Gladstonian Ghosts

by Cecil Chesterton

TOWARDS ANARCHISM.

There is an entertaining story told (I know not with exactly how much accuracy) of a well-known Liberal trade unionist, who has recently become a Member of Parliament. He is a typical labour leader of the last generation, a Liberal in politics, a Nonconformist in religion, a deacon (I understand) of his native chapel, a veritable pillar of proletarian respectability, and an unflinching opponent of Socialism in every shape and form. Once it was his duty to attend an international congress of the representatives of his trade, where he found, I should suppose, the revolutionary trade unionism of the Continent little to his taste. However, that may have been, a resolution was proposed at the congress in question demanding a statutary eight hours day. This reputable and independent Briton rose to oppose it, and in so doing made a characteristic Liberal speech, recommending the workmen to rely on themselves, not to appeal to governments, to win what they desired by their own efforts, and so on. Somewhat to his own surprise, the speech on being translated was greeted with no inconsiderable applause—applause which at the conclusion of his fine peroration became thunderous, and was mingled with enthusiastic shouts of “Vive J—— et l’Anarchie!” He had unfortunately succeeded in conveying the impression that by such phrases as “rely upon your own efforts” he meant to indicate the throwing of bombs!

This story gains considerably in point by the events of the last two years. For, during that period, the kinship (always innate) between Liberalism and Anarchism has been made apparent to the whole world in a most startling manner; and we have seen the Nonconformist section of the Liberal party, a section which above all others has always claimed an almost hypochondriac tenderness of conscience, trying to affect the repeal of a measure to which it takes exception, by means of a campaign which involves nothing less than a cynical repudiation of the duties of citizenship and an anarchic war against human society.

Anyone who possesses a temperament sardonic enough to enable him to take pleasure in tracing the moral débacle of what was once a great party can hardly amuse himself better than by following the history of the campaign against the Education Acts both before and after they became law. No one burdened with much moral or social enthusiasm will be able to do so with sufficient calm, for I venture to assert that a more disgraceful debauch of cant, hypocrisy, flagrant misrepresentation amounting sometimes to flat lying, sectarian venom, the prostitution of religious excitement to base ends, all exploited with an utterly shameless disregard of the public interest, cannot be found in the records of English politics for the last century or more.

That is a strong statement; to support it let me recall the facts of the case. First I would ask a fair-minded man to glance through some of the innumerable letters and articles which have flooded the Nonconformist and Radical press from the first introduction of the Education Bill down to the present time, and I would ask such a man to say what, taking his impressions from this source alone, he would have supposed the purport of that Bill to be. I think I may say without the slightest exaggeration that he would imagine that its effect must be (1) to hand over all elementary schools to the Church of England to be disposed of at her pleasure, (2) to impose on all teachers in such schools a new and stringent religious test, whose effect would be to prevent any but Anglican (and perhaps Roman Catholic) teachers from obtaining employment. I do not think there is any exaggeration in the above plain summary. On every side one still hears phrases like “handing over the schools of the nation to the Church,” “imposing a religious test on teachers,” “giving the People’s property to the Priest,” “establishing clericalism in the public schools,” etc., which can have no other rational meaning than that stated above. Now it is not a matter of argument but one of simple fact that the Education Act did nothing of the kind,—that nothing of the kind has ever been proposed in the whole course of the controversy. What the Act did do was (1) to give effect in denominational schools (already mainly supported out of public funds) to an enormously increased measure of public control, where before clerical control had been unbridled (2) to mitigate largely the effect of such religious “tests” as can in any sense be said to have existed in such schools. No new “test” of any sort or kind was imposed, and the Provided or Board Schools remain of course entirely unaffected except as to their transference from one publicly elected and unsectarian body to another and far more efficient one.

Consider for one moment the state of affairs which prevailed before the passing of the Act. There were then two kinds of public elementary school recognised by the State—the Board School and the Voluntary School. Schools of the former type were under the control of School Boards, bodies of irregular distribution and greatly varying importance. It must always be remembered that throughout more than half of England there were no School Boards at all. In the big towns you had doubtless often enough large and efficient Boards administering elementary education over the areas of great cities like London, Glasgow and Birmingham. In the country districts when they existed at all, the Boards were often elected to govern ridiculously small areas (sometimes with only one school in a whole district) and were most commonly inefficient and reactionary.

