It’s Philosophy, stupid
January 25, 2006
I can just imagine a discussion on the sofas in Downing Street about why, in the face of logic, arithmetic and principle, the Prime Minister declares he is going ahead with the school ‘reforms’.
“It’s philosophy, stupid” would quip an aide when confronted with the obvious questions about why the comprehensive school system should be broken up to make way for the brave new world of independent state schools, with freedom to choose what they want, and more crucially who they want to educate.
Blair described his reforms as a “high wire act” when asked by journalists why he was going ahead. I suppose, in a sense he is right; it is a high wire act, but for whom and for what?
I represent an inner city constituency with six comprehensive schools, most of which have had huge problems in the past, having been condemned by the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail, and had well below national averages in GCSE results.
To the credit of the government, the picture is now transformed, with huge investments of money in new buildings, more staff and equipment. There is enthusiasm, and they are doing well. These schools are also increasingly attracting local children so that the sense of community cohesion increases with all of the obvious benefits that this brings.
Along comes Ruth Kelly with the Blair White Paper and proposes that “successful” schools should be allowed to expand, that they should set their own admission criteria, and that the Local education Authority’s role should be, at best, minimal.
In a different age Labour used to pour scorn on the centralised French system where it was claimed that at any minute of any day the Minister of Education would know what lesson was taught in any school. We were proud of the role of local government and innovation. We were proud that Labour councils had abolished the 11 plus exam and introduced mixed ability comprehensive schools. They replaced the Grammar Schools and the Secondary Moderns.
Nobody calls for the return of the Secondary Moderns, but many “commentators” call for selection, and therefore the concept of the grammar school. Logic has been lost. You cannot have one without the other.
The Blairite Agenda of “revolution from above” has remarkably little resonance on the ground, and has emboldened ninety Labour MPs to sign up to an alternative that would prevent the creation of elite schools and selection by ability, or by parents. The White Paper claims that this is the way to improve all schools.
Essentially it is the use of a market argument. A good school attracts parents, therefore it should expand to meet demand, then it will attract (private sector) partners, then it will be more successful and the (failing) school in the (inner) city will be taught a firm lesson in competition.
This is not only unfair, but will mean the less able, less articulate, less socially mobile will be consigned to the poor schools, whilst the aspirant will go to the better schools. In other words, exactly the sort of social division that the Labour commitment to comprehensive schools was designed to end.
Blair might get his reforms through, but with Tory support, to beat off the logical and broad opposition with the Labour Party. The opposition is remarkably widespread and centres on the selection argument, but also on the role of local democracy, and concerns over Foundation schools being run by private enterprise or dubious organisations with their own social agenda.
It would be wrong to look at the education argument as an aberration; it is not.
Two headlines caught my attention over the weekend.
Firstly that doctors who sign a large number of Incapacity Certificates should be fined, or not qualify for bonuses. Those who sign few should be rewarded. This is absurd to the point of comedy. I (obviously naively) thought that Doctors were professionals who examined patients, made a diagnosis, and prescribed care. Here we have the idea that the funding arrangements of the state, and access to benefits take priority over professional judgements. Why stop there? Why not a bean counter in every surgery that can intervene at any time and tell the Doctor what he should or should not, sign?
On Monday morning The Guardian led with the alarming headline that the National Health Service had been told “Put Money before Medicine”. As a slogan it scans well. As a concept it owes more to the height of Thatcherism in the mid 1980s than any concept of social justice. Apparently the Department of Health believe that Trusts have been getting into deficit because they are too free with medicines and care. Again, as with education, the dubious philosophy of competition and markets emerges. Those that spend too much will be penalised, and the successful will be rewarded. Again, if taken to its logical conclusion this leads to fewer hospitals in areas of high (and therefore expensive) need. At no point in the Department’s message does another extraordinary source of expenditure emerge, namely the cost of Private Finance schemes which force the public to pay for many decades for that which it already owns.
As if the arguments on Private Finance costs has not been had elsewhere, Londoners are reaping the costs of the insistence on private finance as hugely greedy companies salivate at the profits to be made from refurbishing parts of the infrastructure. It is a system that disastrously failed on the railways, so there is no reason to suppose it could or should work on the London Underground or anywhere else.
It has been slow in coming, but the debate on philosophy and directions is here. The New Labour ‘ultra’ agenda seems to be that only markets and competition matter, and that only private sector methods are of any value.
It is not a new argument; indeed on the macro international scale it has been roundly condemned for the creation of markets for privatisation, by the insistence on market solutions for meeting social need.
The debate on Education and Health in Britain is an absorbing one; its outcome for the provision of public services on the basis of need is a pretty crucial one for all of us. But where did this philosophy come from?
World of contrasts
January 18, 2006
2006 has started amid enormous contrasts.
