British Labour and Higher Education, 1945 to 2000: Ideologies, Policies and Practice 9781472552785, 9780826440945

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Preface

This book appears at a very critical time in the history of the Labour Party. During three sustained periods of office – first in the 1940s, then intermittently between 1964 and 1979, and most recently from 1997 to 2010 – the Labour Party in power controlled the British state, and with it the direction of public policy. Each of those periods in office left a significant imprint on the society that Labour had governed, but rather less of an imprint (if an imprint has to be transformative) on the economic structure that underpinned both society and state. The society that Clement Attlee’s government inherited was socially divided, patriarchally structured and scarred by low living standards. It suffered from poor educational opportunities, inadequate health care and extensive poverty. The society that Gordon Brown’s New Labour Government left behind was considerably more prosperous and in possession of an extensive welfare network; but in it too, extensive pockets of poverty remained and social divisions were as entrenched as ever. For all the years of Labour in power, social mobility in the contemporary UK remains restricted, job security remains low, and a privileged class continues to dominate the command positions of both the economy and its surrounding social order. As Labour begins, under new leadership, to find some sort of ‘fourth way’ to replace the ultimately unsustainable third one, Dick Taylor and Tom Steele bring to the emerging Labour conversation a timely reminder of a dimension of public policy which a future Labour government would do well to keep clearly in its sights. Taylor and Steele remind us of how important education is to parties of the Left. Just as Thomas Jefferson, long ago, insisted on the creation within the new United States of an educated electorate as a pre-requisite for a functioning democracy, so Taylor and Steele insist that any radical program worth the name needs to be underpinned by a labour movement adequately educated in the workings of the economy and society it would transform. To sustain that claim, and to give it a modern purchase, Taylor and Steele take us back to the beginnings of the Labour Party, and to the key role that adult education played in the development of the Party’s early leadership. For in a world in which access to even secondary education was limited and class-skewed, it fell to the fledgling Labour Party to advocate and create new avenues to knowledge for the many who were excluded

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from a higher education system then monopolized by the children of the privileged. Indeed, it is a measure of the cumulative impact of successive generations of educational reformers based mainly within the Labour Party that higher education is now more open than it was a century ago. But it is also a measure of how modest Labour’s aims and policies have been over the years that Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer still felt obliged to criticize Oxford and Cambridge for elitism in their selection procedures and in their student demographic. This book is a study both of what Labour in power has done and of what it has not. Taylor and Steele remind us of past successes, including the creation of the University of Keele, the national system of polytechnics, and the Open University. They remind us too of more recent failures (overridingly, the recent subordination of higher education to a more general reskilling imperative). As the book demonstrates, the past is still a vital guide to the future, even though the flow of information now reaching workers in UK offices and factories is more extensive and pervasive than it was a century ago. For the inadequacy, superficiality and conservatism of much of those information flows still leave a huge gap in real and relevant knowledge, a gap which the institutions of the labour movement need to fill. New Labour made a brief and ineffective stab at empowering people – briefly offering individual learning accounts that were soon abandoned – but there was, in the end, no University of Industry to match the Open University of the Wilson years. And even if there had been, Taylor and Steele imply that the subordination of its agenda to that of industrial reskilling would not even have scratched the surface of the wider gap that still requires filling – the gap in knowledge about how capitalist economies function and about how they can be transformed. Taylor and Steele write as socialists. Indeed, their specification of the requirements of a socialist education policy is among the book’s greatest strengths. They write too as students and admirers of the work of Ralph Miliband, and share his pessimism about the capacity of the Labour Party ever to deliver such an education policy. Their dilemma – one common on the British Left – is that if the Labour Party does not deliver, there is no other effective agency that might replace it. Taylor and Steele, for their part, see some grounds for a limited optimism amid the gloom – some evidence of a radical current in Labour’s past and in current single-issue movements that might yet, if properly harnessed, propel Labour policy in the direction they favour. It is the Taylor and Steele thesis that the writings of R. H. Tawney remain a source of value for those who would radicalize Labour’s higher education policy. They, like he, ‘while acknowledging the importance of the economic, utilitarian dimensions of higher education,’ remain centrally concerned ‘with moral, civic and intellectual education in order to ensure an intelligent, well-informed citizenry which will be conducive to the development of a generally civilized society.’ Their central thesis is that previous

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Labour governments ‘generally failed in the context of higher education to realize the radical objectives of Tawney.’ Their central hope – and indeed their rationale for the book as a whole – is that ‘the enduring vision of Tawney, Lindsay, Robinson and other social democratic pioneers in higher education . . . will be remembered and learned from.’ Politics on the democratic Left in the contemporary UK is currently intrigued by the Miliband question. Will a party led by the younger son of Ralph Miliband confirm or refute the argument of his father? Will Ed Miliband’s Labour Party confirm or refute the pessimism that Taylor, Steele and the elder Miliband share? To the degree that the ideas and priorities advocated in this book meet a positive response from a Labour Party suddenly in need of fresh thinking, refutation rather than confirmation may yet be the order of the day. Let us hope so. Let us hope that revisiting and re-tweaking the writings of R. H. Tawney will be as productive for a more radical and effective education policy as revisiting and re-tweaking the writings of his contemporary – John Maynard Keynes – may yet be for a more radical and effective economic strategy. For one thing at least is clear: any radical economic strategy followed by a future Labour government will need the active support of a revitalized and self-confident labour movement; and one key pre-requisite of such self-confidence will be the creation of a body of adults educated in the way the world actually works rather than in the way its apologists would have us believe it works. As this book shows, the Labour Party once knew that genuine education radicalizes. It is time for the Party to know that truth again. David Coates Wake Forest University October 2010

