Gove loses the historical plot

Amidst the euphoria over Grove's humiliating climb down over the Ebacc, the proposed new framework for the national curriculum has gone relatively unnoticed. 

I can't speak for other subjects but for History the changes can only be described as daft and dangerous.

Daft - because you only have to look at the curriculum for Key Stage 2 to see the crazy body of knowledge that Grove now seriously expects kids to have before they turn up at secondary school.

Dangerous because, whilst no primary  school is ever really going to cover all this, undoubtedly some will try. And they won't be primaries in the inner cities because like my lovely local primary school that I had to spend a week in as part of my secondary training - they are  quite rightly too busy teaching seriously disadvantaged kids the basics of literacy and numeracy.

The changes, by further increasing and institutionalising the gaps between childrens' experience before they start secondary school, will have the same regressive and divisive effect that Grove originally intended with the Ebacc.

And the history is pretty dubious too:

Here's the KS2 History framework in all its glory:

"Pupils should be taught the following chronology of British history sequentially:

Early Britons and settlers, including: 

the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages

Celtic culture and patterns of settlement

Roman conquest and rule, including:

Caesar, Augustus, and Claudius

Britain as part of the Roman Empire

the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire

Anglo-Saxon and Viking settlement, including:

the Heptarchy

the spread of Christianity

key developments in the reigns of Alfred, Athelstan, Cnut and Edward the Confessor 

The Norman Conquest and Norman rule, including: 

the Domesday Book

feudalism

Norman culture

the Crusades

Plantagenet rule in the 12th and 13th centuries, including:

key developments in the reign of Henry II
the murder of Thomas Becket 

Magna Carta

de Montfort's Parliament
Relations between England, Wales, Scotland and France, including: 

William Wallace

Robert the Bruce

Llywelyn and Dafydd ap Gruffydd

the Hundred Years War 

Life in 14th-century England, including: 

chivalry

the Black Death

the Peasants’ Revolt 

The later Middle Ages and the early modern period, including: 

Chaucer and the revival of learning

Wycliffe’s Bible

Caxton and the introduction of the printing press

the Wars of the Roses

Warwick the Kingmaker
The Tudor period, including 

religious strife and Reformation in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary 

Elizabeth I's reign and English expansion, including: 

colonisation of the New World

plantation of Ireland

conflict with Spain

the Renaissance in England, including the lives and works of individuals such as Shakespeare and Marlowe 

The Stuart period, including: 

the Union of the Crowns

King versus Parliament

Cromwell's commonwealth, the Levellers and the Diggers

the restoration of the monarchy

the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London

Samuel Pepys and the establishment of the Royal Navy

the Glorious Revolution, constitutional monarchy and the Union of the Parliaments."

Marriage overdue reform

I am listening to the radio this morning and fuming whilst a succession of otherwise intelligent and educated people tie themselves in knots trying to argue against gay marriage.

Although there is some comedy value in hearing a bunch of otherwise disturbingly repressed individuals - Ann Widecombe and a whole bunch of more-catholic-than-thou Anglican clergymen in particular - so obsessed with sex. 

Because their main argument is that gay marriages are not about procreation. Even if gay couples can adopt and provide a stable and loving environment for a child they can't - and you can almost hear these repressed homophobes choking on their own priggishness as they say it - have 'proper sex'. 

To quote Fawlty Towers - the psychiatrists would have a field day with that lot.

As a determinedly unmarried heterosexual (because as Shakespeare's Brutus says honest men don't need to take vows), I will be cheering on from the side lines when the House of Commons drags the marriage laws into the 21st Century. 

But mostly I will be reading Engels'  'Origins of Family, Private Property and the State' and reminding myself where all this nonsense comes from.

In defence of Gerald Scarfe

There are many many things that Rupert Murdoch should apologise for. But Gerald Scrafe's cartoon of Netanyahu with the caption 'will cementing the peace process continue ?' is not one of them. 

Murdoch distances himself from the cartoonist - 'grotesque and offensive' - so I can only wonder of he has actually seen any of Scarfe's work before. Because the offensive and the grotesque have been Scarfe's stock in trade for something over forty years - as they have been of great cartoonists since the days of Hogarth.

Accusations of antiemtism seem to hinge on two artistically spurious arguments;

That Netanyahu is pictured with a big nose. surely this can only be said by someone who has never seen Scarfe's work before. As Nissim “Nusko” Hezkiyahu - one of Israel's leading cartoonists puts it:

“If you look at the other caricatures, Bibi came off easy.” “To say that this caricature shows Bibi with a big nose — compared to all the caricatures that are published here, I think that was the smallest nose he ever had,”

Or - that the depiction of blood oozing out of the mortar in the wall symbolising the West Bank Barrier is a reference to the 'blood libel' of medieval antisemitism. Again anyone who has seen Scarfe's work know that splashing blood  red ink about on white paper is one of his  favoured shock techniques. Artistically then perhaps we can accuse Scarfe of a lack of originality.

But what we are really left with is a lazy political argument that condemnation of the policies of an Israeli government towards the Palestinian people is antisemitic. 

