The 1944 Education Act and Rab Butler

I have long been fascinated by the way that Britain not only functioned during the Second World War and in some ways even thrived – politically at least.  Of great interest has always been the 1944 Education Act which may or may not be described as the ‘Butler Act’ depending on your opinion of the level of his actual involvement in the drawing up of the legislation.

It has, however, been described as ‘arguably the most important social reform of the war years’. [1] The piece by Jefferys succinctly outlines the problems; religious schools, the lack of provision of universal secondary education and school fees.  There is a meandering journey as vested interests on various sides of the political and religious divide were brought on board.

Butler was a Conservative minister, yet in the end his act was supported by Labour MPs.  It is also suggested that his reforms were unpopular with the (Conservative) Prime Minister Churchill, who was keen to avoid contentious legislation in wartime.  We are also introduced to Chuter Ede, the Labour junior minister who played a major role in drafting the bill.

We see again that Labour members of this cabinet were far from the flat-capped working men of caricature.  Chuter Ede may have been the member for South Shields, but he was actually from Dorking and was a Cambridge graduate. Butler too graduated from Cambridge, but was schooled at Marlborough.

The bare bones of the problem were that reform of the education system in England and Wales was urgently required.  Despite the economic problems of the 1930s, it was clear that the countries did not have the sort of universal secondary education system suited to one of the world’s leading nations.  The church schools (Catholic, Anglican and non-conformist) were against state control, but not against receiving state money.  There were no clear rules on the way local government schools were run and there was a feeling that fees needed to be abolished if there was to be truly universal access to education. Finally, there was the issue of a standardised leaving age, ideally this would be sixteen.

These ideas of reform had been around before Butler arrived at the Board of Education in 1941 in the form of something known as the ‘Green Book’.  In 1941 it is suggested that Churchill was opposed to these reforms – radical ideas could come after the war had been concluded. As the Allies began to take the upper hand in 1942 and 1943, he relented somewhat.

It took these two years to untangle the Gordian knot of the religious schools.  Agreement was eventually reached on the basis that there would be two types of secondary school.  These were ‘controlled status’ where ownership and finance came under the control of the local authority and ‘aided status’ where fifty per cent of the costs were covered by government funds.  The former were to non-denominational in terms of the teaching of religion, whereas the latter could remain ‘church’ schools.

A key to understanding the success of the 1944 Act is to look at what it did not do.  It did not attempt to bring the private school sector into the state system.  The famous old schools like Marlborough and the less famous grammar schools like Dorking that had propelled Butler and Ede to Cambridge and thence to parliament were unaffected.  This kept certain sections of the Conservative benches quiet and mollified the centre-left sections of the Labour Party.  This left only those on the extreme left (who would espouse universal education meaning very rich and very poor should be taught together and extreme right (who could see little point in ‘wasting’ government money on educating the working classes) as the only opponents of the Bill as it went through parliament.

Butler and Ede also benefitted from the trials and tribulations surrounding the Beveridge report and the potential costs of a social security system.  The education reforms were cheap and uncontroversial in comparison.  Butler also knew the power of the press and kept them onside by giving them what he gloriously noted as ‘honey, butter and other sticky substances’. It evidently worked.

There have been suggestions that Butler’s name should not be so closely associated with something that was so much a team effort.  Around the ministerial table, Chuter Ede had significant input and the actual legislation was drawn up by civil servants – which is of course their job. It was, however, the guile and experience of Butler - an old foreign office and India hand - that guided the bill through despite the initial misgivings of the Prime Minister and a volatile wartime situation.

The 1944 Act set out the basic template for schooling that remains to this day.  The leaving age of sixteen was implemented much later (in 1973), but is still the earliest point at which you can leave school in England and Wales.  State schools have remained officially non-denominational and although subsequent acts have tried to mimic some of the more desirable aspect of the independent sector, those schools remain resolutely independent.

Did the Act go far enough? Possibly not, but the constant tinkering with education policy that continues to this day shows that there is no simple answer here.  It is perhaps easier to reach Oxford or Cambridge from a state school than it was in 1944, but there seems to be little change in the progression of graduates from those institutions into government in Britain.

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[1] Kevin Jefferys, ‘R.A. Butler, the Board of Education, and the 1944 Education Act’, History (1987).