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to record their thanks to the following journals and editors of published books for their permission to reproduce in substantial part or quote extensively from articles and chapters previously published: History of Education for allowing us to print a revised version of ‘R. H. Tawney and the Reform of the Universities’, from vol. 37, no. 1, January 2008; Geoffrey Walford, for allowing us to quote extensively from ‘Lifelong learning and the Labour Governments 1997 – 2004’, in Education and the Labour Government: an Evaluation of Two Terms, (2006), London and New York: Routledge, 99 – 116. We are extremely grateful to the following institutions for allowing us to consult their archives and for the unfailing help of the archivists themselves: the libraries of the Institute of Education and the London School of Economics, University of London, for their separate collections of Tawney Papers; the National Museum of Labour History, University of Manchester; New College Library, University of Edinburgh; the Working Class Movement Library, Salford; the University of Leeds, Special Collections, for access to Lord Boyle’s Papers; the University of Birmingham for the Reverend J. H. Sadler’s Ph D thesis. Both Christopher Price and Eric Robinson were very generous with their time (and tables) in allowing us to interview them and we are most grateful. We also record our thanks to John Pratt for his advice and for access to useful sources, and to Michael Shattock. We have had valuable discussions of much of what we have written here with colleagues at Cambridge, Glasgow, London and Leeds and, as always, their comments and suggestions were most welcome. We have also to thank our partners, for their patience and support in what has been a lengthy exercise; Maria Slowey, in particular has provided both valuable critical commentary and technical expertise. Finally, we would like to thank Helen Roberts for her unfailing support and patience in the preparation of this book. We are of course entirely responsible for the sometimes contentious opinions and arguments in the chapters that follow. Richard Taylor Tom Steele August 2010

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Chapter One

Introduction: From Tawney to New Labour Social justice and equality have been absolutely core values for most members of the Labour Party since its formation in 1900. Inequality in education, for R. H. Tawney and for many since, has been seen as a particularly important barrier to the advance towards democratic socialism (Chapter 3 is devoted to Tawney’s ideas and his influence on Labour’s higher education policy). As Geoffrey Foote has observed, for Tawney, ‘the grotesque and vicious system of educational privilege and segregation “does more than any other single cause, except capitalism itself, to perpetuate the division of the nation into classes of which one is almost unintelligible to the other”’ (Foote, 1985, p. 78, quoting Tawney, 1921, p. 158). Moreover, for Tawney and many on the mainstream left of the Party, adult and higher education specifically were key spheres of activity for attaining an ‘educated democracy’. And yet Alan Ryan, some 70 or 80 years later, summarizing the Blair Governments’ record in higher education, argues that ‘what is worrying is the triumph of narrowly utilitarian standards, as though the only criterion was to send young people out into the world ready to make money by whatever legal means they could’ (Ryan, 2006, p. 97). On a more general level, Denis Lawton, in his review of the Labour Party’s ideology in relation to the whole education sector since 1900, concludes that ‘one of the gaps in the Labour Party policies since 1900 has been the failure to appreciate the importance of education’ (Lawton, 2005, p. 168). And when Blair, following Callaghan’s lead initiative in the 1970s, did foreground education, he ‘accepted the Conservative policies of Thatcherism, rather than developing a Labour policy which would put education at the centre of the Labour vision of a good society’ (Lawton, 2005, p. 168). (James Callaghan, a long-standing centre-right figure in the Labour Party, succeeded Harold Wilson as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister in 1976. He was Prime Minister until defeated by the Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher, in the 1979 General Election.) This study, and the arguments and analyses which underpin it, attempts to delineate how the Labour Party in all its ideological complexity and contention has generally failed in the context of higher education to realize the radical objectives of Tawney, and of many other strands of radicalism in the Party, and has ended up instead with the very different ethos and structures of New Labour. The transition in Britain from an elite to a mass system of higher education took place in the period covered by this book, 1945 to 2000. This

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change was an international phenomenon (see, for example, Schuetze and Slowey, 2000), but its pace in Britain has been especially marked, most notably in the 1980s and 1990s. Of course, this ‘massification’ occurred under Conservative as well as Labour governments, and both parties were influenced by international perspectives and trajectories – especially the experience of the (very different) mass system of the USA. A part of the argument of this book is that, in the latter half of our period, the policies and ideological stances of the parties became almost indistinguishable in the higher education context; this effectively has meant that Labour has adopted a Thatcherite, neo-liberal perspective, albeit cloaked in Third Way rhetoric (Jenkins, 2007, pp. 177–9; for a partial counter to this view, see, Jary, 2005). Labour’s sharp move to the neo-liberal right under Blair, cleverly packaged in modernizing and rhetorically radical presentation, has to be seen, however, in historical context. The modern revisionism in Labour’s ideological position stems from the formative intellectual work of Anthony Crosland in the 1950s – in particular, The Future of Socialism (Crosland, 1956). Successive Labour leaders tried to introduce revisionist reforms into Labour’s policies and structures – most notoriously and unsuccessfully Hugh Gaitskell’s attempt to rescind Labour’s clause IV commitment to common ownership. (Crosland was the leading intellectual of the revisionist Labour Right. Gaitskell, a passionate Labour right-winger, succeeded Clement Atlee as Party leader. He died prematurely, in 1963.) All these had the objective of jettisoning what was seen as the outdated, ‘class war’ politics of Labour and the ILP in the early twentieth century (though see Ralph Miliband’s analysis in Parliamentary Socialism (1972) for a convincing argument that the Labour Party never was, in any meaningful sense, socialist. See Chapter 2 passim). But it was not until Blair that such revisionism was successfully accomplished. This is not the place for a detailed account of New Labour, though we do return to a consideration of New Labour’s higher education ideology and policy in Chapter 9 (For more general discussion of New Labour, see Coates, 2003; Diamond, 2004; Fielding, 2003). But it is important to note that the utilitarian revisionism of New Labour is the contemporary articulation of what has been the most dominant of the ideological themes of Labour’s higher education policy throughout its history. It is not a new position, but merely one developed as part of a somewhat grandiose though vacuous ‘Third Way’ ideology. In as much as there was a break with past revisionisms, it lay in Labour’s remarkable electoral success in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, and also in the confidence and presentational skills with which New Labour articulated this ideology. The policy stance and ideology of the Conservative governments in this period are not the concern of this study. It is worthy of note, however, that the broadly Fabian view, of a utilitarian and training rationale for higher