Which leaves the question of the timing of the cartoon's publication  on Holocaust Memorial Day - something that does show some insensitivity and misjudgement. However it was a decision which Scarfe himself had no part in. That particular decision lies with ... Murdoch and his management.

Fritz Thyssen. A warning from history.

Friends in Germany have told me how the collective-guilt rammed down the throats of kids in the school system there can actually be counter productive. Rebellion is and should be the default setting of youth - and if it's rebellion against a well-meaning liberal agenda then it can produce a new generation of neo-Nazis.

In this country anyone with digital telly can at any given moment find a couple of programmes about the Nazis or WW2 on History or Discovery. And kids in our schools might easily find that they are studying the Nazis and/or the Holocaust in History (possibly both before and after they chose their GCSE options), in English, in Drama, in RE and PHSE.

I have now seen at first hand that many kids seem to compartmentalise the Nazis, WW2 and the Holocaust. They can easily come away with the view that WW2 is quite cool. The Holocaust is a bad thing but fairly divorced from antisemiticism. And  Hitler was  really charismatic.

So when coming to teach this I thought I'd try to get across the idea that the Nazis weren't just about Hitler's personal charm. And that they went from fringe nutters to viable force only when rich and powerful people decided that they were the best bet in helping them hang on to their power in the face of crisis and revolution. Not an original analysis I know - but still one that seemed to be lacking.

I hit upon the idea of getting this across by looking at a potted biography of Fritz Thyssen. The steel magnate was one of the richest men in Germany - and an early adopter of Nazism once the depression started to grip. He recruited his mate to the party - who also happened to run the national bank. They donated millions to the party to help fund one of the most extraordinary election campaigns in history. And they orchestrated a letter signed by a group of twenty seven leading businessmen calling on President Hindenburg to ask Hitler to form a government in the interests of law and order and social stability. Unfortunately for Thyssen he was also a devout Catholic who had qualms about Crystal Night and fell out with the party as the Holocaust was getting underway. He fled to Vichy France, was brought back and put in a concentration camp. After the war the allies tried him as a war criminal.

In other words a perfect personification of the uneasy but intrinsic relationship between big business and fascism. However I was told that none of this was needed. It simply isn't on the syllabus - not even at A level. It is however essential reading for our own times.

The lords and drugs

I have never accepted the argument that a second chamber could somehow act as a voice of reason that does not have to bow to the hurly-burly of politics. Whether it's hereditary, elected or just packed full of cronies, that argument seems like an argument against democracy itself. The same kind of reasoning that  suggests the monarchy is somehow 'above' the vested interests of elected politicians.

But I will applaud the House of Lords select committee on drugs policy of decriminalisation. 

I haven't seen the proposals in detail, nor do I claim  any expertise on the subject. But whatever the ins and outs of their reforms, they at least have had the balls to treat drugs as a health issue and not a law and order issue  - or a public morals issue.

Of course the cynical could say that they can afford to think outside the box because in our current political climate there is bugger all possibility of their ideas being implemented. Cameron has certainly pissed ice on it from the start and Miliband has unsurprisingly said something dull and non-committal about on-going reviews ... blah-blah-blah. Both are far too nervous looking over their shoulders at the pitch-fork wielding self appointed guardians of middle England's virtue  to actually yield to common sense about the ludicrous notion of a 'war on drugs'.

Clegg alone has picked up the issue. But then again as with everything else the LibDems do - it's easy to pose as libertarian when you're hiding behind the skirts of reactionary neo-Thatcherites...

Unusually positive festive break

I am just coming to the end of my first ever 'teacher's long Xmas holiday'. 

Previous holidays  have always involved going to work in the hiatus between Xmas and the New Year. These were curious days of doing a very small amount of work - usually from some arsehole-client who only gave us work when every other firm was shut - and a lot of buggering about doing nothing in particular. And with a bit too much time on my hands, usually some whiskey-induced melancholic introspection and stock-taking.

Paradoxically the year,  whilst I am actually at home for the holidays I have far more to do in terms  of course work, planning and marking. And for once, I am actually looking forward to going back to it all.

In my last years in the old job - I found myself in the unenviable position of being the governor at the annual works do. This meant staying relatively sober and being button-holed by some pissed-up back seat driver who would then tell me where I was going wrong and what they would have done. Being a tolerant sort of chap I tried to take this in tolerant good humour - but it did wear thin after the third or fourth ear-bashing. A variation on this, and one that I had to restrain myself from joining in with because in truth I agreed totally, was a similar ear-bashing about how things aren't what they used to be - and that as a trade we were all doomed.

In contrast I was at the school staff Xmas bash this year:

In terms of the what I've been used to having worked in Soho for all these years, as bashes goes this was a bit woeful. And teachers let off the leash definitely fall into the category of what one of my old reprobate colleagues used to dismissively call 'amateur drinkers'. But as I quietly propped up a darkened corner of the bar, I was similarly buttonholed by someone telling me that - in spite of everything I might hear -  teaching really was the best job in the world. Not once, but on three separate occasions. So starting a New Year on a positive note for once - I'll take that all as some sort of endorsement.

