservative parliamentary candidate, and part of our conversation centred on what would rank as the worst government ever. In practice we seemed to be considering only post-war governments, as none of us is revisionist enough to suppose that the Munich agreement was anything other than a stain and a disgrace on British public life, but that’s a big enough canvas on which to have a debate.

Our discussion inevitably gravitated to the 1970s: there is a powerful case for selecting either the Heath Government of 1970-74, or the Wilson Government of 1974-76. There is also an arguable case (the political economist Robert Skidelsky makes it in a new book on the Wilson and Callaghan Governments) for taking the whole of the 1974-79 Labour Government as the worst, with close competition from its immediate predecessor – though my own view is that the Callaghan Government of 1976-79 was an immeasurable improvement on 1974-76 under Wilson, and was broadly creditable on economic and foreign policy.

(The book to which Skidelsky contributes – with too little care on his part, for he comments on the coincidence of Wilson’s taking office in the same year as Mao’s death, which in fact occurred two years later – is the usual mixed bag of academic and journalistic comment, but has some relevant material. Polly Toynbee contributes a chapter on social policy; I can’t tell you what it’s like, because I can’t be bothered to read it. Stuart Holland, the economic guru of the Bennite Left in the 1970s and later MP for Vauxhall (I was a member of his constituency Labour Party in the mid 80s, and found him pitifully eager to acquiesce in whatever absurdities Lambeth Labour cared to expound), contributes an unintentionally hilarious chapter in which he complains at Chancellor Denis Healey’s refusal in government to take seriously Holland’s own recommendation for industrial planning agreements on the Japanese model – as if the Japanese economy had since proved an unqualified success. Other chapters by, among others, Lord Plant and The Times’ correspondent Peter Riddell are far more illuminating.)

I’ll write a separate post later giving my comparative judgement of these governments’ records overall. It’s enough to say at this point that I certainly consider the 1970s were bad years for the quality of government overall, when an unworkable and undemocratic system of corporatism took hold in economic management. Great economic power, entrenched in government-established bargaining and planning, was exercised by institutions that essentially were answerable to no one and ran no sanctions if they undermined that system. Government took a high proportion of personal income, and spent a large proportion of national income, while failing to deliver non-inflationary growth. Deregulation, scaling back the public sector and taming union militancy were strictly necessary in the 1980s, though Mrs Thatcher was at fault in not stressing equally the responsibility of the state to recognise and alleviate the social consequences of economic change.

But one thing that might be worth doing in advance of that comparative exercise is to identify not the worst post-war government but the worst post-war minister. On this point, there can be no reasonable disagreement by objective and fair-minded observers, and I’ve been reminded of that person’s identity by an excellent new book by Robert Stevens, now at the Constitution Unit at University College London, entitled University to Uni: The Politics of Higher Education in England since 1944.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the award for ‘Worst Minister Since 1945’ goes to Shirley Williams, Education Secretary in the Callaghan Government and now Liberal Democrat leader in the House of Lords.

Stevens recalls that one of the recommendations made by the IMF in 1976 (during the so-called IMF crisis) was to cease subsidising foreign students attending British universities. Mrs Williams accepted the recommendation, and before the Government fell she raised fees on all students. Stevens recounts that in order to make that decision less politically contentious, Mrs Williams undertook to pay the whole fee for all domestic students, regardless of their and their parents’ economic circumstances, including Oxbridge college fees – which previously had been paid by students or their parents. Stevens adds, a touch wryly but incontrovertibly accurately:

This remarkable gift to the affluent released funds to parents which increasingly were used to pay public-school fees. These schools, in turn, had become increasingly attractive as Shirley Williams did her best to finish off the last of the grammar schools.

Baroness Williams, articulate exponent of the Liberal Democrats’ opposition to tuition fees – a straight subsidy to the middle classes at the expense of the taxpayer - is eminently recognisable from her earlier persona as the defender of privileged sectional interests and the promoter of increased inequality. Truly, she is the worst and – as her proclaimed beliefs are the exact opposite, for she complains at the erosion under Tony Blair of Labour’s ‘bedrock principles’ - least philosophically coherent minister since the war.

