In public and before what is in every sense the entirely civil Lanchester Parish Council, no less a person that its Chairman, the Majority Chief Whip on Durham County Council, could not have been plainer. Even if not quite in these words, he set out that the County Council simply would not dare to cut the transport to "faith schools", which in the secondary sector here almost, if almost, means Catholic schools.
The relevant Councillors and Officers had either been graced with an Episcopal Visitation or summoned into the presence of the Successor of the Apostles, it was not clear which. Either way, it seemed to have done the trick. Not that His Lordship will have needed to say much beyond, "Do you want at least three Cabinet members, including the one holding this portfolio, to be among numerous Labour Councillors to lose their seats to anyone who might happen to want them if this thing goes ahead? Well, do you?" Who says that the North East is the heartland of New Labour? Why, in this very constituency, the Labour Party had to break its own rules and cause an all-women shortlist to produce a Catholic PPC, as well as contradicting the whole point of the device by ensuring that that PPC was local.
All of which has coalesced in my mind with Peter Hain's proposal that pressure groups become "affiliated consultees" to the Labour Party, although at least ideally to the Conservative Party, and possibly even to the Lib Dems, as well. The Catholic Union of Great Britain, perhaps? Or maybe something a bit more militant, such as the Catholic Action Group, most of whose supporters either will be or will have been Labour supporters, not to say levy-paying trade unionists and even fully paid up members of the Labour Party? On what grounds would an application for such status be refused? Then again, why imagine that it would be? We are not in the dark days of New Labour now.
More broadly, how about "affiliated consultees" concerned with each of the Welfare State, workers' rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement and wider mutualism, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, public ownership, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, civil liberties, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, traditional structures and methods of education, traditional moral and social values, economic patriotism, balanced migration, a realist foreign policy, an unhysterical approach to climate change, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State?
Or (indeed, and) how about one concerned with all of them, perhaps with further links to bodies nevertheless retaining their independence as well as their degree of remove even from formal consultation within the policy-making process of one or more political parties? With a full panoply of national, intermediate and very local structures, such a body should at least seek such role, if not outright affiliation, at least in the event of No vote on electoral reform. In the event of a Yes vote, why stop there?
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Are you deliberately trying to give all the metro-Blairites heart attacks? I reckon you must have succeeded tonight.
ReplyDeletePeople say that you'd be a useless constituency MP who would spend all his time writing books and articles and trying to amend bills. I say that would be no worse than an MP who do nothing but badger the people that complaints about pot holes should have been made to in the first place, don't even read books and articles never mind write them, and would never dream of tabling anything on the floor of the House.
But based on tonight's two posts none of us should be worrying. You have the balance just right. In fact I for one would be delighted to see a national politician of intellectual weight who came out of and spoke on behalf of the communities and movements that you so obviously do.
I would agree with that. We do not need someone to fix the drains, we already have people to do that. We need someone who will turn everything represented by your two stormingly good posts tonight into legislation and major contributions to the national debate. If not you, then who? For that matter, why not you, even if there are other people available although none of us can see them?
ReplyDeleteThe parish priest from Lanchester was one of three people who turned up at County Hall, were ushered straight in to see the Leader, and now this as if by magic.
ReplyDeleteOne of the other two was the Labour MEP for the North East, who went to St. Bede's where you were a pupil then a governor. He is active in Lanchester priest's last parish. The other was the priest from Trimdon, who like Lord Levy is one of Tony Blair's tennis partners even if Blair did only give him an MBE not a peerage. So I don't know why you are beating up on New Labour. Plus the portfolio holder is a practising Catholic.
I always remember a lot of Catholics in the Labour Party but never that the party was the political wing of the church as in Liverpool or Glasgow. That is new here, at least outside the Consett area. Must be nice to have such connections, Catholic here, Muslim in other places. But who speaks for everyone else? Who speaks for me?
The Lanchester ward is now a lot larger than the (secular) parish but when they were almost identical it occupied a third way, to coin a phrase. There were wards in the Consett area where you almost had to be a Catholic to get in, and there still are. There were wards in the Stanley area where it was almost impossible to get a Catholic in, one effect was that the extreme left had much more of a foothold there, and that is also still the case.