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education, was adopted too by the Conservatives in the post-war period. This is in sharp contrast to the high Tory, traditional and elitist view of the role of universities, dominant in the old Conservative Party for many years. Not that this latter view has disappeared, of course: on the whole, Conservatives have continued to believe implicitly that the ancient universities should retain their role as the agency for the social reproduction of the governing class and its culture. To return to the focus of our concern: it is evident that the Labour Party has always been a coalition of disparate social democratic and socialist perspectives (Beer, 1959; Miliband, 1973; Coates, 1979; Fyrth, 1986; Pelling, 1954, 1993), and these perspectives are reflected in the differences of view over higher education policy. Broadly, in the analysis and discussion that follow, we argue that there have been three underlying and distinct perspectives articulated in different ways in the various policy contexts considered. The first, and dominant perspective, has been the utilitarian view that the fundamental rationale for an expanding higher education system is to provide appropriate skills and training for the future workforce to ensure an efficient and competitive economy. This is closely linked to a belief in creating a meritocratic higher education system, based upon equality of opportunity. (It is rarely, however, noted by proponents of this view that without a far greater degree of social and economic equality the overall education system remains inherently skewed so that it reflects wider social inequalities – middle- and upper-class families live in communities where there are higher-achieving schools, and the home and peer-group environments are more conducive to educational attainment, and thus to higher education opportunities and success (Wolf, 2002)). It is of course no accident that Britain’s two most prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge, continue to recruit approximately half their undergraduate intake from the privately educated sector, attended by fewer than 10 per cent of the school-age population. A sharply contrasting perspective is that personified by R. H .Tawney, with the central emphasis upon a national system of education, based on general social equality and centring on an ‘educated democracy’. Whilst acknowledging the importance of the economic, utilitarian dimensions of higher education, the central concern is here with moral, civic, and intellectual education in order to ensure an intelligent, well-informed citizenry, which will be conducive to the development of a generally civilized society. Within this perspective liberal educational principles and practice have been prominent, pre-eminently in adult education but also underlying much of the culture of the older universities too (Ryan, 2006; Taylor, Barr, and Steele, 2002; Fieldhouse, 1996; Jepson, 1973). This perspective merges with the more radically socialist view which has seen adult education and higher education more generally as having a distinctive social purpose, frequently specifically socialist and focusing on workers’ education and community

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education initiatives (Ward and Taylor, 1986; Lovett, 1975; Thompson, 2000; Taylor, Barr, and Steele, 2002; Wallis, 1996; Holford, 1993). For many years, Labour had a strong attachment to many of the cultural and ideological characteristics of liberal adult education, particularly as articulated through the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), the Extramural Departments of Oxford and Cambridge, and the large civic and provincial universities. Thus, Labour was committed to fostering access to study in the arts and social sciences for working-class communities and to the belief that for a fully functioning, informed democracy adult education was not a luxury but a necessity. ‘Knowledge is Power’ was a maxim for mainstream labourism. This rich vein of commitment to Tawney’s ‘educated democracy’ was, in effect, jettisoned by New Labour. The utilitarian, instrumental training and skills mantra, inherited from Thatcherism, dominated policy making with only short-lived allusions to the older, liberal tradition. (The best-known example of the latter was the oft-cited foreword to The Learning Age, written by David Blunkett, as Secretary of State for Education, in the early days of the 1997 New Labour Government (Great Britain, 1998)). There is a third and very different radical strand, however, within the Labour coalition. This perspective is that represented by those who advocated the creation of the polytechnics as an alternative higher education to what were characterized as the elitist, bourgeois universities. Eric Robinson, one of the most articulate and vociferous advocates of this position, saw the real history of working-class, post-compulsory and higher education as lying in the development of the parallel vocational tradition of the Mechanics’ Institutes and, later, further education colleges. For Robinson and other proponents of the new polytechnics, the central emphasis should be upon working-class students and their learning, and curricula and administrative structures should be geared accordingly. This perspective was hostile not only to the inherent elitism of the universities but also to their abstract, ‘gentlemanly’ conceptions of the disciplinary canon. Of course, this tripartite thematic division is somewhat schematic and the boundaries between them are, so to speak, porous. Nevertheless, conceptualizing the Labour Party’s higher education policy in this way has a twofold advantage: it emphasizes the conflicted terrain of this debate, and it provides a rough ideological map of the complex make-up of the Party’s ‘labourism’. We should emphasize, however, as we argue in considerably more detail in the next chapter, that we begin from a particular analytical perspective regarding the Labour Party – and indeed the proper role of higher education. Our own position, broadly libertarian Marxism (with a range of qualifications and caveats), sees the Labour Party as, at its most radical, a reformist democratic socialist party. As David Coates, summarizing the ‘Milibandian’ perspective (see Chapter 2), has put it:

