How many times have I tried to tell you that Michael Gove had no Tory, or even broadly conservative, political roots or principles whatever?
Nor did Margaret Thatcher, of course.
But whereas the unlettered and uncouth Thatcher merely was a kind of Marxist, but without knowing it, Gove is a well-read and committed one, who even goes so far as to use the M-word as term of approbation in order to sell his "free" schools policy.
Gove is also an outspoken admirer of the unlettered and uncouth Tony Blair and of Blair's veteran Trotskyist bag men, Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers, of whom the latter ended up tarting himself as a "cab for hire" during the last attempt to sever the Labour Party's trade union link, an attempt which saw Blair interviewed under police caution inside Downing Street.
Fresh out of Oxford, Gove applied for a job with the Conservative Research Department. But it turned him down, being unable to find any evidence that he was a Conservative, or even political at all. So he joined The Times. Yet look at him now. And still having frequent, off-the-record meetings with Rupert Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch, another of whose Times boys has just been given a peerage. One of at least three SDP gains, with Danny Finkelstein, a close personal friend of Michael Gove's, joined by John Horam for the Conservatives, while Sir Ian Wrigglesworth takes the ermine for the Lib Dems.
And whatever else the SDP might have been, it was certainly not "the Old Labour Right".
Don't forget that Gove used to "flatshare" with Ivan Massow and Nick Boles before he conveniently met Sarah Vine at The Times (soon to be at the Mail - could Paul Dacre, like Murdoch, be looking to open a "Free School"?). Here is a heterosexual Tory who has now history of being either Tory or heterosexual. Who could be behind his rise to power?
ReplyDeleteWell, at least he's kept away from the Foreign Office.
ReplyDeleteAnd at least the man's done some good by putting British history back into the British National Curriculum-which has been used as an anti-British brainwashing system by Left-wing teachers for the last several decades.
Regius Professor of History Richard J Evans may be lamenting the replacement of "World Studies" with Magna Carta, but nobody else is.
The fact that our children have been raised in complete ignorance of their past is the fault of radical Left-wingers who've turned our textbooks into Marxist propaganda.
Read this excellent journal article by the late, great historian Raphael Samuel "The Case For National History".
http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/historyresource/journal5/jhltr5.pdf#page=85
Ten years old, but still a highly apt description of how the Left hijacked British history to undermine patriotism and push their radical globalist agenda.
It's almost as good as Peter Hitchens great chapter on E.H Dance's Left-wing campaign against patriotic school history textbooks in "Abolition of Britain".
If we must mention Byers, can we point out that the disgrace was that he was a fucking arms dealer? Who cares about his corruption when he was doing with the full support of the state?
ReplyDeleteExcept that Gove is not "bringing back British history" (which never went away, that those of us who did not grow up being frightened with tales of the wicked state schools can recall).
ReplyDeleteHe dismissed even the very right-wing historians whom he he himself had engaged, after they had produced a very right-wing, but academically serious, document.
Instead, he has written his own ludicrous pastiche using terms such as "gunboat diplomacy" and "Clive of India".
The mercy is that there is so little in it that there will still be plenty of time to teach the real stuff in between.
Unless the curriculum time is reduced dramatically in order to reflect the dramatic reduction in the curriculum, that is.
"British history" (which never went away, that those of us who did not grow up being frightened with tales of the wicked state schools can recall)."
ReplyDeleteAnyone who thinks most British children are taught their nation's history at state schools has his head so deep in the sand its probably disappeared.
Read that brilliant historian's journal article I linked to-an excellent summary of the 50-year Left-wing campaign to undermine proper history teaching in our state schools.
Or try talking to the average 16-year-old school-leaver about British history.
Or just get out more, Dave.
Our state schools really are that bad.
You have never knowingly set eyes on one.
ReplyDeleteI went to one. It's called St Columbus in Bexleyheath.
ReplyDeleteThis is the lovely place I went to- http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/bexley/8783689.BEXLEYHEATH__St_Columba_s_school__extremely_shocked__at_stabbing/
ReplyDeleteAnd both my parents taught in state schools at different times-my dad a primary school and my mother a state secondary.
So don't give me that.