Tories. Nasty then. Nasty now.

Maggie may be dead and buried - but the spirit of the thoroughly nasty party is alive and well.

I should know better, but I fell of my chair when I read the extraordinary story about Sussex  Tory Councillor John Cherry. He's the NIMBY racist who caused a minor shit storm in his reaction to the news that a South London Academy was going to set up a boarding school - for inner city kids - in his little patch of Middle England.

In an echo of the Smethick by-election Cherry says that the prospect of letting these kids - who he says will be 98% Black and Asian - out into the local villages will create a 'sexual volcano.'

He does concede that it wouldn't be so bad if these bussed-in 'ethnics' were Chinese or Indian because apparently these groups have a hard-working academic ethic. But he is quite clear that he doesn't want any Pakaistanis - because that group are 'uncertain what hard work is'.

Sadly, the interaction of class, culture and institutional racism means that there is a grain of truth in his observations about the over and under achievement of various groups. Although if he did his homework further he'd have found that one of the most under-achieving groups of all is the  "white British'.

Councillor Cherry has swiftly apologised and resigned and the Tories are of course now desperately back-peddling.  Cherry's views certainly don't sit well with the metro-savvy Notting Hill-ite wing. But I suspect that Cherry  just said what many of the Tory loyalists in the shires actually think.

Ding Dong. Trafalgar Square.

Last night, like many other right-minded people  I was wandering around Trafalgar Square looking for a celebration that was never going to be truly adequate.

About thirty years ago I was planning a very different kind of celebration.The 1983 'Falklands election' was the first one I was able to vote in. I had just turned 18 and somewhat still naive. I was possibly one of the few who was confidently expecting a Labour victory on the night of 9th June. Even in those pre-Miners's Strike days, how could it be otherwise ? 

So we stayed up all  night at a friend's house watching the results come in, fortified by way too many cans of Carlsberg Special Brew as celebration turned to sorrow-drowning. For some reason we went into school the next day - looking very much the worse for wear -  and were advised by a friendly teacher that it would probably be in everyone's interests if we discretely went home.

So it was with a certain sense of closure - both melancholic and contented - that I was at Trafalgar Square, along with my own 18 year old daughter and her friends. If only it wasn't thirty years too late.

Let's take a moment to rejoice

Having spent most of my adult life waiting for this moment - Maggie Maggie Maggie Out Out Out has been ringing in my ears since I was 16 - now that it's actually come I feel a bit of an anticlimax.

As a historian I am certainly  not inhibited in talking ill of the dead. I enjoy the childishness of all that stuff on Facebook as much as the next man. Although I do think that Tony Benn hits the nail on the head with his characteristically sober and dignified epitaph:

"Mrs Thatcher was a politician that believed what she thought, did what she said she was going to do and that gave her a certain integrity. However, she used that trust to make war on the working class. She taught us the meaning of class war through campaigns against the miners and the introduction of the Poll Tax. We are still dealing with the effects of that 'Neo-Con' economic experiment".

'Integrity' I would add only in the perverse sense of an enemy that looks you in the eye before stabbing you in the guts. As opposed to the turncoat Blairs, Browns and Millibands who stab you in the back. 

And that's my sense of anti-climax. Thatcher may be dead but Thatcherism is all too much alive and well. Still for tonight at least - let's permit ourselves a bit of time to rejoice.

A lot of balls

A new experience for me this weekend - I visited a pawnbrokers. 

That old-fashioned description wasn't what was over the door - but that's what it was.  It offers of course a very old-fashioned service, but one that - in my neck of the woods  anyway - is depressingly flourishing. In fact along with fried chicken shops and betting shops, places offering pay day loans at interest rates of over 1000% are just about the only enterprises that do prosper around here.

Thankfully I wasn't there for a loan - I wanted to collect a Western Union transfer from Greece.

I wanted to  - but I couldn't because I could not persuade them that the name on the paperwork from the sender - 'Chris' - was a universally acknowledged abbreviation of the name on my driving license 'Christopher'. Even my signature on the very same license  'Chris' was not enough to assuage their jobs-worthiness. Nor were my pleas that only the DVLA, the Passport office and my grandmother got away with calling me Christopher - and she's been dead for twelve years.

So I left empty handed. I am nor sure whether I should be relieved that bureaucratic bullshit seems to trump old-fashioned avarice. Or doubly depressed at a new corporate  take on old-fashioned parasitism.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

It was always going to be a risk: 

Taking a bunch of cynical street wise London teenagers to an art-house cinema to watch two hours of largely black and white talking-heads in a worthy  documentary.

But getting my GCSE class to watch Ken Loach's 'Spirit of 45' paid off. You couldn't make it up - the kids came out wide-eyed and buzzing: Had it really happened ? And how come people had let that bitch Thatcher get away with destroying it all ?

As I walked back to where my bike was parked I have to confess to being choked with emotion: 

Satisfaction that a generation whose experience was so different, could be inspired by these old people talking about socialism. Melancholy for that older generation - my Mum and Dad's - who had seen their dreams fall apart and who we will never get a chance to properly thank. And anger for my own generation - those 40-somethings who bought into the 80's Thatcherite dream that shat on it all.