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The Labour Party . . . (is) . . . at most a reformist party, and moreover one less seeking to transform capitalism into socialism by parliamentary means than as at most a party of social reform, one within which reformists and more moderate reformers battled for dominance (with the latter invariably in the ascendancy). (Coates, 2003, p. 325, emphasis in the original) It is thus against this ideological and political background that the Labour Party’s higher education policy record must be assessed. Similarly, our perspective on higher education is broadly within the ‘Enlightenment’ tradition. We believe strongly that universities should be intellectually and academically autonomous, and, as far as possible in this complex age, organizationally and financially so too. The free pursuit of knowledge, the discussion and analysis of ideas, disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas, theory and opinion of all hues, with very few imposed restrictions (one, for example, would be incitement to racism and the inculcation of racist ideologies) should be among the core values of the academy. In particular, we must guard against the erosion of two key aspects of higher education culture which are now under threat: the freedom to question and criticize the prevailing common sense (whether political or religious), and the autonomy of universities and other higher education institutions to determine their own priorities and policies according to academic criteria without the current undue influence and pressure of external bodies with a perceived interest and/or stake in higher education activities. In the current environment it is all too evident, in Britain as elsewhere, that these are real dangers: never in modern times have the state and the dominant ideology – neo-liberal capitalism – had such a determining role in the academy (we return to these issues in Chapter 10). Drawing on archival sources, this study analyses in some detail the key issues and periods in Labour’s higher education record over the period. It should be noted, however, that for much of the time, Labour did not have higher education as a priority. As Bocock and Taylor have observed, unlike the USA, in Britain education has not normally been at the centre of the Labour Party’s social policy concerns, though there are of course several exceptions (for example, Blair in the 1997 election campaign and subsequent government) (Bocock and Taylor, 2003). In so far as education has been a major concern for Labour, historically it has been very largely focused on the schools sector – and to a much lesser extent on further education (FE) and adult education. Leaving aside the reasons for this relative neglect of education as a whole, why has higher education normally been so marginal to Labour’s policy agenda? After all, even the Labour Party – as a party of modest social reform – has a concern with breaking down the rigid class hierarchies, at the very least to create a more meritocratic system: and the universities are one of the prime means of socially reproducing the next generation of the ruling or governing class. A traditional university education, at least until

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late in the twentieth century, provided for the large majority of its graduates not only the network contacts, and the confidence (and the education per se) to fulfil this role: it also inculcated a strong establishment culture and the myriad of ‘common sense’ assumptions that inhere. Again, this is a question we return to at the end of the book, in Chapter 10. But it is worth noting here that, again up to quite late in the twentieth century, most Labour MPs had no university education – and those that did were very largely graduates of Oxford or Cambridge; and many, who had left school at 14 or 15, had had few positive educational experiences, and no understanding of or empathy with higher education (Blondel, 1974). This study is thus not primarily an analysis and history of the development of higher education policy and practice from 1945 to 2000. There have been several such authoritative studies in recent years (Shattock, 1994; Palfreyman and Tapper, 2009; Silver, 2003). Rather, it is an argument, couched in a detailed historical examination of some of the key episodes in Labour’s journey in this area, about the contested ideology of labourism and its strengths and weaknesses in the social policy arena. Chapter 2 is an elaboration of our perspective on the nature of the political state in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and its role in higher education, alongside the ideological and thus policy environment of the Labour Party. This chapter is therefore a political overview of the terrain which the remainder of the book explores, and is a reference point against which the specific developments discussed later can be measured. Chapter 3 centres on R. H. Tawney and the influential perspective and tradition which he created and put into practice. We also look in some detail both at his philosophical and ideological conceptions, and the ways in which he played a major policy and political role in the development of Labour’s higher education perspective over three decades. The period from the late 1950s through to the mid-1960s was an important time for Labour’s higher education policy development. Chapter 4 reviews the historical and ideological background to the ‘Keele experiment’, and in particular the pivotal role played by A. D. Lindsay (see Chapter 4). Somewhat in contrast to the stillborn initiative of Keele, the early 1960s also saw the creation of both the new ‘plate glass’ universities (Warwick, York, Lancaster, Sussex, etc.), with their modern, liberal – and to an extent inter-disciplinary – image and ethos, and we look at the policy implications of this development too. The Labour Party was greatly influenced by the ‘new sociology’ led in the educational sphere by A. H. Halsey, the leading centre-left sociologist and Oxford University academic, and his peers as well as the American experience, informed by the philosophy and theorizing of leading American analysts of higher education, such as Martin Trow and Clark Kerr. Chapter 5 reviews and discusses these issues, and their influence in the Labour Party.

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Chapter 6 considers in some detail one of Labour’s two main initiatives in the period: the decision to introduce a binary higher education system through the creation of the polytechnics. We also look at the arguments surrounding this development, and in particular the motivations and perspectives of some of the main ‘actors’, including Toby Weaver, Anthony Crosland, and Eric Robinson. The other major initiative in Labour’s higher education policy in this period – and a unique and much criticized one at the time – was the development of the Open University (OU) (see Chapter 7). The determination of Jennie Lee, the formidable Minister concerned, and of the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, were crucial in ensuring that this innovative institution took off successfully. There was much political compromise, and there remain fundamental questions about the extent of the OU’s radicalism in policy terms. But there is no doubt that its establishment and experience has been a major Labour achievement. Chapter 7 explores this whole, fascinating episode. As always in the Labour Party, there was in the period a variety of dissident, alternative perspectives on the left of the wider labour movement. The ‘old’ Left, principally those in and around the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), produced a range of interesting and relevant policy papers. Not surprisingly, the CPGB favoured both a greater emphasis upon working-class access to higher education, and a more scientifically and technologically orientated curriculum. The CPGB policy statements, though receiving little profile, were useful and probably of some influence, in shaping the detail of the Labour Party’s higher education policy. Chapter 8 examines this aspect of the labour movement’s policy spectrum, and equally important, describes and analyses the dynamic New Left thinking in this context from 1956 onwards. The work of Stuart Hall, the Anderson/Nairn thesis on the nature of the Labour Party’s failure to develop a fully socialist ideology (and Edward Thompson’s robust rebuttal of this dismissive analysis), and the subsequent recasting of socialist intellectual thought, were all of some influence in Labour’s policy thinking. Chapter 8 covers this range of dissident but important policy thinking in the higher education context. In the penultimate chapter (Chapter 9) we analyse the very active – in higher education and lifelong learning terms – first few years of the New Labour Government of 1997. Despite the early enthusiasms and the moderate optimism of some in the field, New Labour’s record in higher education has been, in our view, disappointingly conformist, bureaucratic and in many respects philistine and illiberal. Chapter 9 analyses the ideological and political reasons for the failure of New Labour to capitalize on the opportunities of the landslide election victory of 1997, in the context of higher education, and links this back to the analysis of labourism in Chapter 2. The final chapter (Chapter 10) draws together the themes of the preceding analysis, and discusses the potential for radical socialist higher