ReplyDeleteBut in Lanchester the way to overcome middle class doubts about voting Labour was to ensure that the three candidates for the three district seats were one from each of the three churches, CE, Methodist and left-footer. They could not always manage it but they always did better when they could. That's Middle England, us life long pit villagers will never understand it. But little details like that give an insight into understanding David Lindsay.
David also lobbied unsuccessfully for the Methodist minister to be made a county or minor authority governor of the CE controlled primary school to keep him/her and his/hers on side, yes in those days he was that concerned with keeping as many sections of the community as possible in the Labour tent. He was pretty good at it, shame he was never given a chance at a higher level. But that is where he is coming from, that is how his mind works.
You wouldn't be goading the County into this to help your own parliamentary ambitions, would you, David?
ReplyDeleteWhy should the council not pay the transport costs of pupils to Catholic schools? What most people do not realise is that Catholics pay twice for their schools. As tax payers we pay the same as everyone else to provide state education. Then, on top of this, we have to pay another 15% or 20% towards the cost of our schools. I am sure, as a governor, you will be able to explain this better than I can, but the essential point is that Catholics are obliged to pay an extra proportion of the cost of schooling for their children that state school parents do not. Many non-Catholics choose to send their children to Catholic schools but make no extra contribution at all towards the cost of their child's education.
ReplyDeleteI am not a governor anymore, but I had and have no objection to the Church's payment of a proportion of the building costs (I was on the buildings committees of two schools, one Catholic and one not, for eight years each - an education, all right), which is what this is.
ReplyDeleteIt seems a small price to pay for the level of control that She thus acquires, if only she could be bothered to use it. And since it is, in fact, the basis of the Governing Body's position as the staff employer in VA schools, it is certainly a very small price to pay for that; I repeat that I have also been a governor of a non-Catholic school albeit C of E, but only Controlled, not VA.
As I said, it looks as if the County simply wouldn't dare charge for transport. I even suspect the practising Catholic portfolio holder to have put that out there in order to have it shot down, so that she can always hold up its bullet-ridden carcass if her permanent staff were ever again foolish enough to mention it. The Parish Priests and the Head Teachers have been superb in organising this campaign.
Affiliated consultee status might also be good for the People's Voice in South Wales that used to have an MP and for the SDP that still exists there and in Yorkshire.
ReplyDeleteIt is really interesting to read about your record as a long-standing governor of two very different schools and many years on the parish council of what has to be one of the biggest parishes in the country with such a mixed and hard to please electorate.
ReplyDeleteThere are people younger than you in the Commons who have never been anything except politicians' fetchers and carriers, not that that seems to help certain golden boys that you have been passed over for in your time. That bloke who could not hack it running the Big Society was about your age but he keeps his Lords seat and title for life. What had he done before? Nothing too demanding, obviously.
Even Warsi is only a couple of years older than you and her only qualifications were being the right sex, being the right colour and failing to get into Parliament at the ballot box.
There is a longrunning attempt to depict you as an unworldly figure with little or no understanding of ordinary people. It always comes from upper middle class types who have never worked outside politics, never been politically active at local level and would never consider any public office below Parliament. They certainly did not spend eight years trying to stop St Bede's from falling into the water underneath it.
ReplyDeleteUMC, Jack, I don't think so. A clan of career chai wallahs, bent planners and hooligan husbands. With pretensions, but nothing more than that. Not like David.
ReplyDeleteYou are much missed in the school transport controversy, David. If you had still been a governor of the Bede's and active on the county party as the successor to the district party, then this madcap policy would never have been devised. Better still if you had been a county councillor as well as a governor.
But as you say, it will not go ahead now. Forget re-election, Clive and others do not fancy being deselected by their local parties, at least as Catholic as their wards. I love your idea that Claire has deliberately allowed this to be suggested so that the reaction will make sure that the idea is never revived.
Even so, though, you are missed.