The post you are reporting:
Courtesy of the Times.
As speechwriter to the prime minister, it was the comment I dreaded most. While perusing a draft of the latest speech I had written, some wise head or other would make the inevitable suggestion: “What this needs is a really powerful passage on British values — y’know, what makes this country great.” A flutter of nods and off I would be sent to arouse the nation’s patriotic sentiments in a way that would have had Lord Haw-Haw repenting and bedroom jihadists breaking out the Union Jack bunting.
How to distil the essence of Britain into a few lines? Desperate, I would resort to lists: the Beatles, Shakespeare, queueing, D-Day, Bobby Moore in ’66 . . . might these do to conjure British values? No! Far too white, too twee, too male-centric. Offence-proof words were required. Eventually we would end up with the same old beige values of tolerance, democracy and the rule of law. The official definition of British values is always a pointless exercise and yet this, apparently, is what’s needed once again to bring the nation together. At this week’s cabinet meeting Theresa May told ministers that as part of the government’s new Integrated Communities Strategy schools dominated by pupils from a single race or religion must teach “pluralistic British values”.
This can be filed under Whitehall baloney for several reasons, not least because there is already a requirement to promote British values in schools, introduced in 2014 following the Trojan horse allegations. It is risible, too, because the very notion of “teaching” British values via macaroni-and-glue tributes to Magna Carta will inspire nothing but boredom in the nation’s young. Yet what makes it gold-plated baloney is that while the government proposes the teaching of values to help pupils understand “different ways of life”, it has also expressed a desire to see schools further segregated along racial and religious lines. In a recent interview the education secretary, Damian Hinds, suggested that he was in favour of ditching the 50 per cent cap on religious admissions to new oversubscribed faith schools. In other words, he is in favour of more faith schools being able to select 100 per cent of their pupils on the basis of religion: more mono-religious, mono-cultural schools.
It is possible that the Catholic Hinds, who was educated at a Catholic school and whose office has received a donation from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, has the wishes of the Catholic church in mind. Despite the fact that the Catholic International Education Office defines a Catholic school as one that is “open to all”, the church here is dead against the 50 per cent religious admissions cap, saying that it breaches canon law not to prioritise Catholic children. In a 2014 Commons debate, Hinds suggested that if Catholic schools are open to all they “lose their distinctive character”.
What makes the Catholic lobby particularly powerful is that the government is relying on it to open more free schools. But if May’s administration also cares about the “one nation” agenda it bangs on about, it must keep the 50 per cent cap and put the Catholic church in its place, perhaps politely reminding it of Jesus’s words in Luke 18:16, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not”. Unless the Lord whispered the caveat “apart from little children of different faiths”, it is difficult to square this benevolence with the church’s stance. It matters deeply that we resist more segregation in schools. Parts of this country are woefully divided. Professor Ted Cantle, who carried out a major report into cohesion after the 2001 Oldham race riots, believes that things have got worse since then: “More segregation in residential areas, more segregation in schools, more segregation in workplaces . . . driving more prejudice, intolerance, mistrust.” Governments can do little about segregation in privately rented or owned homes or in workplaces. Where the state can and must work for more integration is in schools. In the state-funded sector, it is neither realistic nor desirable to get rid of faith schools. Catholic schools alone make up 10 per cent of the total and though atheists harrumphing about “fairy stories” may not like it faith schools consistently rank among the best in the country. It would be folly to attack existing success stories.