British values: hasn't the government forgotten the one that matters most?

The talk here in England has recently been all about “British values”.

This follows an alleged attempt  by fundamentalist Muslims to take over some schools in Birmingham. Nicknamed “Trojan Horse”, this plot may or may not have been happening. It’s quite hard to tell. All I know is that Ofsted, the body charged with inspecting schools, went in and found nothing, even handing out a couple of “outstanding” ratings; got told there were some nasty Islamists at work; went back in – and found just that.

Park View: officially "outstanding" last time,
"inadequate" now

Meanwhile, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, responsible for schools, fell out with Theresa May, Home Secretary, responsible for security and combating terrorism. They took to bickering with each other in public about which of them had failed to expose the evildoing or to act against it adequately. They only stopped when David Cameron, Prime Minister which makes him their boss and the man whose job each of them covets, knocked their heads together and told them to behave.

If nothing else, the whole story confirms that there’s nothing like supreme professionalism and competence. And what this sorry crew displayed was nothing like either of them.

Now this A-team has come up with the appropriate response to the unsavoury individuals behind the plot. They’ve decreed that henceforth all English schools should promote British values. 

Inevitably, those cynics who run the press asked the party-pooper question: just what are British values? And equally inevitably we were quickly into a discussion in which fish and chips loomed large (a virtual amendment to the unwritten British constitution prescribes that the right of citizens to consume any desired quantity of fish and chips shall not be infringed).

Helpfully, Gove has now spelled out British values for us today. They are respect for the law, democracy, equality and tolerance of different faiths and religious and other beliefs.

It’s wonderful to be run by people who think these values are specifically British. Respect for the law? It occurs to me that one or two other nations may have thought of that one.

It’s also good to know the government believes such high standards are ingrained in the British psyche. Take democracy, for instance. Universal manhood suffrage, coupled with votes for women at 35, is still less than a century old; equal voting rights between the sexes came only ten years later.

Then there’s equality. This government has been slashing benefits and tax credits for the poor – and taxes for the wealthiest. The top 1% of the population from the point of view of takings, between them collect 15% of national income – in other words, 15 times the national average. That shows a commitment to equality in much the same way as Vladimir Putin shows enthusiasm for open political debate.

And finally we have tolerance of other faiths and beliefs. Non-Anglican Protestants could run for Parliament in Britain only from 1828, Catholics from 1829, Jews from 1858. Homosexuality has been legal in Britain since 1967, gay marriage has been possible for just a couple of months.

Meanwhile, 2.7% of the British population is black; 14.6% of police stop and searches are on black people; 8% of arrests; and 13.7% of the prison population.

Anyone who thinks that these figures reflect the greater inclination of black people to commit crime is simply part of the problem.

Equality and tolerance? We’re a long way from them yet.

And that’s the point about most of these values. They’re not specifically British, and Britain doesn’t practice them all that well. Many of us would like to see the country aspire towards them, but given the huge increase in poverty under the present government, it’s hard to believe that Ministers share that view.

In any case, Michael Gove’s demand that schools teach British values is self-defeating. Because there’s one value that he’s forgotten about completely and, though it’s not exclusively British, it’s certainly deeply rooted in our culture.

We don’t want government telling us what we should believe.

Now there’s a value Gove would do well to re-learn. Funnily enough, it’s something Conservatives always claim to believe in deeply. But perhaps they don’t mind so much if it’s them doing the telling. 

Naughty tale. And an unlikely moral ending

We all know the scene from the worst kind of school novel.

The little boy, bitter, embarrassed, furious is standing on the square of carpet in front of the headmaster’s desk. To one side is the teacher he cheeked.

“Well, Gove Minor,” thunders the headmaster. “What have you to say for yourself?”

“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs May,” mumbles Gove, staring at the floor in front of him, and refusing to look the teacher in her eyes.

“Yes, well, that’ll have to do. Now bend over.”

“Yes, Mr Cameron,” says Mrs May, for it is she who is about to receive the caning, not Gove at all.

In the corner, ignored by the main actors, is Professor Wilshaw, School Inspector-in-Chief, observing the scene and noting “Outstanding approach to discipline.” Unknown to anyone else, and indeed unknown to him, in two weeks time he will review that judgement and replace it by “Inadequate understanding of justice or the purpose of punishment.”

The book has no sympathetic characters and fails, in consequence, to engage readers. After selling poorly for five years, it is remaindered in May 2015 and unsold copies pulped soon after.

We’re living through that story in England now.

An anonymous letter, now widely believed to have been a hoax, announced some months ago that schools in Birmingham were being taken over by a conspiracy of Muslim fundamentalists intent on turning them into hotbeds of extremism or even terrorism. Some of the schools were inspected by the Schools Inspectorate, Ofsted, headed by Sir Michael Wilshaw, gave them a clean bill of health, occasionally even handing out the highest grade, “outstanding”.

When the allegations, now known as the “Trojan Horse”, surfaced, Ofsted visited 21 schools. We’ve now had their report. Two schools previously found to be outstanding were downgraded to “inadequate”, the lowest possible grading. No evidence was found of Islamic extremism, though there was evidence of a climate of fear and an increasing emphasis on Islam in the schools, some of which have a Muslim intake of over 90%.

Meanwhile, Michael Gove, Secretary for Education, had let it be known that he considered Theresa May, the Home Secretary and therefore Minister in charge of counter-terrorism, responsible for the shortcomings. In response, the Home Office put on-line, at midnight, a letter from May to Gove in which she pointed out that he had known about the Trojan Horse allegations and demanded to be told why he had taken no action in response.

As the spat intensified between May and Gove, both leading contenders to replace David Cameron at the head of the Conservative Party when he loses office, he called them in and dressed them down. Gove was forced to apologise publicly to May, but May took the more serious punishment: she had to fire one of her favourite special advisers.

Uneasy neighbours on the government front bench

Isn’t it lovely to see the Education Minister behaving like an unruly pupil in one of the schools he oversees, and being reprimanded in much the same way?

No-one emerges from this story with any credit. Not the Muslims who are trying to convert secular, state schools, funded by the taxpayer, into centres of Islamic faith. Not the writer of the Trojan Horse letter who clearly massively overstated the problem. Not May and Gove doing their pot and kettle act. Not Cameron trying to re-establish his authority over a government that seems completely out of his control. And finally, not Ofsted or Wilshaw who seem to completely elastic in their assessment of schools, shifting their evaluations from one extreme of the scale to the other in response to scandal.

And the worst of it all? None of this would even be contentious if these schools were faith schools – of which we have 6000 in England.

Yes, state, taxpayer-funded confessional schools.

Gove may be upset about the Islamic takeover of schools in Birmingham. But he’s very much in favour of faith schools generally and would like to see a great many more of them.

I don’t like schools becoming centres of Islamic indoctrination. But I don’t like acting as centres of Christian or Jewish indoctrination either. That’s what we have Churches, Mosques or Synagogues for. Very few people go to them, but that’s their choice. I see no reason why the power of the State and the money we provide it should be used to make up for their indolence in religious practice, by teaching their kids at our expense what they refuse to study themselves.

They want faith schools? Let them found, and fund, their own. That’s what the French do: private schools can be faith-based, but the public sector is strictly secular.

A secular state school system? Now that would be a response to the Trojan Horse allegations we could be proud of.

Not likely to happen any time soon, though.