Three cheers for Danny Boyle

Every year at about this time I usually find that some celeb I have had a degree of admiration for has eroded their credibility  by accepting an archaic gong or title in the New Year's honours list.

My biggest disappointment this year was that 'people's champion' and all round working class hero Bradley Wiggins has picked up a knighthood. 

Some will say that it is a small thing and that I should just lighten up. But the honours system is just another prop in the edifice of deference and elitism that bears down on our society. 

So let's hear it for Danny Boyle. In many ways the architect of our 'feel good Summer', you can be sure that the powers-to-be were beating a path to his door to offer him a knighthood. And he no doubt would be more deserving than many of the faceless apparatchiks of government who every year collect a gong for just turning up.

But it seems he turned it down. This shouldn't be a surprise - he's on the record as saying that in the Olympic opening ceremony he wanted  to celebrate being  British from the point of being 'an equal citizen'.

Perhaps one day when we've finally  scrapped all the fore-lock tugging and  royal bollocks that makes up the honour's system, we can put Danny Boyle in charge of a peoples' awards ceremony.

NRA fuckwits

Like an alcoholic who tells you that what he really needs to sort himself out is just one more drink - you can only shake your head in despair when you hear that the NRA's response to the Newtown school shooting and the murder of twenty young children and six of their teachers is a call for armed guards at schools.

What the fuck is with Americans and their guns ? 

I'm as much a willing victim of American cultural imperialism as the next man. I have two American motorcycles, I'm told that I dress like a redneck trucker.  I listen to alt-country. If I could afford a pick-up truck I'd have one of those too. But still I can't understand the idea that gun ownership is somehow the soul of the nation. I've even studied American history: I get the obsession was the constitution as a sacred text. I get the need to define the nation in terms of a frontier - either real or metaphorical.

Even so.  We can contextualize as much as me like - it's time to just say for fuck's sake grow up and end this bollocks - and  join the rest of the modern world in the sanity of gun control.

Class in the classroom

In the world of education bollock-speak will go to convoluted lengths to avoid any mission-creep into the dangerous waters of politics - and  the elephant in the corner is class. Labour's recent dubious dablings  on the subject do not help in this.

At schools we will talk at length about the issues facing 'EAL' (that's English-as-an-alternative-language) pupils. But we all know that we aren't really talking about the offspring of diplomatic personnel or multinational managerial staff  posted in this country for a few years. We mean the children of immigrants living in inner cities.  Or we talk of 'targeted micro-populations' of underachievers - at the top of which list is 'White British. But we all know that we are not talking about the offspring of Guardian reading Merlot-sipping media types in Hampstead. We mean the white working class.

Ironically those stereotypical characteristics of the demonized chav: low aspirations; lack of respect for educational achievement; a deeply ingrained suspicion of both authority and middle-class do-gooders -  perhaps just reflect a slightly longer experience of British capitalism than the still optimistic hopes of immigrant communities. But as the present economic crisis deepens so does this experience  - and so the attitudes converge. Because that's how class trumps everything else.

A requiem for a generation of sorts

I am not by nature the most gregarious of people, which is perhaps why I am careful to maintain my oldest friendships. And I have been lucky enough that the friends of my teenage years also  still some of my closest. Over something like thirty years, despite the inevitable twists and turns of life we have all remained in touch, albeit rarely managing to all be in the same place at the same time. 

However Friday was one of those occasions. We met for the funeral of a man who played a bigger part in those formative years than any of us realised at the time, the headmaster of our school. The school was a Catholic one, and the man was a priest  - but that is in many ways irrelevant - he was quite simply a good man with some genuine wisdom,  and one of those rare self-effacing people who exert a greater influence on people than they ever know. 

It is said that there are two types of atheists - Catholic atheists and Protestant atheists. And I know that I fall into the first category. Despite the fact that none of us have stayed with the hocus-pocus to which we were subjected in our youth,  we did  honour  the occasion  the man, and perhaps the passing of our own youth,  in authentic Catholic fashion by following the funeral with a piss-up of truly epic proportions. 

It was a bitter-sweet melancholic evening  that perhaps only we can understand, but which I felt it only right to share here.

Workers' control is the only press regulation

It's easy to lose your way in the wake of the Leveson inquiry - and many sensible people have. Whilst all right-thinking people delight at the prospect of putting the boot in on the Murdochs and Desmonds of the media world, any sort of press regulation that curtails genuine investigative journalism is less appealing.

However as with many of these knotty issues that stray into the murky area of censorship I am inclined to give the devil the benefit of the doubt - for the sake of the rest of us. As with pornography and racism - or any of those other things that make us liberals reach for the statute book - there are enough laws already. Tapping phones is already illegal, paying bent coppers for stories is already illegal - and politicians manipulating press barons is a fact of life that no amount of laws short of revolution will stop.

On Facebook I came across this wonderful blank page from the Sun when in the midst of the miner's strike, NGA members refused to handle a picture that depicted Arthur Scargill as a Nazi.  And I remembered that it was a similar action by print workers that was a pivotal point in the escalation of the 1926 General Strike.