The State Management Scheme - the story of 'Government Pubs' in Britain

Imagine if the Home Office took over the running of pubs and breweries – surely it would be a disaster?

One of the strangest attempts at social engineering in modern British history began in 1916 and came to an end in 1973. This was the ‘State Management Scheme’, developed by the Home Office to respond to the problem of alcohol abuse in wartime. Whereas the United States would approach the ‘evil of drink’ with an outright ban in 1920 and the beginning of the prohibition era, a more inclusive approach was utilised in the United Kingdom.

The First World War was, by 1916, a conflict that required a vast, constant supply of armaments.  A conflict that was intended to be over quickly had become bogged down in the trenches of northern France and Belgium. The opposing armies were lobbing shells and firing bullets at a phenomenal rate, which led to the ‘shell crisis’ of 1915.  This meant that vast munitions factories had to be established to service this demand. 

One such site was Gretna, just north of the Scottish border, but not far from the English city of Carlisle. The scale of the enterprise was vast; by 1917 there would be some 17,000 workers on site. Remarkably, almost 12,000 of those workers were women.  It is not difficult to imagine the social upheaval that this caused. People (most of them young women) were released from a very controlled domestic environment into a maelstrom of wartime hedonism.  This came to a head in the bars, pubs and clubs of Carlisle as thirsty munitions workers flooded into the city in search of a good time.

Two years earlier, in 1914, the government had enacted the ‘Defence of the Realm Act’ which placed general restrictions on the sale of alcohol that were not relaxed until the 1980s.  These powers were not sufficient to deal with the events taking place in Carlisle, so another solution had to be found.  What was decided was that a scheme needed to be put in place that controlled – rather than banned – the sale of alcohol.  There was also a need to remove the potential for profiteering from the sale of alcohol, something definitely not to be encouraged.

What finally emerged was the ‘State Management Scheme’, a system so rigid and radical that if we were studying it in the Iron Curtain countries or modern North Korea we would deride it as ideologically unsound, unworkable and unfair.  What happened was this – the government ‘nationalised’ not only the public houses in the Carlisle area, but also the means of production (breweries) and supply chains.

Pub landlords became salaried civil servants who would not only fail to make more money by selling more beer, but could also lose their jobs if customers failed to keep to the rules.  During the war (and a little afterwards, things were loosened in 1919) the rules were very strict indeed – the buying of ‘rounds’ was forbidden, as was the practice of spirit ‘chasers’ with pints of beer.

The scheme was implemented in two other areas too, around the famous armaments factory in Enfield, north-west of London and munitions works in the Cromaty Firth. Surely there was a clamour for this terrible practice to end after the armistice? Well, the Enfield scheme was wound up in 1922 as was the other Scottish experiment, but in Carlisle it continued into the 1970s.

There are a few reasons for this, one being that publicans and brewers – although selling a hugely popular product – were not well-liked.  They tended to produce indifferent products purely to generate vast profits for scions of the brewing industry that grew immensely rich on the meagre wages of the poor.  The State Management breweries implemented high standards and produced a quality product at a fixed price.

Next came the pubs themselves; conscious that the environment in which alcohol was consumed had an effect on drinkers, the civil servants behind the scheme enlisted an architect to join them.  This man was Harry Redfern whose other work included laboratories at the University of Cambridge. His contribution to the scheme was the ‘New Model Inn’, a design inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement.  These places were revolutionary in that they incorporated concepts like food service into the British pub environment. These new establishments were pleasant places to enjoy a drink, rather than the rough and ready slophouse.

The idea of the New Model Inn spread across the country and ushered in a golden age for the public house. This is where the concept behind the State Management Scheme needs to be looked into a little more deeply.  There was an unusual understanding of social need here – particularly unusual for a government that was sending soldiers overseas to be slaughtered in their thousands –that drinking alcohol was not something that should be prevented.  It was recognised that the drinking environment and what was being drunk were equally important. These ideas would eventually lead to the smoke-free, reasonably family-friendly pubs of today.

The State Management Scheme saw off the Second World War and the Swinging Sixties, but did not escape the attention of the Heath government of 1971. That government would nationalise Rolls-Royce in 1971, but chose to sell off another symbol of Britain – the ‘government pubs’.