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education, given the demise of the New Labour project. As a part of this discussion, we outline what, in our view, should be the (realistic) short- to medium-term higher education policy objectives for a more radical future Labour Party – or indeed any future socialist regrouping, which, in the presently volatile political environment, may well be a more realistic possibility than at any time in the recent past.

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Chapter Two

Labour Ideology and the Context for Higher Education Policy Since its inception in 1900, the Labour Party has been the mainstream political organization representing those who have, broadly, advocated both working-class interests and social democratic ideas of reform. It has, however, always been a broad church, as all analysts agree, whatever their other, numerous, differences of view (Miliband, 1973, 1983; Wright, 1987; Diamond, 2004; Coates, 1975, 1980, 2003; Pelling, 1961; McKenzie, 1963; Crosland, 1956; Wright, 1979, 1987; Morgan, 1984; Williams, 1979; Panitch and Leys, 1997). The focus of this study is, of course, the relationship between this ideological formation – the Labour Party – and the development of its higher education policy and practice. To understand that relationship, however, it is necessary to examine in some detail the overall potential – in theory as well as in practice – of the Labour Party to achieve significant change in structural and policy terms. This is a crucial debate too as a precursor for our subsequent detailed analysis of the Labour Party and higher education policy. The record of achievement and failure must be set in the context of what it is more broadly possible to achieve through the Labour Party. These are not therefore just ‘academic’ issues, and nor are they matters of only historical record – though they are that too. Judgement depends upon prior analysis and assessment of the ‘reforming potential’ of the Labour Party and indeed of similar such parties in other developed societies. Our own position derives, broadly speaking, from what has become known as the ‘Miliband’ school of analysis (Miliband, 1961, 1973, 1983, 1994). This position is in sharp contrast to the democratic socialist perspective of R. H. Tawney, so influential, and indeed so radical, an influence on the Labour Party’s higher education policy, and education in general, for much of the twentieth century. We devote a chapter (Chapter 3) to Tawney’s important role and to his ideological stance. Here, we should note that Tawney was deeply committed to the achievement of equality in general, and to educational equality in particular; and he saw educational privilege and segregation as the key factor, over and above the capitalist system per se, in the perpetuation of ‘the division of the nation into classes of which one is almost unintelligible to the other’ (Tawney, 1952, p. 158). Tawney, though, assumed implicitly that no fundamental changes were necessary, economically and politically, in the existing system. His perspective was that, in effect, ‘capitalism can be moral but, in the absence of state restraint, it had opted

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to be unpleasant. All that was needed was the removal of its unacceptable face by state action’ (Foote, 1985, p. 80). This is a view which, we argue, is untenable. And this difference of perspective takes us straight into the arguments of this chapter. There are two, intimately related, aspects of this analysis. The first is the question of whether or not the state and its structures, institutions, processes and overall culture are ideologically ‘neutral’ and subject to the full force of the democratic will via the electoral process in which different political parties with different perspectives compete freely for power. If this is the case, then ‘no class or group is able to assure its permanent political predominance’ (Miliband, 1969, p. 22). The alternative view is that, despite the rhetorical adherence to democracy, and despite too the substantive and important liberal freedoms of modern capitalist societies, the socially and economically dominant class controls power (and effectively the key aspects of the socialization processes) through an essentially subservient state. The relationship is not, of course, one of linear causality. In complex modern societies the ‘dominant class’ is variegated and often divided into elite groups with differing interests. Similarly, there are many examples of instances when the state in one or other of its manifestations acts autonomously, against the perceived interests of economically dominant groups (for example, in the judicial system). The relationship is thus better characterized as interactive and complex, rather than one-way and simple. Nevertheless, given all these necessary caveats, the argument from this perspective is that ultimately the state represents the interests of the economically dominant class in the broader political and social sphere. An important issue in this argument – and our second question – is the extent to which political parties and movements that claim to be to a greater or lesser extent opposed to the existing dominant order, are in fact effective and autonomous forces for significant change (whether through ‘reform’ or ‘revolution’). In the British context this centres, as noted, on the potential in theory and in historical practice of the Labour Party and broader labour movement to achieve such change. It is to this latter issue that most of this chapter is devoted, but we begin by examining briefly the first question, the proclaimed ‘neutrality’ of the state, in the context of our central concern in this book – universities and higher education. There is no doubt, to begin with, that the state has become far more involved in higher education and the detailed operation of its institutions over the period since 1945, and especially since the rapid expansion of the system from the 1980s onwards. Similarly, there can be no doubt that universities have increasingly served the state and its perceived interests in far more explicit ways than previously. However, this does not imply that in the very different contexts of earlier centuries universities were fully autonomous and somehow separate from the interests of the state: on