I can't help but thinking that declining press standards might just have something to do with the breaking of the media unions.

Zen of teaching

Some of my friends, knowing my background in martial arts, on hearing that I was going into teaching in inner city schools joked that I'd probably need my skills in the new job. In saying this they showed that they didn't know much about either martial arts, or about modern education. But now, three months or so into my training I am realizing that they might just have had a point. 

I am not talking about physical confrontations - because in a school that can only be a lose / lose situation - but in a sense they would never have imagined. 

Being constantly under the microscope and given feedback, constructive or otherwise, and a growing obsessive sense that whatever you do there will always be something else you could have done better - all of these aspects of being a student teacher have a parallel in martial arts training.

So does the ability to accept this criticism whilst maintaining your composure and carrying on with the task in front of you... Then lying awake at four in the morning whilst the criticism gnaws away at your brain. And most of all, getting up the next day with a compulsive optimism that today you will  be better.

Surgical strikes in Gazza

William Tecumseh Sherman said 'war is hell'. The US general is credited with having invented the concept of total war - war taken to the heart of an enemy's civilian population. This is nonsense of course. I immediately think of the Romans waging bio-warfare against Cathage - having levelled the city they then plowed salt into the fields so no crops would grew and the population would starve.  

Of course, the fact that it has always been so doesn't make it any more palatable. But  I find it particularly nauseating when I hear suggestions that there is some sort of other warfare perpetrated by those who can take a high-ground - that their sort of warfare is intrinsically different and more ethical. 

It's a suggestion that is a luxury only to 'top nations' equipped with a sense of moral superiority and better technology. In the nineteenth century the British empire spread civilization with the Maxim gun, and in the twentieth the US imposed American values of democracy with napalm.  And now  Israel talks of 'surgical strikes' with drone missiles against Gazza that will eliminate only the bad guys. 

Like many others I am witnessing the attacks in Gazza in horror - and I have no ready solutions. 

But instinctively I reject the sanctimony of Israeli army spokesmen who talk about the special nature of the IDF and their unique mission to protect civilian life and values of decency. It's the pious hypocrisy that only the bully and  imperialist can afford.

McAlpine v the BBC

I am not minded to spare too much sympathy for the out-going BBC Director General George Entwistle. A pay-out of a full year's salary of £450,000  for a job that he has held for a couple of months sticks in the throats of the thousands of us who have faced genuine redundancy in the past few years. But I also can't help having a couple of pauses for thought:

Firstly - If it had been an ordinary person rather than a Tory grandee who had been falsely accused of paedophilia - would justice have been quite so summary ? I am thinking of the twenty years that it took 96 ordinary football fans to clear their names after having been slandered. And a slander not arising from a bungling incompetence but from a malicious conspiracy between police and press - for which there are still quite a few heads waiting to roll. I guess scouse football fans just don't have quite the same leverage as Lord McAlpine.

Secondly - Entwistle went, quite  correctly, because he was the boss of an editor who fucked up having sub-contracted an investigation to an outside firm. Sloppy journalism and sloppy management. But then that's what happens when the media rushes to placate  pitch fork-wielding vigilantes demanding that 'something must be done' in response to the Jimmy Saville affair. Exactly the same mob who are now baying for the blood of Entwistle.

Most importantly none of this does anything for getting justice for the victims of what is undoubtedly a far-reaching paedophilia conspiracy .

The new McCarthy-ism in education

Absorbing though my new life as a born-again student-teacher I have restrained myself from blogging excessively about it. Partly because I seem to have a lot less downtime generally these days - but also because I am conscious that what is fascinating for me may just be a bit less so for others. But I had to share this:

Whilst real teachers were enjoying their half term break, we students had to go in to university in our week away from our schools. Highlight of the week was a debate about part two of the new teaching standards. Now, I'm aware that this might sound pretty obscure - but it is actually of enormous significance. At a time when there is an ever-growing number of academies - who can opt out of the national curriculum and whose teachers do not have to have qualified teacher status - it is only the only part of the teaching standards which are going to be  universally applicable to everyone in the profession. In comparison to the wordy corporate speak that makes up the much longer part one of the standards - which do refer to the actual business of teaching - part two is  much shorter, much vaguer -  and altogether much more sinister:

'Teachers uphold public trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour, within and outside school, by ....not undermining fundamental British values*'

Fundamental British values is taken from the definition of extremism as articulated in the new Prevent Strategy, which was launched in June 2011. It includes ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’.

Defenders of this bit of nonsense will no doubt  argue that only members of Al-Quaida or the BNP need fear this, but as a history teacher I have a horrible sense of  deja-vu with a new notion of 'un-Britishness' taking the place of un-Americanism. If that sounds alarmist then just remember that without a disregard for 'the rule of law' we would have no right to vote and no trade unions. 

But most of all, this new definition of British values serves up a recipe to sack  teachers who are also activists  taking part -  in arenas that usually have  nothing to do with their work - in protests and actions such as demonstrations and picket lines. All of which in these illiberal days are increasingly on  the margins of legality.