This rather splendid website http://thestatemanagementstory.org/ plans to gather together more information on the subject.

The Scottish Referendum 2014 - some instant reactions

In the run-up to the 2011 Scottish general election, former politician turned television presenter Michael Portillo began to shadow Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond on the campaign trail for a BBC documentary.  Portillo, a man who witnessed at first hand public political humiliation in an unexpected United Kingdom general election defeat in 1997, seems to begin the programme snapping at Salmond’s heels.  Here was a man whose entire being was founded on an impossibility; Salmond wanted independence for Scotland.  A faint pipe-dream before the 2008 financial crisis, the idea of Scotland joining a happy band of small, rich northern nations like Iceland and Ireland was truly risible by 2011.  Portillo was going to have fun skewering Salmond’s pomposity.

Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) was First Minister of a deeply divided Scottish Parliament.  The previous election in 2007 had left the SNP with the highest number of seats, but no overall majority.  There had been no majority control of this reconstituted parliament since it sat again in 1999.  Scottish politics being the tribal affair that they are, a coalition was not a possibility. The SNP decided to form a minority administration with Salmond as First Minister

The administration struggled through until 2011, watching the goings-on at Westminster in May 2010 when the Labour Party (in government in the UK since 1997) was swept out of office, but without a majority for the Conservatives.  This must have looked familiar to those north of the border, except that British politics are not actually as tribal as they sometimes seem. What followed was a surprising, but not totally unexpected coalition between the nominally right of centre Conservatives and the nominally centre of centre Liberal Democrats (neither of these definitions truly explain the machinations inside these parties) at Westminster.

Exactly a year later, the Scottish general election was held.  Given that the previous votes had failed to give a majority of seats, this was not expected in 2011.  Somewhere in the campaign, however, something changed; something that is noticeable in Portillo’s documentary.  Obviously there will have been careful editing, but part way through the programme, the presenter’s demeanour changes.  Portillo suddenly seems to realise that the public are on Salmond’s side.   The tone changes and the remainder of the programme is a more sombre appraisal. Salmond is suddenly treated more like a statesman and less like a rabble-rousing Celtic joke.

The result of the election was stunning.  The SNP didn’t simply win; they trounced the opposition, taking sixty-nine seats to the fifty-seven held by the other parties.  This can in part be explained by the falling away of support for the Liberal Democrats (a successor party to the Liberals, who were traditionally popular in the non-conformist Western Isles and Highlands).  Their traitorous behaviour in London with the Conservatives (never popular in Scotland and without a member for a Scottish constituency at Westminster) cost them all but five of the fifteen seats they held previously.

This was a stupendous result for the SNP and for Salmond personally it was a magnificent comeback.  Originally party leader as far back as 1999, he endured four years in the wilderness between 2000 and 2004 before returning to the role. Outside the ‘Holyrood bubble’, it was assumed that although the SNP had always stated independence as their sole objective, the result of this clear victory would be to consolidate their grip on the Scottish Parliament for generations to come.

Salmond, however, smelt blood. It was clear that the UK government in Westminster was at its weakest since the dying days of the Major administration in the mid-nineties.  It was perhaps in a similar self-mutilating state as in the dire days of 1974 when two elections were needed to separate Heath and Wilson. With the dust settling over the financial crisis and Westminster under the coalition government of Cameron and Clegg in no position to deny them, Salmond and the SNP set out a timetable for independence. In hindsight, it seems a ridiculously short timescale for such potentially momentous events.  A referendum would take place in September 2014 on a simple Yes/No question. If the result was ‘Yes’, then Scotland would leave the United Kingdom, with all the formalities completed within eighteen months. 

There were precedents, not least the ‘Velvet Divorce’ between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, although a veil seems to have been drawn over the lake of economic development in the latter – could that have been a portent for an independent Scotland.

Much can be made of Scotland’s history as an independent nation and that its Royal family was far more in cahoots with France than a country it saw itself as merely geographically rather than politically connected too. This was the time of the ‘Auld Alliance’, Pretenders of varying ages and the romance of Scottish statehood.  There was the defeat of the clans at Culloden and the terror and indignity of the Clearances – a Scottish genocide if you will.  As the countries were bonded together in Union, Britain’s empire boomed. Those in favour of Scottish independence will be keen to remind you of Scotland’s role in empire – how Glasgow was the ‘Second City of Empire’. Scottish ‘traders’ (actually drug dealers, but in a far more industrious way than characters in the works of Irvine Welsh) established the great trading companies that founded Hong Kong and  Scottish diaspora spread around the globe.