Comments

[PooterGeek]

I couldn't agree more. Still she has no shame. Still she makes no sense.

Technically, Thatcher closed more grammar schools than any other British minister, but there's something almost satisfying about that statistic---Williams on the Left and Thatcher on the Right, old Somervillians united in vandalism.

Now, thanks to them, middle-class Right-wingers can buy their children that much more advantage that much more cheaply; middle-class Left-wingers can play the "comprehensive" system to their children's advantage that much more easily. The Right talk of "freedom of choice"; the Left condemn "elitism". They both win by keeping the oiks in their place, no matter how much more hard-working and talented the children of the poor are than their own offspring.

(It's not just the vandals who are matched, there's also a bleak symmetry in depriving the disadvantaged of the intellectual tools required to recognize their own deprivation.)

[Matthew]

There is actually very little evidence that the comprehensive system has failed, particularly compared to the system it replaced.

For a somewhat more thoughtful analysis than PooterGeek's I suggest one reads Ross McKibbin,

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n23/mcki01_.html

[Matthew]

Incidentally on worst governments of all time, surely the 1987 to 1990 Thatcher government, or the 1955 to 1957 Eden government must be up there.

I remember the 1987 to 1990 Thatcher government very well -- we had the poll tax, soaring inflation, an unsustainable property boom and the start of the Iraq arms scandal for starters.

On Eden I recommend reading

partly because it contains one of my favourite quotes, from the Permanent Under-Sec to the F.O at the time of Suez,
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n10/john01_.html

"Kirkpatrick told one doubter that 'the PM was the only man in England who wanted the nation to survive; that all the rest of us have lost the will to live; that in two years' time Nasser will have deprived us of our oil, the sterling area fallen apart, no European defence possible, unemployment and unrest in the UK and our standard of living reduced to that of the Yugoslavians or Egyptians.' "

I wonder if that's how Tony sold our recent middle east adventure to the Cabinet?

[David Boothroyd]

I don't know what you have against the Wilson Government of 1974-76. It's true that Wilson himself was somewhat tired and bereft of ideas at the time but most of the failings of this government are really the responsibility of its predecessor or of world economic conditions. When Wilson came back in people were talking seriously of Britain being "ungovernable", but the short period in 1974 was extremely productive in good legislation. The politically divisive Common Market issue was solved for a generation with a renegotiation of terms followed by a referendum. Wilson was a genius at governing steadily despite a Labour Party which was already splitting apart and a tiny Parliamentary majority.

[Mark T]

Talking of politicians looking after their own, am I right in thinking that the grant aided status of Holland Park Comprehensive ceased more or less as soon as Shirley Williams's daughter left the institution?

[Bob]

"On Eden I recommend . . "

In his rationale for Suez, Eden claimed that it should lead to the reform of the United Nations, just as Blair has claimed in justification of Britain's involvement the Iraq war.

At a mass demonstration in Traflagar Sq at the time, Aneurin Bevan said in his speech, on that argument any criminal could claim he was reforming the police. If Eden believed that - Bevan paused for rhetorical effect, to add, " . . and he may, then he is too stupid to be prime minister."

That was the only speech I ever saw Bevan make and devastating it surely was.

[Bob]

"Stuart Holland, the economic guru of the Bennite Left in the 1970s . . "

This explication of Holland's prescription for Socialism in our time possibly merits wider attention:

"However it was with the idea of a state planning agency that Holland hoped to show the new possibilities open to a more just economy. He looked to the Italian example of the IRI (the Industrial Reconstruction Institute), set up by Mussolini and used by subsequent Italian governments to develop the economy. This had, of course, already been tried through the IRC (the Industrial Reorganization Corporation) set up as part of the National Plan in 1966, but the IRC had been too small to have much effect on the British economy. A revamped IRC in the form of a National Enterprise Board would, however, have a major effect in stimulating the private sector through an active policy of state intervention and direction."

- from Geoffrey Foote: The Labour Party's Political Thought: A History (3rd ed. 1997) p.311. Holland's own book, Socialist Challenge (1974) sets out in greater detail policy proposals for a Labour government modelled on the policies of Mussolini in Italy in the 1930s.

