It’s a testament to the communications skills of Cameron’s Tories that they have managed to present yesterday’s policy on grammar schools as some kind of radical break with the past. To recap; Cameron promises not to interfere with those grammars that remain, but not to build any more. As political revelations go, this is nearly up there with Tony Benn promising not to privatise the NHS, or Sir Peter Tapsell vowing not to drag the Royal Family down into a cellar and execute them.
No Tory government was going to build more grammar schools. Thatcher did not build any more grammars. Major did not build any more grammars. In 1997 he did promise to build more grammars, because that’s the kind of thing you do when you need to galvanise your few remaining troops for a last-ditch defence. But Cameron was not going to reintroduce the 1944 Education Act any more than he would have reintroduced rationing.
It’s called electoral reality. A promise to siphon off the top one-third of pupils will appeal to those parents who are absolutely confident that their child will go to these fabulous schools. That might be ten percent - the ones who know both that their child is a genius, and that they’re not deluding themselves about it. The other ninety percent either know that their child will go to a bog-standard comprehensive, though one stripped of the brightest and most ambitious, or will be unsure whether their little darling will make the grade and go to this elite school, or be dumped with the skimmed rabble in the other one.
Most of the aspirational parents Cameron wants will be terrified to gamble like this - ‘is little Octavia going to be a rocket scientist or a crack dealer?’ will be the inevitable thought process. Until normal schools are disciplined, safe and civilised, there is no chance of widespread selection.
The only choice for Cameron was whether to make a big deal out of not building any more grammar schools, or to not build any more grammar schools and do it quietly. Being keen to engineer a series of mini-Clause Four moments, the man decided to do the former.
And for once, the old Right took the bait. Grammar schools are something so fundamental to the Hefferite vision of Britain that they bit without thinking. David Willetts’ statement of the bleeding obvious contained nothing that changed policy, just the appearance of what the party wanted. The only choice in British politics is between a New Labour government and a centrist Tory government. If either party swerves off into the ideological wilderness they’ll stay stuck there.
Interestingly, Cameron’s apparent U-turn has almost exactly the same logic as the real Clause Four moment. No one, except the dafter members of the old Left, really thought that an incoming Labour government would nationalise everything down to the corner shop, but Blair managed to connive a small revolution out of his statement of the obvious. As both he and Cameron know, the great trick of democratic politics is to say what people already believe, and make it sound new, interesting and bold. You thus appeal both to people’s aspirations and their vanity.
They know that the real control over politics does not come from politicians, but from the voters' perceptions of politics. Power belongs to those who influence these perceptions, rather than the politicians who obey.
Education policy has long been seen as a left-wing monopoly, partly because the teachers are unionised, and largely lefties themselves. I was once taught about the 1980s famines in Ethiopia, in a class that blamed environmental degradation, cash crops and Western policy in general, but carefully avoided mentioning the fact that the country was a Marxist dictatorship at the time.
But it is also because for a long time, much of the commentariat has managed to ensure that ‘education’ is seen as synonymous with ‘state-run, comprehensive education’, and edged the Right’s views on the matter into a grammar-obsessed corner. And the Right has long been happy to oblige. Most people believe that there’s no alternative to comprehensives, because outside the bastions of the intellectual Right, none are seriously discussed. Politicians cluster around what the masses believe, and the masses believe what a certain class of people tell them is acceptable.
Friedrich Hayek wrote a pamphlet on the subject in the late 1940s, arguing that it was the public intellectuals, the ‘second-hand dealers in ideas’, who were responsible for socialism, not politicians. It was these opinion-formers, the academics, writers, broadcasters, artists, teachers and activists, who control the flow of ideas down to the masses, and decide which are acceptable and which abhorrent. Socialism was originally a movement of the intellectuals, and it took decades to convince the working class to sign up. This is equally true today. Those who control the flow of ideas control the chief moulder of politics.
In a society where all original debate in conducted through the media, those who control how ideas are seen have an immense power. It was difficult to debate the merits of multiculturalism when the mere suggestion would cause TV interviewers to suck in a horrified intake of breath. It was hard to talk about the problems of Islamist politics when the BBC prefaced any mention of the MAB - the UK offshoot of the often-banned Muslim Brotherhood, and first cousin to Hamas - as “the moderate” Muslim Association of Britain.
Once the chief intellectuals change their minds, the terms of debate change for the rest of us. It is much easier to debate controversial subjects like Islam and multiculturalism once the intellectual class decides that it needs to be discussed. It took the intervention of the rather admirable Trevor Phillips to end the farcical official silence on these matters, and allow Question Time audiences to feel that they could applaud Melanie Phillips without actually being a fascist.