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the contrary, their primary function has always been the preparation and socialization, through specified curricula and cultural perspectives, of successive generations of the governing class and its accompanying professional support structures (Scott, 1995). And this has applied even in times when the state was far smaller than in the modern period and was also closely intertwined with the Church and its culture. At the same time as the state has become so much more involved with higher education, the state itself has become increasingly entwined with corporate capitalism (Monbiot, 2000). This is not the place for detailed analysis of this large and important issue. Here, we focus on a few of the key areas of the state’s roles in the context of higher education. There has, for example, been a huge growth in business schools, and related commercial areas of study. Such education provides, in Miliband’s words ‘not simply a training in the “techniques of management” . . . but also a training in the ideology, values and purposes of capitalist enterprise’ (Miliband, 1969, p. 253). Moreover, as many such schools are dependent upon donations from wealthy, private sector capitalist businesses and their individual, senior leading figures, almost all of whom are by definition strong advocates of the capitalist system and its insidious ‘common sense’, it is hardly likely that such schools and their academic staff – or indeed, the institutions of which they are an increasingly important part – will be critical of corporate capital and its ideology. As business interests have become so much more prominent in higher education, and in the structures and culture of the wider society, so representation of business has increased significantly in the governance processes of universities and colleges (Thompson, 1971; Monbiot, 2000). Similarly, the language and discourses of higher education have adopted the terminology and assumptions of the business world (students as ‘customers’, Vice-Chancellors as ‘Chief Executives’ etc.). These issues are returned to in more detail in the context of the higher education policy of the New Labour governments of 1997 and beyond in the final chapter (Chapters 9 and 10). Here, the focus is upon the way that such facets of higher education reflect the broader trends in society and the state. There is thus no doubt that the state has played an increasing role in higher education; and similarly that the growth of corporate capitalism’s influence in the wider society has found its reflection too in higher education structures, culture, and policy. The point at issue is in our view an uncontentious one, and we should move on to our main concern: the potential and practice of the Labour Party. Before that, however, we do need to note that none of the preceding argument leads necessarily to the conclusion that the Western political system, and the role of the state within it in its various national contexts, is anything other than ‘democratic’, in the commonly accepted sense. One crucial element in the argument is the claim that the civil service, the state

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bureaucracy in all its national and local manifestations, is in reality ‘neutral’: that is, the civil service has no particular political ideology, is solely the servant of the democratically elected government whatever its complexion. Yet even a cursory examination of such a contention shows that, at least in this ‘pure form’, it is absurd. The governing strata of the civil service are recruited overwhelmingly from the ranks of the ‘better’ universities, and these are again drawn very largely from the upper reaches of society. They are, moreover, expected to locate themselves in an ideological spectrum from strong conservatism to mild reformism. There are examples, of course, of senior individual civil servants with relatively radical views who have had a major impact on policy development (one such example, that of Toby Weaver, is discussed in some detail in Chapter 4, in the context of the development of the polytechnics). But this is very much the exception: for the most part there is a natural conservatism – in both the broad and narrow senses – in the civil service, as numerous studies have demonstrated (Theakston, 1995). The conclusion must therefore be that ‘by virtue of its ideological dispositions, reinforced by its own interests, (the) bureaucracy . . . is a crucially important and committed element in the maintenance and defence of the structure of power and privilege inherent in advanced capitalism’ (Miliband, 1969, pp. 128–9). The barriers for a political party and movement intent on introducing radical change are thus formidable. But, given the nature of modern Western capitalist societies with, on the one hand, their established liberal freedoms, their increasingly educated and aware populations and their sophisticated media systems and, on the other hand, their manifest inequalities and injustices, it is surely not impossible for a determined, mass party of opposition to achieve some radical change? We thus return to the second of our questions noted at the outset: the extent to which in both theory and historical practice the Labour Party and broader labour movement in Britain have the potential to achieve such change. The Labour Party and the wider labour movement have always been dominated by their right wing, and both the Labour Left and the extraparliamentary Left have been correspondingly weak. The Labour Party was from the outset fully incorporated into the existing, fundamentally capitalist, social and political structures, as well as being enmeshed in the capitalist economy and the assumptions and policies which underpinned it. A central feature of this incorporation, in the directly political sense, has been the Labour Party’s ‘parliamentarism’. The opening passage of Miliband’s Parliamentary Socialism makes the point with some force: Of political parties claiming socialism to be their aim, the Labour Party has always been the most dogmatic – not about socialism, but about the parliamentary system. Empirical and flexible about all else, its leaders have always made devotion to that system their fixed point of reference

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and the conditioning factor of their political behaviour . . . The Labour Party has not only been a parliamentary party; it has been a party deeply imbued by parliamentarism. (Miliband, 1973, p. 13) It should be noted too that this perspective applies not only to the parliamentary Labour Party but also to the industrial, trade union leadership. The reasons for this right-wing dominance are not the main concern here. The issue of the chronic inability of the Left in Britain to mobilize an effective socialist organization – or even a radically progressive formation – have been widely debated. In particular, the argument between Perry Anderson and Edward Thompson through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, forms one of the seminal discussions and theoretical disputes on the European Left (Anderson, 1966, 1980; Thompson, 1965). And, in the context of the inability of the Left in Britain to forge a radical, socialist alternative to labourism, Tom Nairn’s incisive analysis from1966, in which he emphasized the importance of both Fabian, neo-utilitarian influences, and the Christian-inspired moralism of the early ILP, is today, in 2010, even more relevant to the plight of contemporary labourism (Nairn, 1966; and see Chapter 8 for further discussion). Our focus, however, is rather upon the effects which this right-wing dominance has had upon the ideological stance and policy formation of the Party in the twentieth century – especially in relation of course to our area of analysis here, higher education. What has been the nature of this dominance? There are, to begin with, numerous examples of dramatic capitalist crisis when the Labour Party has shown unequivocally that, in extremis, it will always support the existing structures (usually portrayed as ‘the Constitution’ or the ‘rule of law’ or even ‘the system of parliamentary democracy itself’). The two classic industrial disputes of the twentieth century in which this stance was exemplified were the General Strike of 1926 and the Miners’ Strike of 1984–85 – but there have been several others in each and every decade (Phillips, 1976). Secondly, Labour has been a party of modest ambition, above all concerned with the advancement of concrete demands of immediate advantage to the working class and organized labour: wages and conditions of work; trade union rights; the better provision of services and benefits in the field of health, education, housing, transport, allowances, unemployment benefits, pensions and so on. These demands may be clad in the garb of ‘socialism’ but . . . their horizons have been narrowly bound by the capitalist environment in which they found themselves, and whose framework they readily took as given; and it is within its framework and the ‘rationality’ it imposed that they sought reform. (Miliband, 1983, quoted in Coates, 2003, p. 185)

