The Shadow Cabinet and the Conservative Party were deeply split over the principle of selection in secondary education and, in particular, over the examination by which children were selected at the age of eleven, the 11-Plus. To over-simplify a little, it was possible to distinguish four different attitudes among Conservatives. First, there were those who had no real interest in state education in any case because they themselves and their children went to private schools. This was an important group, all too likely to be swayed by arguments of political expediency. Second, there were those who, themselves or their children, had failed to get into grammar school and had been disappointed with the education received at a secondary modern. Third, there were those Conservatives who, either because they themselves were teachers or through some other contact with the world of education, had absorbed a large dose of the fashionable egalitarian doctrines of the day. Finally, there were people like me who had been to good grammar schools, were strongly opposed to their destruction and felt no inhibitions at all about arguing for the 11-Plus.
Within the Shadow Cabinet I was aware of a broadly similar range of views. Shadow ministers in general did not want to make education a major issue in the forthcoming election. Nor was this necessarily a foolish view. Both the Party’s own internal polling and published polls showed that the 11-Plus was widely unpopular and that people were at least prepared to say that they supported comprehensive schools. Whether they would have felt the same if they had been asked about re-organizing specific local schools on comprehensive lines and whether, in any case, they understood what was meant by ‘comprehensivization’ were of course different matters. There was, for example, a large difference between the full expression of the comprehensive concept, which was essentially one of social engineering and only secondarily educational, under which there was no streaming at all according to ability, and — on the other hand — a school to which entry was open to all, but which streamed by ability. In fact, as I was to point out in the Second Reading debate of Labour’s Education Bill in February 1970, it was absurd for the socialists to attack the principle of selection, since it would continue to apply in one way or another throughout the system from the age of eleven. I might have added that when you stop selecting by ability you have to select according to some other inevitably less satisfactory criterion. In practice, this would usually be income, because families with sufficient money would move and buy houses in middle-class areas where a well-run school was available for their children. Some Labour Members and many Labour supporters understood all this well enough, and felt betrayed by Harold Wilson’s abandonment of his own personal commitment to keep the grammar schools. When I won a surprise victory in the Committee Stage debate, knocking out Clause 1 of the Bill, it was because two Labour Members absented themselves.
But by the time I took on the Education portfolio, the Party’s policy group had presented its report and the policy itself was largely established. It had two main aspects. We had decided to concentrate on improving primary schools. And in order to defuse as much as possible the debate about the 11-Plus, and in place of Labour’s policy of comprehensivization by coercion, we stressed the autonomy of local education authorities in proposing the retention of grammar schools or the introduction of comprehensive schools.
The good arguments for this programme were that improvements in the education of younger children were vital if the growing tendency towards illiteracy and innumeracy was to be checked and, secondly, that in practice the best way to retain grammar schools was to fight centralization. There were, however, arguments on the other side. There was not much point in spending large sums on nursery and primary schools and the teachers for them, if the teaching methods and attitudes were wrong. Nor, of course, were we in the long run going to be able to defend grammar schools — or, for that matter, private schools, direct grant schools and even streamed comprehensive schools — if we did not fight on grounds of principle.
Within the limits which the agreed policy and political realities allowed me, I went as far as I could. This was a good deal too far for some people, as I learned when, shortly after my appointment, I was the guest of the education correspondents at the Cumberland Hotel in London. I put the case not just for grammar schools but for secondary moderns. Those children who were not able to shine academically could in fact acquire responsibilities and respect at a separate secondary modern school, which they would never have done if in direct and continual competition and contact with the more academically gifted. I was perfectly prepared to see the 11-Plus replaced or modified by testing later in a child’s career, if that was what people wanted. I knew that it was quite possible for late developers at a secondary modern to be moved to the local grammar school so that their abilities could be properly stretched. I was sure that there were too many secondary modern schools which were providing a second-rate education — but this was something which should be remedied by bringing their standards up, rather than grammar school standards down. Only two of those present at the Cumberland Hotel lunch seemed to agree. Otherwise I was met by a mixture of hostility and blank incomprehension. It was not just that they thought me wrong: they could not imagine that I could seriously believe such things. It opened my eyes to the dominance of socialist thinking among those whose task it was to provide the public with information about education.
There were still some relatively less important issues in Conservative education policy to be decided. I fought hard to have an unqualified commitment to raising the school leaving age to sixteen inserted into the manifesto, and succeeded against some doubts from the Treasury team. I also met strong opposition from Ted Heath when at our discussions at Selsdon Park in early 1970 I argued that the manifesto should endorse the proposed new independent University of Buckingham. In spite of backing from Keith Joseph and others, I lost this battle but was at least finally permitted to make reference to the university in a speech. Quite why Ted felt so passionately against it I have never fully understood.
The Selsdon Park policy weekend at the end of January and beginning of February was a success, but not for the reasons usually given. The idea that Selsdon Park was the scene of debate which resulted in a radical rightward shift in Party policy is false. The main lines of policy had already been agreed and incorporated into a draft manifesto which we spent our time considering in detail. Our line on immigration had also been carefully spelt out. Our proposals for trade union reform had been published in Fair Deal at Work. On incomes policy, a rightward but somewhat confused shift was in the process of occurring. Labour had effectively abandoned its own policy. There was no need, therefore, to enter into the vexed question of whether some kind of ‘voluntary’ incomes policy might be pursued. But it was clear that Reggie Maudling was unhappy that we had no proposals to deal with what was still perceived as ‘wage inflation’. In fact, the manifesto, in a judicious muddle, avoided either a monetarist approach or a Keynesian one and said simply: ‘The main causes of rising prices are Labour’s damaging policies of high taxation and devaluation. Labour’s compulsory wage control was a failure and we will not repeat it.’
This in turn led us into some trouble later. During the election campaign the fallacious assertion that high taxes caused inflation inspired a briefing note from Central Office. This note allowed the Labour Party to claim subsequently that we had said that we would cut prices ‘at a stroke’ by means of tax cuts.