It seems quite a long time since I reproduced the wisdom of Peter Hitchens on this Blog. That must be rectified. He puts it far better than I ever could!" It is easy to see why a cynical Tory leadership might have secretly wanted to destroy Britain's excellent grammar schools.
Once selection by ability was abolished and replaced by comprehensives based on catchment areas, the best state schools would be in the wealthiest parts of town, and the Conservative-voting middle classes need no longer fear competition for scarce places from the bright children of poor homes. And so it has turned out, more or less.
But it is much harder to work out why Labour - supposedly the party of the working class - should have tried so hard and for so long to deprive the poor of good schools.
If you can understand why this happened, then you can begin to grasp what has gone so wrong with British politics since the Second World War.
For the crisis in British state education is the direct result of the takeover of the Labour Party - once a working-class, Christian and socially conservative party - by dogmatic, well-off, middle-class cultural revolutionaries."
Once selection by ability was abolished and replaced by comprehensives based on catchment areas, the best state schools would be in the wealthiest parts of town, and the Conservative-voting middle classes need no longer fear competition for scarce places from the bright children of poor homes. And so it has turned out, more or less.
But it is much harder to work out why Labour - supposedly the party of the working class - should have tried so hard and for so long to deprive the poor of good schools.
If you can understand why this happened, then you can begin to grasp what has gone so wrong with British politics since the Second World War.
For the crisis in British state education is the direct result of the takeover of the Labour Party - once a working-class, Christian and socially conservative party - by dogmatic, well-off, middle-class cultural revolutionaries."
