Academies Bill [HL]

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord James of Blackheath]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to his new task and wish him well with this very welcome Bill. I look forward to it unfolding its various stages.

I come to this debate today out of what the Americans would call “left field”—not a political left field, this side of the House will be pleased to hear. Rather, it is a definition of the direction of the game being changed for a moment by an unexpected move. I hope that I might provide that. I love the idea of these academies. I only wish that I could have gone to one, but that would have been a long time ago and, in any event, I know that I would not have got in; I would have been classified as a special needs child and I would not have got into the system at all. My special need was that I was classified as mentally retarded. I have no argument with that assessment at all. I have made no secret of it since I came to your Lordships’ House. It causes me no grief now and I came to terms with it many years ago. What concerns me are the many children in this country today in a similar category who will also never get to an academy and how they can be motivated to set their eyes on a horizon worth aiming for, for the enrichment of their lives, which is otherwise a difficult issue in the present circumstances. This should engage the political parties of all persuasions in this House and should not be an exclusive issue for one.

We have a problem in this country that is beginning to look to me like a replication of the circumstances that gave rise to the difficulties experienced by my generation during and after the Second World War, when I began my educational progress. I am 73 years old. My first vivid memory is of five minutes past 10 on the morning of 20 May 1940. I was just short of my third birthday at the time and my mother had just cleared away the breakfast—bear with me, this is relevant. She cleared away the breakfast and put the radio on to what should have been “Housewives’ Choice”, or something of that sort. Instead, it was Alvar Liddell in his darkest, most sepulchral tones, announcing that France had capitulated and that we were now on our own. Immediately, the BBC announced that it would suspend services for the rest of the day until the Prime Minister could speak, but that it would repeat the message of the capitulation every five minutes and, meanwhile, between each message, it would play what it said was Purcell’s trumpet voluntary. It was not, but the BBC thought that it was.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

Mentally retarded?

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I did not know it at the time, my Lords, but found out in rather changed circumstances many years later. The BBC ended up playing this damned tune every five minutes the whole day, but my mother would not switch off the wireless because she wanted to hear when the Prime Minister came on. So we listened to it. That has been very much in my mind in the past month, because of the celebrations of the Dunkirk deliverance. However, we knew nothing of that at the time; all we knew was that France had fallen. We did not know that operation Dunkirk was going on at that time or that 380,000 soldiers were coming back to help the defence. My mother was convinced that the Germans would be there for tea, and she did not have any apple strudel. I suspect that they would have wanted something other than that, but that was her problem at the time. We had this terrible phase of two weeks or so of misery before we had an army back; had we but known it, in another four months we would have the victory of the Battle of Britain to announce.

So we got through the war, more or less. We had three times the ritual of the little orange envelope being delivered, starting off with the words, “The War Office regrets to advise”—but that happened in every family. The war ended, really on VJ Day not VE Day. On that day we learnt for the first time the terrible power of the atomic bomb. From that moment on we knew, as a generation, that we were doomed. There was no point in working—why bother with school? We had no hope whatever, which was how we were brought up for many years to come. We also had the threat of the great red horde flooding across Europe. Berlin was going to fall—the Berlin air lift was a waste of time and was never going to succeed. When it did, we had to wait to see whether we could survive the Korean War and the yellow horde coming from the other direction, so we had no hope anywhere. Who was bothering to sit their exams with any serious intent, or to pass anything? We did not, so I got sent to a school for what would today be called special needs. We really were special needs, but we were not quite as stupid as we might have been thought: of the 22 boys in the class that I was sent to, two played for England at chess within 10 years of the class being formed.

In the fullness of time, one went on from there and—hoping for the best—I got an Oxford entrance place. I could not go, because I had to put up a guarantee of £1,500 to get there—to pass “Go”—and I had not got £1,500. But I went to a better university: Ford Motor Company. My 10 years at Ford were better than what any university in the world could have done for me. Ford even paid me to be there. That brings up a big demotivating point that politicians need to think of today: you have to let the young people who succeed receive some of the benefits of their success. There came a day when I got a huge promotion and my salary went up from £8,000 to £10,000. When I went home and worked it out that evening, I realised that thanks to Mr Wilson and his colleagues I was going to receive £160 a year out of my extra £2,000. It was not enough to start a mortgage for a house or anything, but I calculated that at least it would pay for three tickets a month to see Maria Callas, Schwarzkopf and all the rest of them at Covent Garden for £5.25—five guineas, as they called it in those days. The money went to a good purpose, but it did not advance my way of life.

Around me, all sorts of things were happening. The Teddy boys came on the scene. They gave way to the beatniks and the beatniks gave way to the hippies. Why? These were the remnants of my generation, who had no motivation and no thrust for what to do with their lives, all because the education system had failed to do anything with them when it could have done. Now I see a similar pattern emerging. At that time, we were frightened out of our wits by the atomic and nuclear threat and the prospect of communist overrun. We have exactly the same factors today, only all children today believe that there is no point in working on because global warming will destroy everything in their lives—they are frightened out of their wits about it. Also, they believe that the world economy has been destroyed and has no prospect of recovery, so there is no point in them working to take a role in it. We have to get the political sights up. With all due respect, the right reverend Prelates at the end of these Benches have a role to play as well, in reminding children that God has given us everything with which to support ourselves and have a good life, provided that we use it and take God’s strength with us to do it. It is time that the churches all got together behind that with a much bigger voice.

I ask that we do something very positive and think in terms of how we motivate and take with us the people who will not go to the academies and who will have special needs arising not out of being stupid but out of the complete lack of any inspiration or motivation on which they can draw, because of their depression due to the circumstances around them.

As a postscript, I shall pick up on the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, to me about Purcell and the trumpet voluntary. When I was picking the music for my wedding, I chose that my wife should enter the church to the sound of the same piece of music and was informed by the organist at St Paul’s, where we were getting married, that it was not by Purcell, but was Jeremiah Clarke’s march for the Prince of Denmark. Then my wife asked me why I had chosen it. I said, “I wanted to get rid from my mind the association I have between it and the fall of France”. She said, “You think marrying me is comparable to a disaster like the fall of France?”. I said, “Good gracious, no—I just want a happy event to replace the terrible association I have with it”. She said, “I knew about this—I guessed that was the reason—and I’ve got one for you too. When France fell, Hitler had all the cricket fields in every corner of France dug up to make cabbage patches and he banned cricket in all its forms. That is what we should take into our marriage—no cricket matches on television, no test matches, and you are never to wear the tie of that dreadful, miserable cricket club”, by which she meant the MCC. So she naturally got the last word.

This is a splendid Bill. It will do well for the clever ones who get there, but please can we not forget the non-clever ones who have their lives to lead and who will make a big contribution to the economy of this country in time to come if we look after them properly?