Catholic schools stand on the brink. The Tories offer them no hope, and the Lib Dems have been committed to their abolition for as long as that party, as such, has existed.
Yet it was Labour MPs who defended Catholic schools, and thus all church-based state schools, over several successive decades. National leaders of the Social Democrats recently supported Christian religious instruction in the schools of Berlin. Early Labour activists who resisted schemes to abort, contracept and sterilise the working class out of existence.
Catholic and other Labour MPs, including John Smith, fought tooth and nail against abortion and easier divorce, not least including both Thatcher’s introduction of abortion up to birth and Major’s introduction of divorce legally easier than release from a car hire contract. Methodist and other Labour MPs, including John Smith, fought tooth and nail against deregulated drinking and gambling. There were those, including John Smith, successfully organised (especially through USDAW) against Thatcher’s and Major’s attempts to destroy the special character of Sunday and of Christmas Day, delivering the only Commons defeat of Thatcher’s Premiership.
The trade unions’ fought numerous battles to secure paternal authority in families and communities by securing its economic base in high-waged, high-skilled, high-status male employment. Trade union banners depicted Biblical scenes and characters. There is an abiding concern that any new or reformed second chamber continue to include powerful guardians of moral and spiritual values in general, and of our Christian heritage in particular.
How do we vote for such parliamentarians today? Certainly not, with extremely rare exceptions this time, by voting Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, never mind for the very anti-Catholic separatist party in Scotland or for the secular fundamentalists of Plaid Cymru. Do not vote for any of them. Make alternative arrangements.
"Catholic schools stand on the brink. The Tories offer them no hope, and the Lib Dems have been committed to their abolition for as long as that party, as such, has existed"
ReplyDeletethat's a good a reason to vote for either the Tories or Lib Dems as I've ever heard.
You should stand as a main party parliamentary candidate, if you are not already doing so.
ReplyDeleteI don't really want to. But I'll vote for one of them. As will almost everyone else. There's probably a reason why they don't feel the need to placate the Catholic mafia.
ReplyDeleteEd Balls was wonderfully dismissive about them on the radio as well this morning, good man.
That's not what the NUT is saying, for a start. I'm about to do a whole post on that. ++Vincent Nichols got himself Westminster by completely humiliating Alan Johnson over admissions. But he was on for a red hat anyway next time round, so what will extra will he get for this?
ReplyDeleteThe current furore over Catholic education (which applies equally to other faith school providers, such as Muslims) arises from the requirement in the Schools, Children and Families bill and the DCSF guidance published alongside it, which means that Catholic schools may be required to teach kids the techniques of evil - like how to use contraceptives, and how to kill the unborn. This is utterly illiberal and has no place in a society which considers itself open or diverse.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is a potential sting in the tail of this: the guidance requires that SRE be provided in the context of 'equality, diversity and rights'. Presumably, then, state schools will all have to learn, quickly, what Catholic and Muslim teaching is, so that they can present them to their pupils. If not, they are operating outside the guidance, and are open to legal action - as is OFSTED if is fails to criticise any school whose programme does not accurately inform on such diverse standpoints, and the right of people of faith to hold those standpoints.
I suspect the DCSF, ignorant as it is of any point of view other than chucking contraceptives at kids and killing off the 'mistakes', has completely missed this effect of its guidance - and will regret it.
I'm not necessarily averse to teaching teenagers the physical facts of abortion.
ReplyDeleteAnd it will be interesting to see if you are right in practice. Of course, you are in principle.
Oh, teaching the facts, yes: but this goes further. In KS4, pupils are expected to be taught to answer:
ReplyDelete"What is the full range of services, help and information available to me including local contraception and sexual health services?"
So we can teach them the facts abut abortion, but also have to tell them where they can go to do a little bit of killing of their own.
We can tell them the facts abut contraception (interestingly schools are required to cover "the latest medical evidence available on topics such as: the efficacy of different contraceptive methods" - if they take that seriously we'll at least finally have schools teaching that natural family planning is more effective than barriers, as every study within the last 20 years confirms), but we then have to tell them how to get low-effectiveness condoms, with which to devalue their whole nature as human beings.
The problem is that the DCSF doesn't actually know the facts: they ignore the research which indicates that this sort of thing simply doesn't work. The agenda behind this is profit, not education.
The SNP is hardly anti-Catholic. It supports Catholic schools, as a matter of policy. In addition, it is talking about a return to opting out, including opting out by groups of schools. The most likely beneficiaries would be the Catholic schools, which would go if threatened with closure by their Local Authorities. They could go as a single group, still fully state funded, still with a church veto over all teaching apointments.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows where the SNP truly stands on who is really Scottish. And on who isn't.
ReplyDeleteThe SNP doesn't like to think about who is really Scottish. Every Scot knows that they live in a mongrel nation, assuming they paid any attention when they were told as much in school, or every take account of popular culture, particularly sport. Very few have four grandparents, two parents and a spouse born a bred in Scotland. No-one wants to see Glasgow turn into Belfast and everyone knows that it's not a flight of fancy to suggest that it could. It is widely held that separate education has prevented communal violence. There may ethnic nationalist Scottish voters, but they are probably already voting SNP, so appealing to them wouldn't help the party to win. Whatever the SNP think, there is simply no alternative to pluralism in Scotland.
ReplyDelete