The obsession over Iran has become more dangerous by the hour as the US and its main allies seem determined to push the issue of its nuclear research to the UN, and seek gradually to entrap other nations into supporting an ever more militant stance against the country: not that different from the tactics used against Iraq where an unpopular regime with no regard for human rights was pilloried and used as a reason to attack. That piece of deception and dishonesty has led to over 100,000 deaths with the prospect of many more to come, as any kind of regional peace is no more than a shimmer in a heat haze.
The issue of nuclear weapons is obviously very serious, as is adherence to the 1970 Non Proliferation Treaty. The treaty forbids the development of nuclear weapons by any non-declared state. It also requires the five declared states (who happen to be the five permanent members of the Security Council) to disarm. In all the talk over Iran, neither the US nor Britain seem to have realised the incongruity of their position. Both countries are actively considering a new generation of weapons of mass destruction, whilst at the same time condemning Iran for developing uranium enrichment facilities.
There can never be any justification for nuclear weapons of any sort by anyone, and therefore any state that wants to develop them should be condemned, as should states that continue to hold them. The best way to prevent their spread is surely to promote disarmament, not aggression.
The one element in all the flurry of meetings and conferences being held to discuss the crisis over Iran, has been either an understanding of the political structures of Iran or any attempt at dialogue with both the regime, religious authority or the civil society of Iran.
It is remarkable that the majority of the many and diverse elements of the Iranian opposition are united in their opposition to any invasion of Iran, as much as in their criticisms on human rights grounds of the regime in Tehran. These voices were very well represented at the enormous and successful Peace Conference organised by the Stop the War Coalition in London in December.
Anyone who believes that the strategy of the Bush Administration, in reality the Project for a New American Century, offers any hope for oppressed people should look at the results in Afghanistan, and the contempt the US shows for any sovereignty of other nations.
War was never declared in Afghanistan, yet the country continues to be occupied by coalition troops whilst drug production rises, and the warlords are back in power in some regions.
Pakistan, which courted huge internal pressure by supporting the US, now finds itself incapable of doing anything about the murder of its citizens by US air strikes, supposedly in pursuit of Al Qaida remnants, in the border region.
Meanwhile in Iraq the grim toll of death and destruction rises by the day, with the civilian administration either in Baghdad or Kurdistan increasingly intolerant of any opposition.
Yet the western countries that have supported or participated in these projects, now need to proclaim that a degree of normality has returned, and are even trying to deport unsuccessful asylum applicants to Iraq: a move firmly rejected by a large meeting of Iraqi asylum seekers in Parliament last week.
Indeed, looking across the region, the most useful comment made recently was by the Saudi Foreign Minister, who told the BBC Today programme that the only way he could see of defusing the situation was for a nuclear free region. That, of course, would require Israel to divest itself of its own illegal nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile in other parts of the world different agendas are being pursued.
Australia, under the leadership of John Howard, wanting to present itself as the strongest US ally in the region, hosted a conference of the regions biggest polluters, who came to the extraordinary preliminary conclusion that the natural environment was not harmed by their activities, and that self regulation by industry was the answer to environmental problems. Their views are in stark contrast to the dire warnings of ecological catastrophe, from the pollutive effects on the eco-system by uncontrolled logging, draining, development and monoculture.
In another continent however, right on the US backdoor there are enormous signs of hope. Cuba, having survived forty years of economic blockade and hostility has now moved centre stage in Latin America.
One country after another has produced new Governments all broadly rejecting or critical of neo liberal economics.
The election of Michelle Bachelet in Chile, with Communist support, on a programme of social inclusion is a huge step. She was jailed under Pinochet, who himself is now under house arrest, and is the first woman elected head of state anywhere in the continent.
Her victory comes only three weeks after Evo Morales was elected President in Bolivia on a programme of land reform and public ownership of the nation’s natural resources. His first pronouncements were of support for the revolution in Venezuela and Cuba, and rejection of the neo liberal economic that has been so disastrous for the majority of people in the continent.
There is an honourable tradition of radical Governments being elected to bridge the gap between rich and poor and pursue land reform, throughout the continent. There is a dishonourable tradition of their defeat by military coups, as in Chile in 1973 or Guatemala in 1954 for example, or their undermining and removal by quasi democratic means as happened to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
All the hopes of the revolution of cooperatives, schools and land reform have now been reduced to the whole continent’s poorest country.
This year we need to continue to search for peace in the Middle East through the withdrawal of the occupying forces. We must also support the exciting and liberating process throughout Latin America. Next week’s World Social Forum in Caracas could not be in a better place at a better time.
Hope in Latin America
January 15, 2006
(From London Labour Briefing)
The victory of Michele Bachelet in Chile’s Presidential election comes at the start of a remarkable year for Latin America.