What doesn't destroy you and all that.

Almost a year to the day after I was bombed out of my old job I met up with a couple of former workmates - similarly 'lifers' with the old company - for a few beers in Covent Garden.

Between the three of  us we  must have notched up about 75years of service with the firm - so it's fair to say that all of us had our worlds turned upside by sudden redundancy. Of the the three of us I've probably moved the furthest from our previous world,  but we all agreed that the past year has been more enjoyable and more meaningful than anything we'd experienced for years with the old business.   In fact the only thing we missed - apart from the money - was the banter; and even that declined rapidly when we stopped being 'in the print' and morphed into the poncier world of the  'creative industries'.

I detest the new-age capitalism that preaches a mantra of self help about embracing change and using redundancy as an opportunity. It's a sanctimonious fig-leaf to justify that every few years the free market has to have a clear-out. Meaning that for most people who have been tossed out on to the rubbish heap there's simply not much hope of a way back. 

And it's worth remembering  that all that 'what doesn't destroy me makes me stronger' bollocks was originally coined by the Fascist's very own barmy pet philosopher. But for a small minority - those lucky enough to have some sell-able  skills or education and a bit of financial security behind them, the self-help mantra might just have a element of truth. 

It doesn't scale up to a societal level and it's certainly no model for a sustainable economy with any sort of morality - but thank fuck it seems to have worked out for me...

Another walk in the park

I've just come back  from the TUC march today. One of many such demos over the years, but my first as a public sector worker.

With aching feet and a ridiculous wait for a bus home my feel-good factor has become worn a bit thin. 

Feel-good because I always think that  trade union demonstrations capture  the kind of  communal spirit that was so often spoken about at the time of the London Olympics - and so often is just bullshit. But today there was a genuine feeling that this is the real Britain - a country of working people who do actually give a toss about each other.

But it is a fine line between that and a frankly hollow sentimentalism. So when I hear the likes of Unison's Dave Prentis making their usual ritualistic fiery speeches or even worse, Ed Milliband brazenly trying to warn us to expect cuts from a Labour government, I can't help feeling much like one of the grand old Duke of York's weary foot-soldiers.

To maintain the momentum for a proper General Strike, it was important that today wasn't a flop. And thankfully it wasn't. But realistically that's as much as can be really said.

On a lighter note, as I walked down Oxford Street to get my bus home, I couldn't help but reflect how the Metropolitan Police show considerable political understanding by  stationing TSG squads outside Starbucks, Vodaphone, Boots and anything owned by Richard Green. Thereby unambiguously signposting  to the rest of the world which businesses are the worst tax-dodging corporate cunts.

Jimmy Saville - In defence of the odd

You don't have to be one of the usual self-appointed, self-righteous Daily Mail brigade to be stirred by the Jimmy Saville paedophilia case. 

Janet Street-Porter (along with others) has put it very well in revealing that in the 70's music and broadcasting industries celebs had a sort of droit de seigneur - or perhaps more accurately a  benefit of clergy - that turned a blind eye to everything from casual misogyny to rape. 

I suspect that forty year later. things  have got  worse rather than better. I've heard it argued that such a conspiracy of silence as surrounded Sir Jimmy OBE would simply not be possible in this inter-web twittering age. But the antics of Premiership footballers would suggest quite otherwise.

However, there has  also been a very dangerous argument being advanced in the wake of Saville-gate: A surprise that nobody had realised sooner he was a nonce - because it was so obvious. 

The shell suit. The jingle-jangle jewellery. The hairstyle. The fact that he was unmarried and lived with his mum. Or even more sinisterly, that he was a wealthy celeb who chose to do voluntary work. It all adds up to very disturbing a charter for vigilantes and bigots - and it evokes the memory of Stefan Kiszko the tragic misfit falsely imprisoned for 16years and hounded to an early death. And many other easy scapegoats similarly the victims of a lynch-mob mentality.

Saville - and more controversially I'd add Roman Polanski too - deserve to be exposed for what they are - paedophiles. And not just oddballs.

Eric Hobsbawn

I have to confess that I owe a slightly perverse debt of gratitude to Eric Hobsbawn who died yesterday.

It was his 'Labour's Lost Millions' article published in Marxism Today in 1983 that sent me on the trajectory that ended with me joining the then Militant. At the time I was a member of the Young Communist League having made the rookie mistake of believing that the Communist Party were to the left of Labour. My wonderfully tolerant Bennite parents didn't give me much to rebel against - but this was one way of expressing the unavoidable teenage rejection of the older generation. 

Fortunately this delusion only lasted a few months before Hobsbawn's article came out. Instinctively I knew it to be a rejection of class politics and of of the values of the labour movement in favour of something that would come to be later known as 'New Labour'. And so I probably became one of the few who joined the Labour Party with the express view of seeking out the Militant and the 'proper' Marxists. So thanks for that Eric.

Like any socialist  with an interest in history, I had his books - and it is only fair to say that his history was very much better than his politics and in a world of Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and David Starkey, they remain essential reading.  