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The Labour Left has campaigned, as a minority, against the dominance of the right-wing leadership. Its purposes have been twofold: to push their leaders into accepting more radical policies and programmes and to urge a more assertive and socialist response to challenges from their political opponents. But this Labour Left has almost always approached politics from within the same ‘parliamentarist’ framework of assumptions, challenging not the fundamental structures and the ideology which underpin them, but rather reacting to specific policy issues or crises, and seeking specific, short- to medium-term, solutions. One of the remarkable features of the Labour Party’s history in the twentieth century has been the regularity of the crises, whether economic, political, or foreign policy in nature, and the consistently conformist policies that have been pursued in response by Labour. As Miliband puts it, ‘Like Hobbes and fear, crisis and the Labour Party have always been twins – Siamese twins . . . (and) what is so remarkable about the Labour Party is the similarity of the problems which have beset it throughout its history’ (Miliband, 1973, p. 16). The Labour Left in essence changed very little over the twentieth century, in terms of its ideological approach, from that of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in the Labour Party’s formative years (for discussion of the ideology of the ILP, see Nairn, 1966; Beer, 1959; Howell, 1976). The ILP believed that there were no irreconcilable differences in society and that discussion, compromise and working through established institutions – including, pre-eminently, Parliament – were desirable, responsible and necessary. The leaders of the ILP thus had at base a consensual notion of politics and naturally found it far more congenial to contemplate political association with the Liberals than they did with the Marxist Left. Of course, all this changed as far as the ILP was concerned, in the 1920s and beyond: but, by that time, the ILP had been marginalized, manoeuvred out of a leading role in the Labour Party, and was to decline rapidly in influence through the 1930s, as it became steadily more left-wing. The key point, however, is that the Left in the Parliamentary Party continued, by and large, to hold to this earlier ‘moral’, parliamentarist ideology. Indeed, this is not surprising: the ILP activists drew their inspiration from many of the same sources as the Liberal Party. They were overwhelmingly non-conformist Christians in their beliefs, morally outraged by the injustice and hardship created by industrial, urban, capitalism, and believed that through moral exhortation and argument the majority of people could and would be ‘converted’ to socialism as the only moral, and sensible, way of organizing society. They saw their task in many ways as the secular evangelizing of the socialist message to as many individuals as possible; and it is significant too that the inherent reference point of the individual, central to non-conformist Christianity, was carried through implicitly into labourist ideology and practice. Of course, a great deal has changed since those early days, not least the decline of religion as a major factor in both the

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Labour Party and society at large (though see Wilkinson’s work on Christian socialism, for a partial corrective to that view (Wilkinson, 1998)). But, as noted, the attachment of the Labour Left to this ideology was very strong throughout the twentieth century. Two periods of Labour Party history are emphasized by those on the Labour Left who wish to defend and justify the claim that the Party has, at least at some important moments, both stood for and enacted socialist policy and ideology. The first is the adoption in 1918 of Clause IV (the commitment by the Party to public or common ownership of the main elements in the economy); and the accompanying policy document Labour and the New Social Order (1918). The second, more often cited, is the notable range of achievements of the 1945 to 1951 governments of the immediate post-war period, led by Clement Attlee. How do these stand up on the criterion of socialist commitment? In reality, 1918 was more a mark of the Labour Party’s commitment to collectivism, to the new ways in which capitalism was re-ordering itself socially and politically, than it was of its adoption of socialism. Rather than a socialist commitment, 1918 marked the dominance of a Fabian blueprint for a more advanced, more regulated form of capitalism. This reflected the wider collectivist trends in Western economies and societies, enhanced and demonstrated by the changes in structure resulting, inter alia, from the experiences of the 1914–18 world war (Winter, 1974). The commitment to the ‘public corporation’ style of common ownership described by Clause IV in 1918 was enacted when, for the first time in 1945, the Labour Party had a working majority in Parliament – indeed, a large majority of 146 seats. The nationalization of the basic utilities and of rail and iron and steel were certainly important advances for the idea of a centrally planned and ordered economy. And arguably, the creation of the modern Welfare State and in particular the NHS were even more important landmarks in the development of a more just, humane, caring (and efficient) society (see Morgan, 1984; Fyrth, 1993). The 1945–51 governments achieved remarkable things, especially given the difficult context of post-war austerity: and these governments and their work remain, rightly, the reference point for Labour Party socialists, in comparison to which all other Labour governments – and particularly the New Labour governments of 1997 to 2010 – seem shabby and disappointing indeed (see Taylor, 2005). Nevertheless, the key argument was the extent to which this can be seen as the first stage of socialist transformation – and was seen as such by the Labour Government. To illustrate this point, Miliband quoted at length from Herbert Morrison’s conference speech in 1945, in which Morrison argued that proposals for nationalization must be put: industry by industry on the merits of the case . . . in our electoral arguments it is no good saying that we are going to socialize electricity, fuel and

