ABSTRACT
The extent and nature of press coverage of the Tyndale affair meant that the Labour Government could not escape it. During the affair, Callaghan was Foreign Secretary, and upon becoming Prime Minister the affair hit the headlines again following the publication of the findings of the Auld Inquiry. In July 1976, the Sunday Telegraph’s headlines were ‘Save Our Children’; The Sunday Times’s ‘How to Control the Teachers’; the Evening Standard referred to the teaching staff as ‘The Classroom Despots’. When questioned in 1996, Callaghan said that ‘I was determined that the Tories were not going to line us up with Tyndale…and every idiotic teacher who was sympathetic to the Labour Party’ (taken from Riley 1998: 58). Moreover, he commented that:
I was concerned with what was being said to me in the constituency about literacy and numeracy, not exactly in those terms but people were talking to me about those things. Some parents were expressing disquiet as to whether their children were being taught or not, because of the child-centred approach…There was a feeling of dissatisfaction. The 1944 Settlement seemed to be getting frayed at the edges, particularly by the activity of the unions…The Tyndale school was rattling on, getting a lot of publicity and that wasn’t doing the teaching profession any good.…The Government could not escape its responsibility. I was also talking to the CBI about those battles and they were complaining about the quality of the school…I spoke with Bernard Donoughue as I was looking for themes which I could take up as Prime Minister…
(Riley 1998: 59, emphasis added)
The issue of ‘the child-centred approach’ caused the Labour Party leadership much embarrassment (Chitty 1994). Such embarrassment stemmed from the association of the party in the eyes of the public (whipped up by a predominantly Tory press) with putative progressive education, in particular the antipathy towards hierarchy and inequality. But, as I have argued, the issue of inequality was (unhelpfully) conjoined with the Rousseauesque underpinning of the progressive philosophy. The first three Black Papers were published in 1969 and 1970, and basically recommended formal teaching in primary schools and emphasised the high standards held to be co-terminous with grammar-school education. Chitty notes that it was only in the last two Black Papers, published in 1975 and 1977 (Cox and Boyson 1975, 1977), that support was given to the introduction of educational vouchers and increasing the scope for parental choice of schools. ‘By the mid-1970s, the politics of reaction had been replaced by the politics of reconstruction’ (Chitty 1994: 14). Chitty maintains that Rhodes Boyson’s triumphalism was not unfounded. In May 1976, at a meeting of the National Council for Education Standards, Boyson was quoted as saying that: ‘The forces of the Right in education are on the offensive. The blood is flowing from the other side now’ (Chitty 1994: 15). Chitty points to the remarkable extent of right-wing success in seeing the legislative realisation of its ideas. Part of the success is attributable to the changing patterns of decision-making since the mid-1970s.