But strangely enough, I think that perhaps one of the things most to Hobsbawn's credit was the very thing that most obituaries are criticising him for - he maintained his party membership long after that brief period in the sixties when it may have had some cachet in academic circles. 

Make-over time

I start my first teaching placement next week.  So yesterday I got my hair-cut. Over the past few months I've been picking up a suitable(ish) teachers' wardrobe on Ebay. It feels that I am in the process of crossing some sort of Rubicon.

I'm not sure why this seems like a big deal - but I suppose it is about taking on a new persona - a persona of 'authority'. Which is ironic  because in reality as a student teacher I will  have very much less authority than I did as a manager in my old life.  I might not have sought it, I might not ever have been comfortable with it, and I might have tried to play it down, but undeniably I was the boss. And all in a not a particularly worthwhile cause; making money for the owner of the business -  and even worse -  helping the arsehole clients making even more money for theirs.  That I could do so whilst dressed in the same clothes that I wore at the weekend and in the funky comfort of a Soho was scant consolation.

So I suppose - much as Henry of Navarre thought Paris was worth a mass  - then doing something more worthwhile  may be worth a second-hand collar and tie.  But  even so when I catch myself in the mirror it still looks like someone else.

Sort of TUSC report

I went to the Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition conference yesterday. 

I'm totally on board with the TUSC project. Intellectually - because I see it as a necessary part of the process of getting a new workers' party off the ground. And emotionally because after the best part of thirty years swimming against the tide of Tories, bigots and other arseholes I'd rather work with people whose values I more or less share rather than seeking some kind of ideological purity.

The trouble is these people can be rather hard work: And this was much in evidence yesterday. The SWP were generally conspicuous by their absence - and sending only a sprinkling of people confirmed that at the moment their enthusiasm for TUSC constitutes no more than keeping a watching brief. The Communist Party of Britain at least made their reservations open - although in the truly bizarre way of declaring that we should not write off the possibility of Labour being transformed into a socialist party until the next election. And a certain member of Socialist Resistance behaved with the persecuted hysteria that confirmed the python-esque stereotype of the Far Left in his ability to pick an argument in a telephone box. More positively on the other hand the Independent Socialist Network and the Socialist Party are clearly committed to TUSC - and to the credit of both were very careful to express their differences with each other in a  fraternal and respectful way. And most significantly of all  -  the RMT couldn't disguise their impatience that other unions couldn't just follow them in breaking with Labour and signing up to a new party.

I knew what I was in for when I went, so I wouldn't describe the experience as depressing, but after six hours in the conference I did have a numb arse and  a distinct sense of wading through treacle to get to a far off prize. 

Lost in translation

Setting aside for a moment any more serious thoughts about invasions of privacy, misogyny and tacky journalism - I was struck how even at their sleaziest the French do  seem to manage these things with a certain je ne sais quoi. 

Apparently accompanying the topless pictures  of our new Queen-of-Hearts  Princess Kate of Middleton and Cambridge was the caption: 

'Exulted by the fragrance of lavender from the neighbouring fields, Kate takes advantage of those delicious moments of doing nothing and offers her breasts to the soft caress of the Provence sun.[She is] simply a spouse who feels well enough in her body and who has nothing to hide from her husband. And love in its purest form. Pure images of happiness without any cloud ... like a new Eden.’

It may read like soft porn with literary pretensions but it's simply impossible to imagine reading prose like that in OK, Now, Hello or any of the other celeb-gos rags in this country.

Old dog learning new teaching tricks

Six years ago I came back from holiday and started this blog with a first post about the autumnal 'start of a new term' feeling. I never imagined that six years later it would be literally true. Yesterday I was back at university for my first offical day as a student.

Within moments I could see a  few things seem to have changed since the 1980's: Students now take notes in their lectures on their laptops. The students' union doesn't have anything remotely political on the noticeboard - and the bar isn't open at lunchtime. 

More disturbingly,  in a seminar we watched a YouTube clip of celeb-historian David Starkey talking about last year's riots; I seemed to be the only one - other perhaps than the tutor - whose immediate reaction was that Starkey was obvioulsy just  a racist cunt. (Although naturally I couched this in a slightly more academically-diplomatic way).

It's going to be a strange year, but I do feel as if I have finally flicked a switch  on in my brain that hasn't been touched for my years ....

EDL humiliated in Walthamstow

Over the years I've been involved in a variety of anti-fascist activities. Some of these were of the more cloak and dagger variety - these involved a lot of skulking about and waiting for things to happen - usually in greasy spoon cafes. In the days before mobile phones became universal much of this bordered on the farcical. Only very occasionally did we ever get to grips physically with the fascists - and although this fuelled the bravado of pub reminiscences for many years to come, the problem was that they tended to be private victories away from the public eye. They served a purpose in disrupting them, but ultimately 'the propaganda of the deed' doesn't really work when nobody is watching. However many  more of these activities were of the kind where you march backwards and forwards - usually at a safe distance from the enemy, waving 'down with this sort of thing placards'. It's a ritual - and like many rituals does have some purpose. In the right circumstances in can boost morale by making everyone feel good about themselves and creating a sense of purpose. But also like many rituals it can easily slip into being counter-productive through repetition when it seem hollow and meaningless.