Exactly the same process applies to education, and every other political and social issue. Only when those who control the terms of debate have stopped clinging to the failed model of nationalised schools, unionised teachers and illiterate pupils, will we get the chance to create a decent system of schooling. It took 7/7 to start a sensible debate on multiculturalism. The Right now needs to shame the public intellectuals into acknowledging that state education is an embarrassing, ineffective and hopelessly corrupt mess, for there to be any real debate about how we can move forward. But for the Tories, breaking with its obsession with grammers is an essential start.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
New Theatre
Being much too young to remember the Fifties from the first time around, I only discovered Kenneth Tynan, the great theatre critic, when a new collection of his work was published this year. It deserves to be rediscovered, for he wrote shrewdly and beautifully, and because his peak spanned a fascinating time in theatre and society.
Here was a young, intellectual Marxist writing on theatre in the Fifties, a cultured, inquisitive man who reviewed a stage dominated by stale, safe conventionality. He was in the right place on the brink of a revolution, and, through championing this new kind of theatre, one he became bound up with. Like the young playwrights that the era would soon be remembered for, the critic revolted against the twee, archaic ‘Loamshire’ farces - Wodehouse without the wit, character or charm - and pushed the new, young writers whose attitudes and ideas reflected their own, post-war generation.
Tynan, not unreasonably, thought that it wasn’t good enough to produce lame facsimiles of plays from decades ago, that reflect the prejudices and ideals of previous, half-dead generations, rather than their own. He wrote:
“If you seek a tombstone, look about you; survey the peculiar nullity of our drama’s present genre, the Loamshire play. Its setting is a country house in what used to be called Loamshire, but is now, as a heroic tribute to realism, sometimes called Berkshire. Except when someone must sneeze, or be murdered, the sun invariably shines. The inhabitants belong to a social class derived partly from romantic novels and partly from the playwright’s vision of the leisured life he will lead after the play is a success - this being the only effort of imagination he is called on to make. Joys and sorrows are giggles and whimpers: the crash of denunciation dwindles into ‘Oh, stuff, Mummy!’ and ‘Oh, really, Daddy!’ And so grim is the continuity of these things that the foregoing paragraph might have been written at any time during the last thirty years.”
Naturally, these didn’t make up all of what was staged in Fifties London, just what was most depressing and objectionable, and most deserving of a kicking. It must have been deeply irritating to have to go into a new play, know exactly what you are going to see, and know you’re going to hate it. It’s even worse when you know that the audience will be made up of thoughtless people who know nothing about theatre, but know what they like. And so long as it conforms to their template of what ‘a play should be’, they’ll be happy. They’ll keep going back, to see the next copy of this template play, and so long as they do, lazy artistic directors have little reason to change.
We are living through recognisably similar times, particularly for connoisseurs of political theatre. Loamshire is dead, but its spirit of conformity lives on. And sadly, it is Tynan’s generation who are responsible. Starting with the great critic himself, who accepted the chiefdom of the National from Lawrence Olivier - ‘anything to get you off the Observer’ - the angry young men of the Fifties grew older, more established, more influential and more widespread. It is Tynan’s generation, and the ones that dutifully followed, who now run the theatre, and it is their beliefs that any new writing must reflect. Last year, Nicolas Hytner expressed a wish to see a “really good, mischievous right-wing play” at the National. After so long without any, it would seem an utter freak.
Today, any play with a political edge is as predictable, tedious and infuriating as Fifties Loamshire. Substitute little more than ‘an international courtroom’ for ‘a drawing room’, ‘Iraq’ for ‘Berkshire’, and invert the characteristics so that no one smiles and everything is a denunciation, and Tynan’s caustic outline describes perfectly our contemporary theatre.
Go to you any play that touches on the concerns of the ‘68ers, and you can be confident that it will have the subtlety of a hand grenade, the even-handedness of Captain Hook, and all the tedious predictability of a floppy, foot-shaped Christmas present from great aunt Betty. It will denounce capitalism, celebrate the peasant, beatify the Third World, rage against the West, insult Americans, condemn war - except those conducted against the West - and in short, conform to all the prejudices of its audience; who are mostly middle-aged fools who like to think they’ll never grow up. And it has been thus for, ooh, about thirty years.
Theatre like this is not remotely daring. Those playwrights who like to think of themselves as radicals; brave young underdogs fighting a wicked Establishment, are nothing of the sort. Caryl Churchill is a child of the Thirties, and still spouts the half-baked socialism of Parsnip and Pimpernel. Most of the other major playwrights are younger, and spout the half-baked socialism of 1968. They appeal to generations who think nothing of left-wing radicalism, having grown up with and often dabbled in it themselves. Watching a ‘radical’ play is an exercise in nostalgia for our Establishment, not a challenge.