As a Labour MP in the 1980s, Holland progressed to become shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1987-9, so his Socialist prescriptions were evidently not regarded as entirely marginal by Kinnock, then Labour leader. For those who want to confirm the detail, Holland's CV is here: http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~depteco/Stuart%20Holland_CV_5p.pdf

In the mid 1990s, he co-authored a book with Ken Coates, who was previously a Labour MEP: Full Employment for Europe (1995 - ISBN: 085124579X).

[PooterGeek]

"There is actually very little evidence that the comprehensive system has failed, particularly compared to the system it replaced."

Matthew, yours and Ross McKibbin's timid words betray your embarrassment.

I subscribe to the LRB (though I often wonder why) and I read McKibbin's feeble article when it was published. At one point he argues, unoriginally, that whatever shortcomings the comprehensive school system suffers are the fault of the continued existence of private schooling in this country. In a sense he is right. If the annoying excellence of the best British independent schools was removed then it would no longer be true, for example, that half of current Oxbridge undergraduates were privately educated, compared to 7% of the general population. (It's telling that this is the only educational statistic that appears in his piece. I wonder why?)

I'm a scientist. I like controlled experiments. The nearest we have to such a comparison with the comprehensive system is right next to us in Northern Ireland, where they still have old-style selection---something I am not, incidentally, an unreconstructed supporter of. Under that system, right now, not only do a larger proportion of pupils from working class backgrounds get into university from state schools than here, but those in the state system who don't attend grammar schools perform better than matched children on the UK mainland. Like England and Wales, there is still a long tail of under-achievement and, ultimately, illiteracy, but, not only is "our" system worse in these respects, it has reduced social mobility to levels not seen since... before the advent of grammar schools.

How much more clear-cut do you want your failure?

Like you, McKibbin offers no evidence of the success of comprehensive schools. He also writes both of Thatcher's "determination to restore social hierarchies within state education" and of her being "Stakhanovite in her creation of comprehensives". I think I can help him tie up his thesis. When it comes to education, both Thatcher and her comprehensive schools have been consistent in their attainment. Our "progressive", "non-elitist" approach has ensured that the single best predictor of a child's ultimate academic achievement is his or her parents' net income.

I agree with McKibbin that it is not (just) because exams are easier that 'A' Level results have improved. The correlation between incomes and outcomes is strikingly tight. Students haven't become brighter; their parents have become richer. With rising earnings come rising expectations and more money for books, private tutors, coaching and cramming. Against a background of state-funded mediocrity, this same mechanism ensures that, within schools, comprehensivisation will always amplify the difference between those who have to make do with "bog standard" and those whose learning is topped up by educated, middle-class parents.

The biggest success of comprehensivisation, however, has been in replacing selection by aptitude with selection by house price. This effect emerges even without the government wickedly inventing new kinds of schools to discriminate between (the fundamental note of McKibbin's whine). People do that by themselves. Whatever we pretend the "principle" of comprehensiveness might be, on this small island, the practice of comprehensiveness will, across schools, always magnify the advantages of living in an area full of educated middle-class parents.

If selection on the basis of willingness and ability to learn is revived in England and Wales, you and McKibbin can take consolation in its likely death in Northern Ireland at the hands of the region's newly-ascendant ideologues. Diligent, bright, poor kids from inner city schools there can look forward to their relative chances of attending university falling into line with those of their equivalents here and now. When this happens, they will, I am sure, join you both in celebrating their "commonality of experience" with their peers.

Actually, McKibbin might have a point. Long may Williams' and Thatcher's comprehensive system defy the meddling of meritocrats. That way, if I have children, they will, like most of those descended from the exam-passing orders, take their places in the establishment undisturbed by chippy swots from council estates. It is indeed divisive to measure effort and talent, when we all know that the cleverest comprehensive school children are those who choose to be born to educated, middle-class parents.

(Is this "thoughtful" enough for you, or should I be using felicitous phrases like McKibbin's "steady and accelerating retreat" and "not indefensible argument" for my prose to qualify for a positive review?)

[GrimReaper]

My recollection is that Mrs Thatcher's mistake was to allow Local Authorities to decide between Grammar/Secondary Modern and Comprehensive schools. As always with local authorities, they made the worst possible choice.