On the other hand, I was up the road in E17 for the anti-EDL protest yesterday - and it was one of the rare occasions when for once  everything seemed to work. For starters it was a proper community march and not just the usual suspects of the Left. And most importantly despite some high-handed organisation by the SWP/UAF, the march actually achieved its purpose of preventing the fascists from marching. In part this was through the simple and traditional tactic of blocking a road junction - although it seems difficult to believe that the police didn't just let this happen. (Despite the chants of 'police protect the fascists' I do sometimes wonder if things are as simple as that). But more than this -  a  alternative route for the march was also thwarted when a smaller group of us managed to slip the main kettle and get to the fascists rallying point. As a result there was a short stand-off with a handful of EDL leaders whilst the main body of their much-smaller-than-expected march was held in the side streets. The warriors of the master race were  unceremoniously whisked away in their coaches - and after being briefly held by the police lines, we were allowed to make our way home.

After about seven hours on my feet and without food or drink I got home hungry and shattered but with a rare sense of having actually achieved something. Quite simply the EDL were  stopped. And publicly seen to be stopped. And with the overwhelming support of the the local community.

Exams as rationing life chances.

I am off this afternoon to an NUT protest outside the Department of Education against the GCSE marking fiasco.

I'm tempted to say that Education Secretary Mr Bean Michael Grove is just the nerdy kid who was bullied at school and is now getting his own back. Although rather than climbing on to  the library roof with a sniper's rifle, he is taking pot-shots at the futures of a generation. 

But rather more seriously - the Tories have been bleating about GCSE 'grade inflation' for several years now.  They may be  hiding Pontius Pilate-like behind the examing body - but in fact their opposition to year-on-year progress in exams  reveals the underlying narrow and nasty elitist nature of their attitude to education. They claim  that exams are too easy and that kids are overly spoon-fed in preparation for them.  Balanced peversely  at the same time  with  an obssession with targets and league tables, and scare-mongering about standards of teaching.

So they have come up with the simple solution of just shifting the grade boundaries in the middle of an academic year.  Or as one headteacher interviewed by the BBC put it  - they brought on smaller goalposts in the middle of the game - to the extent that the same mark that would have earnt a C pass in January didn't in June.  

As someone who has gone back to school after a thirty year gap, I've seen the new culture in schools: And this 'over-coaching'  is actually just another way of talking about a more inclusive approach to exams, and education in general.

When I was a kid no marking schemes or success criteria were made explicit to us. We were jsut told to just do the we could - and pretty much  left to  ourselves to figure out how. Only  a minority of us - assuming we got the chance in the first place to sit the O levels that the Tories like so much - got to figure this  out for ourselves, either  by good luck  or good judgement. Against this the modern practice of setting indvividual targets and explaining success criteria  is nothing more than an attempt to create something like a level playing field.

In contrast to this, the current exam fiasco looks - and arguably the whole public exam process in general - looks like an exercise in rationing: 

Rationing of access to further and higher education, to genuine apprenticeships in proper trades, and to the job market in general. Because ithe magical  five A-C's at GCSE are rapidly becoming the passport without which kids at the age of 16 are going to be consigned to a lifetime of casual McJobs. And when times are tough, tightening up on rationing for the masses is just the natural thing to do. If you're a Tory.

Prince Harry and the titillating toff phenomenon

I have developed a disturbing addiction to watching 'The Tudors'. I missed out on it first time around, but I now find it has a dreadful fascination. It may be rubbish history but it makes for fun tv. 

It's so full of historical anomalies and inaccuracies that I don't know where to begin - but mostly there is the fat and forty syphillitic Henry VII's  portrayal as a renaissance pouty poster boy. Amongst the constant plotting, shagging and double-dealing there is some suggestion that Henry was a tortured soul. But mostly there is a sense that he is just a 'lusty good ole boy.'

From the original Prince Hal (Henry V), Henry VIII, Charles II, George IV, Edward VII  - to the current royal party animal, another Prince Harry. There seems to be a long tradition of the masses rather liking to be shocked and titillated when royalty behaves this way.

The phenomenon is much the same as with  professional footballers.  A mixture of deference, puerile fascination and an odd sense of living a more interesting life through someone with access to more temptation and toys. And most strangely of all - a sense that when our betters behave in this way they show their humanity and by implication demonstrate that they are most 'like us'.

All of which means that those party pictures of Prince Harry won't really do much significant damage to the monarchy. Sadly.

End of an era for the ANC

Back in the day, many's the time that I would be standing outside South Africa House protesting against the apartheid regime.

I knew about - and fully subscribed to - the sober Marxist analysis that there could be no peace or prosperity for the region until capitalism was eradicated. But to be honest even that wasn't enough to  stem a sense of good-will and optimism towards the ANC's 'rainbow nation'. In truth that bubble was burst long along - but the spectacle last week of 46 striking mineworkers being shot was still beyond shocking. It's a milestone marking  the ultimate decline of the ANC from liberation movement to just another party of capital.