Such was the situation of the Board Schools: that of the Voluntary Schools was still more impossible. These schools, founded originally on denominational lines, were controlled despotically by a private board of clerical or clerically-minded managers. No effective public control was insisted upon. Even where a voluntary school was situated within a school board area, the School Board had no shadow of authority over it. And, as I have already mentioned, rather less than half of England possessed School Boards at all. The only pretence of public supervision then existing in the case of voluntary schools was to be found in the infrequent visits of notoriously complacent inspectors from Whitehall. Indeed the inspectors had to be complacent, for few voluntary schools had the means to make themselves educationally efficient even though they might wish to do so. Though more than two thirds of the money spent on their upkeep came out of the public exchequer in the form of government grants, the remaining third had to be raised by private subscription, that is to say had to be begged vigorously from the most incongruous people, from Churchmen anxious to preserve definite theological teaching and from rich ratepayers and even Railway Companies anxious to avoid the incidence of a School Board rate. As a natural consequence the schools which, be it remembered, were reckoned as part of the national machinery for education, were counted in the statistics of school accommodation, and were indeed the only schools available for a considerable part of the child population, were in a state of chronic and hopeless beggary, and dragged on a miserable existence,—starved, irresponsible, notoriously inefficient, yet practically safe from public intervention.

Meanwhile technical education, unnaturally divorced from elementary, was confided to the care of the County and Borough Councils. Secondary education was nobody’s business. It would have been entirely neglected had not some progressive School Boards stretched the term “elementary” to cover as much as they could until sharply pulled up by the Cockerton judgment, while some of the more progressive Councils stretched the term “technical” in much the same way, and would probably, but for the intervention of the Act, have met with the same fate.

Now what did the Education Acts do? The first and by far the most important change which they made was to transfer all education to the County and Borough Councils.[7] The effect of this was to provide that in future there should be everywhere throughout England one popularly elected local authority responsible for every kind and grade of education within its administrative area, and that this body should be that responsible for local government as a whole. Thus they made possible for the first time the co-ordination of all forms of education and the co-ordination of education with other municipal and local services.

This change had of course the effect of sweeping away the old system of electing educational authorities ad hoc. This seems to have struck many people as a flagrant piece of injustice, an impudent repudiation of democracy, and a shameless invasion of popular rights. It is difficult to understand why. A County or Borough Council is fully as democratic a body as a School Board, if democratic be taken to mean elected by popular suffrages. And if it is seriously contended that a body ought to be specially elected to deal with education alone, because the issues at a general municipal election may be confused, why not carry the principle further and have ad hoc bodies for each branch of local activity? Indeed why should the principle be applied only to local affairs? Why not elect a separate Parliament to deal with foreign affairs, another to deal with Colonial matters, another to deal with social reform and so on? The fact is that the much vaunted ad hoc principle never had any real existence. It is not contained, as Nonconformists and Radicals seem to imagine either in the Bible or in Magna Charta; it is no part of the Natural Rights of Man or the Social Contract or even of the British Constitution. It is nothing but the last relic of a thoroughly discredited system of local government. The framers of the Education Act of 1870 themselves knew of no such principle. They created ad hoc bodies to deal with education, simply because government was then so undeveloped in this country that there was no other body to which it could be entrusted. County Councils did not then exist; the Local Government Act of 1889, which like the Education Act of 1902 we owe to a Tory government, had not yet been passed. Over the greater part of England there was no democratic local government at all. Therefore it was necessary to create a stop-gap authority to deal with education. Similarly there were in the earlier part of the century innumerable other ad hoc bodies, entrusted with the duties of lighting the streets, making public improvements, etc., but they have all been swept away and their powers absorbed by county, borough, town, district or parish council. In course of time it was inevitable that the obsolete School Boards should follow them into the limbo of rejected experiments. It now only remains for Parliament to complete its work by abolishing our hopeless and discredited Boards of Guardians.