The very idea that a single parent woman, who was jailed under Pinochet, should emerge as President is remarkable in itself. But that Pinochet himself, the man who once declared that not even the grass moved without his consent, should be alive and stripped of all immunity shows just how enormous the change is.
But Bachelet is not alone. Four years ago Lula (from the Workers Party) was elected President of Brazil to assert the real political tradition of the continent.
The election of Chavez in Venezuela, his survival of the coup attempt, (welcomed at the time by the British Foreign Office), and his subsequent endorsement is a testament to something very strong in the political tradition of the continent.
Chavez’s influence and popularity across the continent is enormous. The assertion of economic demands by him has changed the whole atmosphere in the continent. Further proof of the mood sweeping the continent came with the election of Evo Moralles in Bolivia, on a clear programme of preventing the robbery of the third tranche of Bolivia’s resources (the silver was stolen by the Spanish conquistadores, the tin by multi national corporations), namely the huge gas and oil reserves.
The history of the continent, from the rapacious invasion of the Spanish and its attempt to destroy the civilisations that existed, gave way eventually to an independence movement led by the settler classes, which bequeathed a social structure based on land and ethnicity on most of the continent.
Mexico was the strongest exception to this norm, with its mid nineteenth century secular constitution and the revolution of 1910 which brought public ownership of the enormous oil industry.
Left Governments came and went throughout the continent at various times in the twentieth century, with populist regimes in Brazil and Argentina, usually followed by military coups and restoration of the old order.
The CIA intervened directly in numerous places: Spectacularly in Guatemala in 1954 after the Arbenz Government nationalised the United Fruit Company: a military coup installed a new regime which handed the resources back to Uncle Sam’s friends.
In Chile in 1973 the death of Allende and the Popular Unity Government unleashed a reign of terror - ‘Operation Condor’ - which killed over 30,000 people in Chile and its neighbours.
The 1980s were dominated by spectacularly unsuccessful experiments in monetarism at the behest of the IMF and the World Bank, and a debt crisis which ruined the lives of millions.
The US discovered that military dictators were a bad image and courted “civilian” solutions.
The hopes of the Nicaraguan revolution of 1979 and all its achievements were finally dashed with its electoral defeat under the threat of an eternal contra war. From being a place of hope with rising literacy levels and falling infant mortality Nicaragua is now the poorest country in the whole continent as its disparity between rich and poor grows alarmingly.
The political phenomenon that covers the continent is now a mixture of the rejection of United States methods, and cultural values, but also a different form of politics.
In Brazil the PT (Partido Trabajadores) grew from a huge social movement that encompassed the movement of landless people with the urban trade unions and social groups; it also extolled the virtue of the cultural diversity of the country.
In Venezuela the Chavez led revolution claims the inheritance of Bolivar, in the sense that he led a movement for independence and self Government; but goes much further in claiming the virtues of the civilisations destroyed by the European conquest.
The incredible mobilisation that led to Morales victory in Bolivia (500,000 out of a population of 9 million marched to call for the nationalisation of gas reserves) also resonate with the civilisations that were there before the Spanish arrived. He is the first President in the whole continent whose first language is not Spanish or Portuguese.
For over forty years the popular myth perpetrated by the USA that Cuba is somehow a great “threat” to the people of Latin America has had an effect. Undoubtedly it has assisted US efforts to isolate the island, but it has also generated support among many who see the high health and educational achievements of Cuba as an exciting prospect. Cuba is now mainstream and very influential throughout the continent. To be accepted as the host for a conference to resolve a border dispute between Colombia and Venezuela is remarkable indeed.
Mexico goes to the polls in July with a very good chance that Lopez Obrador of the PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party) will win the Presidency from the Pro US PAN (National Action Party) of President Fox. The strength of the PRD Campaign is the demand of economic independence from the USA and the use of resources for the good of the people, rather than for the US multinationals.
The sense of anger and outrage in Mexico’s poor communities is given more strength by the construction of a wall along the entire US-Mexican border to keep ‘illegals’ out. The effect of the North America Free Trade Zone on Mexico has been of low wages in dusty border towns, as US companies pay little or no tax to exploit Mexicans.
Mexico is a diverse country with a huge number of non Spanish speaking indigenous people who suffer high unemployment, land theft and poverty. The Zapatista movement based in Chiapas in the South appeals to this huge constituency. Much to the chagrin of the PRD they call for non participation in the election. The welcome their recent nationwide tour was given by President Fox shows just who benefits from this call.
In a world where the Project for a New American Century has had such disastrous results Latin America demonstrates something very different. A huge resurgence of a positive identity on an agenda of respecting history and culture, and calling for economic justice for the desperately poor of the region: a good start to 2006.
