My difficulties with the department, however, were not essentially about personalities. Nor, after the first culture shock, did they stem from the opposition between my own executive style of decision-making and the more consultative style to which they were accustomed. Indeed, by the time I left I was aware that I had won a somewhat grudging respect because I knew my own mind and expected my decisions to be carried out promptly and efficiently. The real problem was — in the widest sense — one of politics.
I do not know and did not enquire how the senior civil servants around me voted. But the ethos of the DES was self-righteously socialist. For the most part, these were people who retained an almost reflex belief in the ability of central planners and social theorists to create a better world. There was nothing cynical about this. Years after many people in the Labour Party had begun to have their doubts, the educationalists retained a sense of mission. Equality in education was not only the overriding good, irrespective of the practical effects of egalitarian policies on particular schools; it was a stepping stone to achieving equality in society, which was itself an unquestioned good. It was soon clear to me that on the whole I was not among friends.
The counter-argument would presumably be that since I was seeking to challenge the conventional wisdom in education, I could hardly complain when I met with opposition. There are, however, two considerations which must be weighed against that. First, civil servants owe ministers honest, accurate advice based on fact, rather than slanted submissions based on preconceptions that the Government (and the electorate) have rejected. Second, it is highly damaging, even judged by the narrow criteria of good and impartial administration, for a department to become as closely connected with its clients as the DES was with the teaching unions, in particular the National Union of Teachers (NUT). I saw this in the flesh quite early on when on Saturday 12 September 1970 I was deputed at the last moment, because of the Leila Khalid affair,[14] to deliver Ted Heath’s speech at a Guildhall dinner to celebrate the centenary of the NUT. There were a large number of DES senior civil servants present and it was immediately clear to me that they and the NUT leaders were on the closest of terms. There were all those in-jokes, unstated allusions, and what is now called ‘body language’ which signify not just common courtesy but rather a common sympathy.
My difficulties with the civil service were compounded by the fact that we had been elected in 1970 with a set of education policies which were perhaps less clear than they appeared. During the campaign I had hammered away at seven points:
• a shift of emphasis onto primary schools
• the expansion of nursery education (which fitted in with Keith Joseph’s theme of arresting the ‘cycle of deprivation’)
• in secondary education, the right of local education authorities to decide what was best for their areas, while warning against making ‘irrevocable changes to any good school unless… the alternative is better’
• raising the school leaving age to sixteen
• encouraging direct grant schools and retaining private schools[15]
• expanding higher and further education
• holding an inquiry into teacher training
But those pledges did not reflect a clear philosophy. As I have already indicated, different people and different groups within the Conservative Party favoured very different approaches to education, in particular to secondary education and the grammar schools. On the one hand, there were some Tories who had a commitment to comprehensive education which barely distinguished them from moderate socialists. On the other, the authors of the so-called Black Papers on education had, to their credit, started to spell out a radically different approach, based on discipline, choice and standards (including the retention of existing grammar schools with high standards). Their case was strongly founded in well-informed criticisms of the present system. We were caught between these two opposing views. And for all our talk of coherent strategies and deliberate decision-making, this was not a government which felt any inclination to resolve fundamental contradictions. I was very conscious that in any struggle with the civil service I might not be able to count on the support of all my Cabinet colleagues.
GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT
On that first day at the department I brought with me a list of about fifteen points for action which I had written down over the weekend at Lamberhurst in an old exercise book. After enlarging upon them, I tore out the pages and gave them to Bill Pile. The most immediate action point was the withdrawal of Tony Crosland’s Circular 10/65, under which local authorities were required to submit plans for reorganizing secondary education on completely comprehensive lines, and Circular 10/66, issued the following year, which withheld capital funding from local education authorities that refused to go comprehensive.
The department must have known that this was in our manifesto — they always scrutinize the Opposition parties’ policies during an election campaign. But apparently they thought that the policy could be watered down, or at least its implementation postponed. I, for my part, knew that the pledge to stop pressuring local authorities to go comprehensive was of great importance to our supporters, that any delay would be taken as a sign of weakness, and that it was important to act speedily in order to end uncertainty. Consequently, even before I had given Bill Pile my fifteen points, I had told the press that I would immediately withdraw Labour’s Circulars. I even indicated that this would have happened by the time of the Queen’s Speech. The alarm this provoked seems to have made its way to No. 10, for I was reminded that I should have Cabinet’s agreement to the policy, though of course this was only a formality.
More seriously, I had not understood that the withdrawal of one Circular requires the issue of another. This was a technicality, but it was one which those who disagreed with the-policy inside and outside the department used to maximum effect. My civil servants made no secret of the fact that they considered that a Circular should contain a good deal of material setting out the department’s views on its preferred shape for secondary education in the country as a whole. This might take for ever, and in any event I did not see things that way. The essence of our policy was to encourage variety and choice rather than ‘plan’ the system. Moreover, to the extent that it was necessary to lay down from the centre the criteria by which local authorities’ reorganization proposals would be judged, this could be done now in general terms, with any further elaboration taking place later. It was immensely difficult to persuade them that I was serious. I eventually succeeded by doing an initial draft myself: they quickly decided that cooperation was the better part of valour. And in the end a very short Circular — referred to as Circular 10/70 — was issued on Tuesday 30 June in good time for the Education Debate on the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday 8 July.
15
Direct grant schools, which included some of the most famous and successful secondary schools in Britain, entry to which was often highly competitive, were funded direct from the DES and were outside local control.