Because most poignantly - the strikers in Marikana face an unholy coalition of not only the bastard mining company Lonmin, but also the ANC's security forces and their own former union - the once revered South African NUM who seemed to have turned this into a turf war with the independent break-away AMCU.

So despite having some sort of  grip on what's been happening there -  it was with a very heavy heart then that I found myself holding a placard in Trafalgar Square again  this evening - some  twenty years after  celebrating the end of apartheid.

Medieval human rights

Today two truly incredible stories are coming to a head. They've been much covered in inter-web land and I've got no miraculous new insights other than to quietly point out a connection between the two.

On the one hand we have  the Assange affair and the bizarre spectacle of the Ecuadorian embassy offering him a sanctuary. Which our own government is preparing to violate, and break with all diplomatic norms by entering and  arresting him so that he can be delivered up to our US overlords. And on the other hand in Russia we have the show trial  of  the Pussy Riot collective for 'hooliganism' in publicly ridiculing Putin - for which they face three years in prison.

Two modern states and world powers - both up to their necks in stories that are in fact straight out of the Middle Ages.

Actually that's not quite fair - whilst Putin's behaviour is perfectly consistent with medieval kings who regarded the state as their own personal fiefdom, generally everyone was loathe to violate the protocols of sanctuary.  

At times like this  democracy and human rights in modern states aren't much more than a thin and inconvenient veneer.

The faces of Cool Britannia ?

Last week I went to the Judo - I sport I have a limited knowledge of, and last night to the Graeco-Roman Wrestling - a sport I have no previous knowledge of at all. I had a great time at both. Doubtless my enjoyment would have been greater if  I'd had understood more of what I was watching - Graeco-Roman manages to be both deceptively simple and also highly technical - but after a few minutes I was completely immersed into it.  

This wasn't because I was a partisan spectator either -  Team GB were not represented at all - and with the  USA favouring  Freestyle Wrestling, Graeco-Roman seems to be dominated by Eastern Europe and Central Asia. So in the same vein as my previous post - the fact that I can came away from the Graeco-Roman so engaged speaks volumes about the 'pure' and universal ability of sport to inspire. 

There's a lot in the papers today about the feel-good factor of a weekend where Great Britain enjoyed record success in the 'mainstream' area of track and field. 

Sober reflection on this would say there is an undeniable element of jingoist distraction from the gloom of austerity in all this. I am fairly immune to this - and personally my immediate reaction to the announcement on the PA that the ever-miserable Andy Murray had won gold in the tennis was to just  groan inwardly.

But as with the 'Cool Britannia' opening ceremony, my cynicism is tempered.

There is certainly a whiff of 'one nation' bullshit about all this attempt to be all-inclusive. I'm sure there was an element of it in Lord Coe's decision to feature Jessica Ennis as the 'face of the games'. But it is worth remembering that in this country there remains a significant minority of nasty Little England shits, who would deny us the idea of a multicultural society, and wish that our society had been frozen in the Chariots of Fire era of sporting toffs we could all look up to.

One of them is Rick Dewsbury of the Daily Mail talking about the opening ceremony:'it is likely to be a challenge for the organisers to find an educated white mother and black father living together with a happy family in such a set up...'

The very visible success of a young state school educated, mixed-race woman from a working class background must stick in his throat and that of many others like him. And for that reason alone - despite the disgrace that 50% of British medals went to athletes educated at independent schools that cater for a mere 7% of the population - it worth (briefly) joining in the celebrations.

I promise my next post will be about something other  than the Olympics ...

Sport as culture

Yesterday I went to the first of the two Olympic events that I got tickets for (over a year ago back in the days when I still had money). And a great day I had too - from the sport itself to a totally painless experience of getting to the venue and passing through the much discussed security.

Recently I have spoken about going to the Olympics to a few of my 'right-on' friends who seem to think that doing so was some sort of petit-bourgeois deviationism. 

What sanctimonious bollocks. There is a peculiar trend in certain parts of the Left that regards sport as at best a kind of modern day opiate of the people, and at worst  an inherently reactionary celebration of competition. And of course they  throw in the obvious (and undeniable) points about the corporate manipulation of sport as profit.

It's a philistine attitude that they wouldn't dare make about any other aspect of art and culture. Because that's exactly how sport should be considered -  as a physical expression of human culture. As it was at the original Olympics - and in modern times too until 1952 - when medals were given for sculpture and so on just as they were for athletics.

Nobody living in London who has their head screwed on needs to be lectured on the highly dubious 'legacy' that the Olympics will leave behind in the capital's most impoverished boroughs. And we can hardly help but notice the branding onslaught that big business have taken the opportunity of the games to unleash.

But the answer to all this can be found in simply watching the reaction of South African gold-medalist Chad  Le Clos's father being interviewed. His reaction shows why sport can express everything that is great about being human.

As Ray says - let's now just sit back and enjoy the games - we can argue about them later.