Thanks Mr Loach - you confirmed that I am in the right job.

No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid*

Ironic. As mentioned in my last post I was going to interview my dad to use his reminiscences as a source for one of my classes. One that I had heard before was of  him going to a meeting as a teenager shortly after the war to hear Aneurin Bevan speak on the creation of the health service - a defining moment which persuaded him to join the Labour Party. 

I was going to brave the icy weather and ride down to Kent when I got a call from his carer to come early because he had been taken into hospital. Fortunately he was able to be discharged the same day. But whilst spending a fairly harrowing day in the very same AndE department from which my mum was admitted and never returned, we had an announcement advising us that waiting times were three hours and that anyone waiting to be seen should go to another hospital ten miles away, or to see their GP. 

And next week I will be on a march next Saturday  to protest the cuts at the Whittington Hospital - roughly a life time on and from my dad going to that meeting ...

* These words from Aneurin Bevan's 'In Place of Fear'

History of our own

I am happy to be working in a school at the moment that promotes the kind of History that would get Mr Grove foaming at the mouth. No kings, queens, Isambard Kingdom Brunel or David Livingston. 

The student population is largely Black and the school makes no apology for featuring Black history heavily in the curriculum. And not just the usual GCSE focus on 1960s Civil Rights but Black British History - pre-colonial Africa, slavery in the Caribbean, decolonisation and post-war immigration. It shouldn't really be a surprise then  that as a result, History is popular at the school, and the kids are actually keen to take part in the lessons.

This attempt to connect what is being taught to student's own experiences and the world today is not restricted to Black History. Yesterday we were discussing the possibility of  a school trip to a viewing of Ken Loach's new film 'Spirit of 45'. And this weekend I was interviewing my Dad to use a source for his memories of hearing Aneurin Bevan speak at a public meeting at that time.

This teacher-training business is probably the most all-consuming and draining thing I've ever done -  but it certainly beats the crap out of what I used to put up with in my previous life ...

Cardinal O'Brien - inappropriate ?

I hate the expression 'inappropriate'.  It is particularly over-used in schools. And in more general usage it has become a euphemism for anything from 'a bit naughty' to 'absolutely fucking outrageous'.  But I had to suppress a giggle (which in itself was probably inappropriate) when I heard that Cardinal O'Brien (Stonewall's 'bigot of the year) is standing down because of inappropriate behaviour towards young priests. 

Given the track record of the Catholic church - predatory sexual behaviour and the mis-use of positions of authority would seem entirely 'appropriate' with that particular organisation's ethos.

Everything becomes a commodity ?

I'm delighted to see that the  proposed sale of our local Banksy 'Slave Labour' mural has been stopped. 

I realise that in many circles the jury is out on Banksy's political credibility.  He straddles the mainstream and has now done pretty nicely  out of his public acts of subversion. 

But  at the moment that's quibbling - the mural in Wood Green was a much-needed  little bit of thoughtfulness and culture in what is otherwise a depressingly barren bit of North London.   The area's other  'attractions' are restricted to 'Shopping City'  - apparently one of the oldest shopping malls in the country - a couple of multiplex cinema chains and a brace of Witherspoons pubs. 

From whichever way you look at it, the mural - a child worker making union jack flags   sited outside a Poundland shop at the time of the queen's jubilee  - is a very apt reflection of our times. And we want it back where it belongs.

What are we eating ?

It looks like Nestle is the latest next big business to be in the shit over contaminated food ingredients.  I suspect there will be many more of these stories to come.

In my previous life - working on packaging reprographics - I gained a bit of an insight into the murky world of retail. I used to do work for one of the particular brands recently featured in the horse meat scandal. 

Whilst we worked for them, as part of a cost-cutting exercise they shifted much of their production to Eastern Europe. As a result we were asked to retouch the picture on the front of the box so as to remove a layer of meat from their lasagna. More generally in the fifteen years or so that I dealt with the retail sector there was, predictably,  a huge shift in the supply base - whether it was food or textiles - away from suppliers in this country or Western Europe. 

The big businesses involved sat above this whole  process like Pontius Pilate.

They issued ethical sourcing policies which suppliers were to sign up to, committing them to maintaining decent working conditions and rights for their workers, and to 'transparency in the supply chain' (telling the retailer what they were doing and how they were do it). Having then indemnified and insulated themselves from any sort of shit sticking. the retailers largely left the suppliers  to it. But at the same time the brief every time that a contract was up for renewal was  to pursue more savings. And this crusade was on a 'no questions' asked basis. It is no surprise then that in the pursuit of fulfilling this quest - child labour, sweat shops - and shit unverified ingredients -  are all simply just part of the process. The stories emerging  over what is in the  food we eat is not an isolated scandal - it is endemic to capitalism - and I'm sure there is more to come. I'm also sure that somehow the retailers will manage to come up smelling of roses.

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.