For these generations are now the Establishment, a fact that is both obvious and ignored. Political theatre is no longer speaking truth to power, but tickling the underbelly of the ruling class. They challenge their audience just enough to make them feel good, to feel invigorated and a little rebellious, but not enough to ever make them change their minds. In their own way, they are as unambitious as a Loamshire playwright, trotting out stale clichés and recycling bits of their last play, or their circle’s repertoire, and claiming it as new, dangerous and biting. It is nothing of the sort.
It is not original to stamp out play after play declaring Tony Blair to be a war criminal, a cretin, or a lapdog of the White House. It was worth doing once or twice, for the sake of provocation and debate. But after four years of repetitive, tedious, mind-numbing denunciation, which finds a ready audience in those who dislike having their prejudices challenged, it starts to become obvious that theatre, and culture more broadly, needs to be shaken out of its smug complacency. Just as the comatose, insufferably bad theatre of the Fifties needed a rocket to be placed strategically, and lit.
The stage has long been the place for the stirrings of change. A movement that first begins to surge in the theatre is likely to soon dominate the mainstream. A century after his death, most people consider Oscar Wilde a writer who slots into our image of the Edwardians; more a man of the swinging ‘20s than a stuffy old Victorian. In our minds, he walks far more easily amongst Waugh, Coward and Woolf than with Kipling or Stevenson. But Wilde was a man who had written most of his plays by 1895, and was dead by 1900.
One could argue the Sixties started in 1954, with Osborne’s Look Back In Anger. Yet on the night of its first performance, Churchill was still Prime Minister, theatre was still censored, Suez was yet to kill the Empire and John Lennon was fourteen. When the theatre first started rebelling, it took a full decade for it to become widespread.
The converse of this is also true. When the theatre starts to seem tired and lazy, and in need of a good kicking, the first whiffs of a new mood are on their way. We are now at this point. The cultural cycle will doubtless take a decade or two to swing into a new mode, and no one quite knows what it is coming. But as it stands, the arts establishment is finished, with nothing new to say and no fresh ways of saying it. It is dead on its feet, and just needs a good push for everyone to notice.
Its replacement will not be, as some fogies hope, a retreading of something that’s already been. When the next great cultural movement comes, it will be an avant-garde one, not just a return to the values and manners of the past. Theatre can still be the great, experimental venue for new ideas and styles, even though it is now slumbering. Not all of the new generation is content to adopt the postures of fifty years ago, and some still have the talent and the drive to create something astonishing.
It needs a handful of brilliant people who keep Tynan’s instincts alive, rather than just his politics, to do something new and interesting. It’ll be fascinating to see what they do, but whatever it is, it can’t come too soon.
Here was a young, intellectual Marxist writing on theatre in the Fifties, a cultured, inquisitive man who reviewed a stage dominated by stale, safe conventionality. He was in the right place on the brink of a revolution, and, through championing this new kind of theatre, one he became bound up with. Like the young playwrights that the era would soon be remembered for, the critic revolted against the twee, archaic ‘Loamshire’ farces - Wodehouse without the wit, character or charm - and pushed the new, young writers whose attitudes and ideas reflected their own, post-war generation.
Tynan, not unreasonably, thought that it wasn’t good enough to produce lame facsimiles of plays from decades ago, that reflect the prejudices and ideals of previous, half-dead generations, rather than their own. He wrote:
“If you seek a tombstone, look about you; survey the peculiar nullity of our drama’s present genre, the Loamshire play. Its setting is a country house in what used to be called Loamshire, but is now, as a heroic tribute to realism, sometimes called Berkshire. Except when someone must sneeze, or be murdered, the sun invariably shines. The inhabitants belong to a social class derived partly from romantic novels and partly from the playwright’s vision of the leisured life he will lead after the play is a success - this being the only effort of imagination he is called on to make. Joys and sorrows are giggles and whimpers: the crash of denunciation dwindles into ‘Oh, stuff, Mummy!’ and ‘Oh, really, Daddy!’ And so grim is the continuity of these things that the foregoing paragraph might have been written at any time during the last thirty years.”
Naturally, these didn’t make up all of what was staged in Fifties London, just what was most depressing and objectionable, and most deserving of a kicking. It must have been deeply irritating to have to go into a new play, know exactly what you are going to see, and know you’re going to hate it. It’s even worse when you know that the audience will be made up of thoughtless people who know nothing about theatre, but know what they like. And so long as it conforms to their template of what ‘a play should be’, they’ll be happy. They’ll keep going back, to see the next copy of this template play, and so long as they do, lazy artistic directors have little reason to change.