Salmond ws sometimes mocked as ‘Barry Braveheart’, after a risible Hollywood film starring an Australian-American in a bad wig as William Wallace, Scotland’s great homegrown hero.  This is possibly where the cracks in the ‘Yes’ campaign begin to show.  Salmond seemed to believe that there was something inherent in the Scottish psyche that craved, even demanded independence.  In a craven piece of opportunism (or a widening of democracy, you decide), the age limit for participation was reduced from 18 to 16, thus enfranchising a whole tranche of romantic sixth-formers.  They would definitely vote yes.

Something needed to be done with the upstarts in Northern Britain, so a brains trust was formed in Westminster.  The Labour and Conservative parties may not like each other particularly, but they get somewhat riled when their traditional duopoly is challenged.  This is not without irony, given that the Westminster government contains Liberal Democrat MPs as ‘coalition partners’.  Thus an organisation was created under the faintly uninspiring name ‘Better Together’. 

Better Together needed a strong, messianic figure at its head, ready to go into battle with Salmond and save the Union.  It got Alistair Darling, who is certainly Scottish but could never be described as being imbued with zeal and charisma. For the chattering commentators in London, this didn’t seem to matter particularly. Scotland was a ‘little local difficulty’; nothing too much to concern you over your over-priced craft beer in Hoxton.

As the referendum date got nearer, the spats became more tetchy affairs. The London establishment seemed to think that the only thing that was necessary to bring in a ‘No’ vote was to terrify the Scots (a nation known, in comedy at least, for being excessively parsimonious) about what would happen to their money after a ‘Yes’ vote. Pre-2008 there would have been a simple answer, Scotland would join the Republic of Ireland in the Euro-zone.  Post 2008, the Euro was a junk currency that would be a burden to a fledgling nation.  The pound, therefore, needed to be kept. London made it very clear that the Bank of England would not be supporting an independent Scotland using sterling as  currency.

This led to a certain amount of floundering from Salmond and his colleagues, who pointed out that many countries around the world use the US dollar as their currency, without backing from the Federal Reserve.  Unfortunately the image this conjured up was of Scotland as a post-apocalyptic narco-state running on endlessly recycled ten pound notes.  Perhaps Scotland could have its own new, independent currency? Newspapers began running competitions for a name – some wags suggesting that the ‘Tunnock’ should be minted, named after a popular confectionary company.

This, again with hindsight, is probably where the wheels fell off the yes campaign the most spectacularly. Even the disorganised and ineffectual ‘Better Together’ team were able to chip away at the simplest of concepts and realise that Salmond and the SNP hadn’t really thought much through at all. 

There is one key ingredient of the Scottish independence debate that has not been raised here. Oil - this inflammatory (in more ways than one) substance has been at the heart of the SNP’s success since the nineteen seventies.  Indeed, it was the discovery of North Sea oil in the sixties and its exploitation that marked the shift of the SNP from a conservative (not the lower case ‘c’) party seeking devolution and ultimately independence to a force in Scottish politics.

The narrative is that the Westminster government (and particularly the Thatcher administrations from 1979-90) stole ‘our’ oil and ‘wasted’ the money they earned from it.  Particular attention is given to the situation in Norway – a similarly large country with a small population that discovered oil at the same time.  Norway stewarded its oil windfall wisely and is all the better for it.  Cynics might also look to the behaviour of those in charge of oil-rich states in the Middle East as an alternative view on an unexpected fossil fuel windfall.

One of the fundamental tenets of the argument for independence was then ‘our oil’. A big problem is that no one can reliably tell exactly how much oil and gas is left beneath the North Sea. Proponents of the ‘peak oil’ theory explain that we have already passed the high water mark for oil, whereas flag-wavers for an independent Scotland seem to think there is an unlimited supply to soothe all Scotland’s ills.

