ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 is the first of the examples of Statement Archaeology in practice. The chapter takes Section 25(2) of the Education Act 1944 as its starting point, and asks ‘How did it become possible for the provision of religious teaching to be made compulsory under the 1944 Education Act?’ The chapter explores the origin of the starting point, tracing its routes of transmission back through a variety of government documents, and a sequence of influential columns—and connected correspondence—in The Times newspaper from 1940 onwards. The archaeological dig reveals that the adoption of compulsory religious education as a governmental policy came about through a discursive shift in the discourse of civil servants at the Board of Education in February 1941. This shift is explained in a preoccupation with quality of provision rather than universality of provision, against a complex backdrop in which universal provision was assumed, allowing the idea to be normalized with almost no controversy. A significant shift in Prime Minister Churchill’s position on post-war legislation created circumstances in which the idea of compulsory provision became law.