We are living through recognisably similar times, particularly for connoisseurs of political theatre. Loamshire is dead, but its spirit of conformity lives on. And sadly, it is Tynan’s generation who are responsible. Starting with the great critic himself, who accepted the chiefdom of the National from Lawrence Olivier - ‘anything to get you off the Observer’ - the angry young men of the Fifties grew older, more established, more influential and more widespread. It is Tynan’s generation, and the ones that dutifully followed, who now run the theatre, and it is their beliefs that any new writing must reflect. Last year, Nicolas Hytner expressed a wish to see a “really good, mischievous right-wing play” at the National. After so long without any, it would seem an utter freak.
Today, any play with a political edge is as predictable, tedious and infuriating as Fifties Loamshire. Substitute little more than ‘an international courtroom’ for ‘a drawing room’, ‘Iraq’ for ‘Berkshire’, and invert the characteristics so that no one smiles and everything is a denunciation, and Tynan’s caustic outline describes perfectly our contemporary theatre.
Go to you any play that touches on the concerns of the ‘68ers, and you can be confident that it will have the subtlety of a hand grenade, the even-handedness of Captain Hook, and all the tedious predictability of a floppy, foot-shaped Christmas present from great aunt Betty. It will denounce capitalism, celebrate the peasant, beatify the Third World, rage against the West, insult Americans, condemn war - except those conducted against the West - and in short, conform to all the prejudices of its audience; who are mostly middle-aged fools who like to think they’ll never grow up. And it has been thus for, ooh, about thirty years.
Theatre like this is not remotely daring. Those playwrights who like to think of themselves as radicals; brave young underdogs fighting a wicked Establishment, are nothing of the sort. Caryl Churchill is a child of the Thirties, and still spouts the half-baked socialism of Parsnip and Pimpernel. Most of the other major playwrights are younger, and spout the half-baked socialism of 1968. They appeal to generations who think nothing of left-wing radicalism, having grown up with and often dabbled in it themselves. Watching a ‘radical’ play is an exercise in nostalgia for our Establishment, not a challenge.
For these generations are now the Establishment, a fact that is both obvious and ignored. Political theatre is no longer speaking truth to power, but tickling the underbelly of the ruling class. They challenge their audience just enough to make them feel good, to feel invigorated and a little rebellious, but not enough to ever make them change their minds. In their own way, they are as unambitious as a Loamshire playwright, trotting out stale clichés and recycling bits of their last play, or their circle’s repertoire, and claiming it as new, dangerous and biting. It is nothing of the sort.
It is not original to stamp out play after play declaring Tony Blair to be a war criminal, a cretin, or a lapdog of the White House. It was worth doing once or twice, for the sake of provocation and debate. But after four years of repetitive, tedious, mind-numbing denunciation, which finds a ready audience in those who dislike having their prejudices challenged, it starts to become obvious that theatre, and culture more broadly, needs to be shaken out of its smug complacency. Just as the comatose, insufferably bad theatre of the Fifties needed a rocket to be placed strategically, and lit.
The stage has long been the place for the stirrings of change. A movement that first begins to surge in the theatre is likely to soon dominate the mainstream. A century after his death, most people consider Oscar Wilde a writer who slots into our image of the Edwardians; more a man of the swinging ‘20s than a stuffy old Victorian. In our minds, he walks far more easily amongst Waugh, Coward and Woolf than with Kipling or Stevenson. But Wilde was a man who had written most of his plays by 1895, and was dead by 1900.
One could argue the Sixties started in 1954, with Osborne’s Look Back In Anger. Yet on the night of its first performance, Churchill was still Prime Minister, theatre was still censored, Suez was yet to kill the Empire and John Lennon was fourteen. When the theatre first started rebelling, it took a full decade for it to become widespread.
The converse of this is also true. When the theatre starts to seem tired and lazy, and in need of a good kicking, the first whiffs of a new mood are on their way. We are now at this point. The cultural cycle will doubtless take a decade or two to swing into a new mode, and no one quite knows what it is coming. But as it stands, the arts establishment is finished, with nothing new to say and no fresh ways of saying it. It is dead on its feet, and just needs a good push for everyone to notice.
Its replacement will not be, as some fogies hope, a retreading of something that’s already been. When the next great cultural movement comes, it will be an avant-garde one, not just a return to the values and manners of the past. Theatre can still be the great, experimental venue for new ideas and styles, even though it is now slumbering. Not all of the new generation is content to adopt the postures of fifty years ago, and some still have the talent and the drive to create something astonishing.
It needs a handful of brilliant people who keep Tynan’s instincts alive, rather than just his politics, to do something new and interesting. It’ll be fascinating to see what they do, but whatever it is, it can’t come too soon.
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