So, with summer 2014 on the horizon, opinion polls were showing ‘No’ voters to be slightly ahead despite the lacklustre performance of Better Together.  An event loomed on the horizon that could potentially make or break the ‘Yes’ campaign.  Glasgow was to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games, that strange relic of empire (they were formerly the British Empire Games) that comes around every four years.  The last time the honour had fallen to Scotland was in 1986 – an event with a very mixed legacy set against the background of the Olympic boycotts of 1980 and 1984 and (more pertinently given those involved) the height of sanctions against apartheid South Africa.  The event also haemorrhaged money and had to be ‘saved’ by that great man of the people Robert Maxwell – but that is another story.

In the event, the games went well, giving a bounce to the ‘Yes’ camp. Suddenly, with just a few weeks to go, the mainstream media in London suddenly seemed to realise that there was something happening.  Rabid pro-Union sentiment appeared in the quarters that you would expect, spouting bile about the potential end of the world should ‘Yes’ succeed.

The week before the vote, Westminster suddenly realised that there was an outside chance that ‘Yes’ might prevail and decided that ‘something must be done’. David Cameron could not, up until this point, be described as an emotional politician, not even in the faux-sincerity Blair style.  However, he shot off up to Scotland, crumpled his face up and used (in a way that only an Old Etonian trying to convey that he was ‘street’) the word ‘effin’ in a speech to show how much he cared.

Ed Milliband was also dispatched on a whistle-stop tour that stopped literally when he ran into  a crowd of marauding ‘Yes’ supporters.  This treatment was mildly less humiliating than that doled out to UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. On an earlier visit to Scotland, he was trapped inside a pub for several hours while a mob bayed outside – probably a situation he did not find too distressing.  Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg may have put in an appearance, but if he did, there seems little need to record it.

Finally, the day of destiny came.  Opinion polls posted in the pro-Yes and pro-No media gave suspiciously high outcomes of +8-10% leads for both sides. Voters voted and there was an anxious wait for results.  Whilst many aspects of the campaign and potential outcome may have been troubling, one fantastic outcome was the turnout.  Participation on British elections had reached a nadir in recent years with the turnout for European and Police & Crime Commissioner elections (the latter in England and Wales only) dipping as low as 10-15% in places.  A great surprise, then, was an average turnout of over 80% of eligible voters.

And so, the actual result.  There was no electoral college or weighting of constituencies, it was a simple Yes vs No result administered along local authority lines. A vote in Kirkcaldy was therefore as powerful as one in Kirkwall of Kirkcudbright.  There had been much talk before the vote of the urban poor – particularly in Glasgow – rising as one to embrace independence. And indeed, Glasgow did vote ‘Yes’, albeit on a significantly reduced turnout of 75%. Dundee also voted ‘Yes’, by a tiny margin. 

But that was it, in pure statistical terms, the result was 45% for ‘Yes’ and 55% for ‘No’; a resounding victory for Better Together and a devastating defeat for Salmond personally and the SNP as a party. A day after the result, Salmond announced his intention to step down at the party conference in November 2014.  He has been knocked back before and come back, but was this one defeat too many?  Perhaps Michael Portillo is waiting in the wings with a camera crew to discover what he plans to do next.

What was the role of 'consensus' in post-war British politics?

A fundamental issue is that there is no true definition in historical terms of what the word refers to. Are we talking in terms of the electorate, of parties, of the machinery of government or indeed some complicated subsets of all three? The literature describes battle lines on a ‘post-war consensus’ drawn between two groups of historians who both agree that the other party is wrong, without being able explain what they are exactly wrong about.

One argument is what we can call the ‘Sir Humphrey’ theory after the superior and condescending civil servant portrayed in the 1980s BBC sitcoms ‘Yes, Minister’ and  ‘Yes, Prime Minister’.  Part of the conceit behind that programme was that government continues despite politicians rather than because of them.  It is civil servants that draft white papers and grind the actual wheels of governments, mentors to a perpetual turnover of members, Lords and ministers that pass through during their tenure.  Even politicians with the most radical ideas find their ardour blunted by the reality of day-to-day governing.  This theory would suggest that all modern government is, by its very nature, consensus led.

We can also consider something that we may call ‘pragmatic consensus’.  Although frequent changes in the governing party have happened during this period (with not infrequent landslide victories), frequent radical change did not happen.  Perhaps this is an inevitability of modern politics, where a desire to retain power strangles radicalism; leading to a true case of consensus for all the wrong reasons.

