Labour’s threat to abolish private education means class warfare
Much will be written and said over the coming months about Labour’s threat to “integrate all private schools into the state sector”. Does it, though, amount to abolition? The motion passed by the conference in Brighton mandates any future Labour government not only to remove charitable status from such schools in its first budget, but also for their “endowments, investments and properties” to be “redistributed democratically and fairly”.
While the removal of charitable status “and all other public subsidies and tax privileges” was already Labour policy, the confiscation of assets — if that is what is meant — goes far beyond anything contemplated before. On the face of it, such a nationalisation of private education would inevitably be challenged in the courts. The European Convention on Human Rights enshrines in law “the right of parents to ensure such teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions”. The Labour Party, which was responsible for incorporating the Convention into UK law through the Human Rights Act, is presumably aware of this. It is certain that the abolition of private education and the confiscation of assets could also be challenged on various other legal grounds. Neither the European Court of Human Rights nor our own Supreme Court would have any hesitation in quashing such legislation if it were deemed to be an abuse of power.
So what do delegates of the Labour Party Conference hope to achieve by making such a threat? And why do it now? The short answer is: because they can. They know that radical resolutions have in the past frequently been watered down or ignored altogether once Labour was in power. But under Jeremy Corbyn, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Motions like this are helpful to Corbyn’s faction on the National Executive Committee, which controls party policy, reinforcing its claim to speak for the “grassroots”. They are trying to ensure that not only Labour party politics, but politics in general, is played by their rules.
The name of their game is class warfare. By hitting those who were privately educated below the belt, Corbyn’s shock troops are deliberately dividing the country by whipping up hatred of the “tiny, Eton-educated elite who are running the country into the ground”, in the words of Momentum’s national co-ordinator Laura Parker. This is the politics of envy and resentment dressed up as equality and social justice. It is ugly, it is wrong, but it has worked before and it could do so again.
Perhaps the Tories have forgotten the abolition of the grammar schools, which was a much bigger change to the education system. It was conceived and executed over more than a decade by privately educated Labour politicians, such as Anthony Crosland and Shirley Williams. And it was never reversed by the Tories, not even by Margaret Thatcher, who was state-educated and enjoyed large majorities throughout her three terms. Indeed, the flourishing of private education in recent decades is directly attributable to the imposition of the comprehensive system in all but a few local authorities.
As they gird their loins for this fight, Conservatives need to take a good hard look at themselves. While Corbyn is exploiting class divisions, what are Tories doing to bridge them? As a nation, we cannot even agree about the terminology. Are the schools in question “public”, “independent” or “private”? It won’t do for the defenders of parental choice in education to circle the wagons and ignore the frustration of the majority whose incomes do not match their aspirations for their children. The Tories have been in office for 27 of the last 40 years. Yet the ambitious, hard-working families who have given them power still find their state-schooled children at a disadvantage in the most prestigious professions. Why has the Thatcherite dream of equality of opportunity remained just that — a dream?
Now that Labour has fired a shot across his bows, Boris Johnson needs to think hard about how he can meet those aspirations in a post-Brexit Britain. Freed from the rules of the European Union, Corbyn or his successor could afford to be far more radical. Johnson himself has shown the power of the prerogative. It would be unwise to depend on the courts to protect private schools.
Education is a fundamental human right and the freedom to decide how to do so is an essential part of that right. But the case for it needs to be made in the political arena. That might require Boris Johnson to upset some of his friends — even to risk accusations of being a traitor to his class. But defending the principle is not to same as defending the practice. In no other country do people call institutions that charge fees of £40,000 a year “public schools”. That and many other things will have to change if Corbyn’s class warriors are to be routed.
