But what was striking was the accusation by the Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake that
"Their hypocrisy knows no limits. While they plot around the Cabinet table to impose this spiteful tax on education, many Labour MPs have been busy covering up their own private school educations. They have no shame in pulling up the ladder behind them."
Because it is a naked appeal to upper-class solidarity. If you benefited from an unfair educational system, it implies, you are duty-bund to ensure that people of your class can continue to enjoy that advantage.
In reality, there's nothing hypocritical about deciding that a system you went through yourself should be reformed or abolished. I'd say it is a sign of a mature intellect, and we expect the Labour Party, even the timid version of it we see today that never mentions social class, to believe in fairness.
But sending their children to private schools is what upper class people do. It's an important part of their identity. Question the practice, and the clang of closing ranks is resounding.
And that solidarity can take extreme forms, as Alex Renton discovered when he went public about the abuse he had suffered as a small boy at his expensive prep school:
The reaction to my story was immediate – and shockingly personal. "You’re a class traitor," said one friend, whose son had just started at Eton. I thought she might have been joking – but she wasn’t the only one.
A few days after publication I was at a smart Edinburgh art gallery party, standing with a glass of free wine in a group of people I vaguely know. "Don’t stand too close to Renton!" one of them, an old Etonian businessman, suddenly announced, grabbing my arm. "He might put his hand down your trousers!" Most of the group chuckled.
You may disagree with Labour's imposition of VAT on school fees, but there's nothing hypocritical about the policy.
Class solidarity is certainly part of the vitriol. But I think there is another element, too. It wasn't so long ago that sending children to private school was a realistic aspiration for (upper) middle class parents who wouldn't consider themselves (or be regarded by others) as upper class. I'm thinking of doctors, solicitors and accountants in local firms, directors of small companies. These people are usually not able to afford private schools any more, as fees increase beyond inflation, housing becomes much more expensive etc etc. My heart doesn't bleed for these people, but I think that VAT is used by the right wing press as an explanation to their older readership why their grandchildren are not at private schools. Much better to blame Labour, than to acknowledge that capitalism no longer serves its auxiliaries nearly as well as it used to. Meanwhile, private schools (especially in the south east).recruit more wealthy international students. (It is difficult to gauge how many, because some are disguised in the statistics when their parents have purchased British citizenship.)
ReplyDeleteIn reality, there's nothing hypocritical about deciding that a system you went through yourself should be reformed or abolished. I'd say it is a sign of a mature intellect,
ReplyDeleteIt's not the sign of a mature intellect at all.
The conservative quoted is, indeed, committing the genetic fallacy by attacking the policy not on its own terms but on the basis of who is proposing it; but this is the same fallacy reversed, to argue that a policy should be supported because of who supports it.
In reality who supports (and opposes!) a policy doesn't matter at all. A policy must be judged entirely on its own merits, not by the identities or characteristics of its proposers or detractors.