A starting point for the consensus debate can usefully be identified as the publication of ‘The Road to 1945’ in 1975 by Paul Addison.  His use of the word to describe the post-war period coincided with the election of Margaret Thatcher to lead the Conservatives, which has been perceived as the ‘end of consensus’. 

The traditional view is explained in several pieces by explanation of what was described as ‘Butskellism’.  This portmanteau term conflated the surnames of Rab Butler and Hugh Gaitskell – suggesting that the Conservative and Labour occupants of the top role at the Treasury were essentially interchangeable.  The term originated in a piece in The Economist but is commonly quoted in explanations of post-war fiscal malaise.

The consensus ends, we are led to believe, when Thatcher arrives and reshapes British politics in her own image. This means that her period in opposition (1975-79) and government (1979-90) marked the end of this cosy agreement between the parties on the basics of policy.  As ever, things are not quite as simple as they seem.  The engine driving Thatcherite economics is recalled as being the final ditching of Keynesian theories and the embrace of monetarism.  This would be true in terms of government, but it is also worth remembering that Labour – in government - did exactly this in 1976, admitting that Keynesian policies were simply driving up inflation without providing the expected increase in employment.

So here, just a year after Thatcher’s election as leader, we see an example of economic consensus from both parties. There are some key points to remember here; consensus can simply be ‘doing the right thing’, so of course parties will agree on certain important themes.  Another layer to unravelling this conundrum is to look at the system of party politics and government at this time.  Whilst some criticised her ‘presidential’ style – an epithet later used describe the Blair governments, perhaps with more validity – Thatcher was, in turn, a member of parliament, party leader and Prime Minister. 

The Conservative party is an umbrella organisation encompassing a wide range of, broadly, right-of-centre views.  When forming a government, a party leader/Prime Minister can only utilise the available members of the upper and lower houses.  These form a hugely disparate political clique – as can be seen from the in-fighting among the various Thatcher cabinets.  It is, therefore, not unlikely that there would be consensus between those on the right of the Labour party and those on the left of the Conservatives.

It is those who find themselves on the margins – either right or left – that can be most critical of consensus.  Since the late 1990s, a one-solution-fits-all party has been convincing some sections of the public that the situation that has held since 1945 of greater integration with Europe is the very thing that is holding the United Kingdom back.  They would argue that the country is literally shackled by consensus – an argument used by the ultimately unsuccessful campaigners for Scottish independence in 2014.

Ultimately, democratic politics is, in its very being, characterised by consensus.  The first-past-the-post system can deliver landslide victories for parties who do not achieve a majority in terms of the popular vote.  Governments that ignore this and tailor their policies simply to those they perceive to be their natural supporters can find themselves in trouble.  In other political systems consensus is simply a way of life – other voting systems throw up coalitions much more often, so people learn to cope. 

Perhaps politicians have too high an opinion of their importance in terms of the governance of a nation.  In recent years Belgium survived for over five years without a functioning legislature and managed not to collapse into anarchy.  The United Kingdom had its own (significantly shorter) period without a hand on the tiller after the inconclusive General Election of 2010 and pulled through admirably. 

The only real conclusion here is that consensus is certainly part of the political process.  In terms of historical debate, however, it can be highlighted by supporters and castigators in equal measure. That is, in itself, a consensus of sorts.

References

Paul Addison, ‘British historians and the debate over the "postwar consensus"’, in Wm. Roger Louis, More Adventures with Britannia (1998), pp. 255-64.
Derek Fraser, ‘The Postwar consensus : a debate not long enough?’, Parliamentary Affairs (2000).
Brian Harrison, ‘The rise, fall and rise of political consensus in Britain since 1940’, History (1999),
Dennis Kavanagh, "The Postwar Consensus," Twentieth Century British History (1992).
Rodney Lowe, ‘The second world war, consensus, and the foundation of the welfare state’, Twentieth Century British History (1990).
Ben Pimlott, Denis Kavanagh and Peter Morris, ‘Is the ‘post-war consensus’ a myth?’, Contemporary Record (1989).

Richard Toye, ‘From 'Consensus' to 'Common Ground' : The Rhetoric of the Postwar Settlement and its Collapse’, Journal of Contemporary History (2013)