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power because it is in accordance with Labour Party principles so to do . . . you must spend substantial time in arguing the case for the socialization of these industries on the merits of their specific cases. That is how the British mind works. It does not work in a vacuum or in abstract theories. (Morrison, 1945, p. 90, quoted in Miliband, 1973, p. 279) Miliband comments that the strong implication of this perspective was that the ‘case for nationalization must not be argued as part of a general socialist case against capitalist enterprise but in terms of a specific remedy for particular situations and applicable in purely functional and technical terms to particular industries and services’ (Miliband, 1973, p. 279). Thus, the Labour Left, or some of the more socialist sections of it, ‘saw the Welfare State and the nationalization measures of 1945–48 as the beginning of the social revolution to which (they) believed the Labour Party was dedicated; while (their) leaders took these achievements to be the social revolution’ (emphasis in the original, Miliband, 1973, p. 307). Numerous other examples could be cited. The ‘Wilson years’ did nothing to alleviate this critical stance on the Labour Party – rather the reverse. Wilson and his colleagues were reformers, and were indeed opposed to certain aspects of the capitalist system: the ‘old boy’ network; ‘commercialism’; parasitic speculators; and the generally ‘aristocratic’ and dated image of the Conservative Party – especially when led by the quintessentially aristocratic Earl Home. However, what in effect they were advocating was renovated, modern and efficient (sic) capitalism, the ‘white heat of technology’ and so on. In their six years in office (1964 to 1970) Labour achieved precious little in terms of socialist advance. Indeed, poverty, in relative terms, increased (Foot, 1968), not because of difficult external circumstances – though there were, as always, plenty of those – but because of Labour’s incorporated, parliamentarist ideology and culture (Coates, 1975, 1980). Similar arguments could be made about any part of Labour’s historical record. The consistency of failure is remarkable. Yet, as Leo Panitch has pointed out, perhaps this is to misread the nature of labourism. ‘What are seen as Labour’s failures are really its successes. The function of the Labour Party in the British political system consists not only of representing working-class interests, but of acting as one of the chief mechanisms for inculcating the organized working class with national values and symbols and of restraining and reinterpreting working-class demands in this light’ (Panitch, 1976, p. 121, quoted in Coates, 2003). In other words, the Labour Party acts as a safety valve for ensuring that potentially dangerous activism can be channelled into constitutional, mainstream structures and processes. The Labour Party, it is argued, far from socializing its supporters and members into socialist activism, has historically done the opposite: it has acted as a deradicalizing force.

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It had become clear, by the late 1970s, that whatever it might once have been, or rather had had the potential to become, the Labour Party was now no longer a reformist party. Such parties, as Miliband pointed out, believed that ‘a socialist society will be brought into being by way of a gradual series of structural and social reforms’; and it was this perspective, broadly, which the Fabian wing of the Party had adopted from the late nineteenth century onwards (Miliband, 1973, p. 373). However, such ambitions, by the time of the later years of the Wilson/Callaghan governments, were no longer seriously in evidence. Can this deeply rooted ideological stance, and practice, be changed? It seems highly unlikely. There are two possibilities which have been traditionally put forward by the Labour Left: first, that the leadership can be pressurized, even compelled, to adopt socialist policies; or, alternatively, that the leadership can be changed, and more radical leaders selected. Both of these tactical approaches have been tried, repeatedly, and both have been resoundingly unsuccessful. There seems no prospect of such changes taking place, and indeed that remote possibility has become considerably less likely since the New Labour governments from 1997 (and the final collapse of New Labour ideologically as well as electorally in the General Election of May 2010). The conclusion is thus that the Labour Party will not – cannot – be transformed into a party seriously concerned with socialist change. Miliband’s view, articulated in 1973, is truer now, in 2010, than it has ever been. Almost forty years later, after several majority Labour governments, it is absolutely clear that the Labour Party remains what it has essentially always been, a party of very modest social reform in a capitalist system, ‘within whose confines it is ever more firmly and by now irrevocably rooted’ (Miliband, 1973, p. 376). The central question in our focused context remains: what could the Labour Party reasonably have been expected to achieve, given this somewhat restricted potential for socialist advance? Before discussing this issue, three other important aspects of the thesis propounded here must be briefly considered: first, what would have constituted a socialist social policy, why is it so different from mainstream Labour ideology and practice, and upon what theoretical basis is it founded? Second, has the failure of the Labour Party to achieve any significant socialist change been a necessary or contingent phenomenon? That is, does the very structure and ‘persona’ of the Party necessarily mean that such change is impossible: could things have fallen out differently had circumstances been otherwise? Finally, what alternative to the Labour Party, if any, has been put forward by those from the Miliband school – and has this been politically realistic? In other words, we are drawn back again to the old question of ‘agency’: how can significant, progressive change be accomplished in a highly conservative and deeply rooted society? In what was to be his last, and typically astringent and positive book, Socialism for a Sceptical Age (1994), Miliband discussed the propositions or themes which, for him, defined the core of socialism. He reiterated that

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socialist analysis must be based on the work of Marx, but went on to specify, in the modern context, three interrelated and interdependent themes for a socialist position: ‘democracy, egalitarianism, and socialization of a predominant part of the economy’ (Miliband, 1994, p. 51, quoted in Newman, p. 329). The first – democracy – is a particularly important point in the context of higher education policy: as with Miliband, we believe strongly, and with few if any caveats, that socialism entails a full commitment to democracy and its associated freedoms – freedoms of expression, including of dissonant ideas, of all sorts; freedom of the press and other media; freedom of assembly, and of religious or other belief. The active and extreme curtailment of such freedoms in Soviet society, in the former Eastern Bloc countries and in China – so often airbrushed out of contemporary political discourse by the Labour Party, for expedient and entirely disreputable reasons – is a key factor for regarding these societies as being wholly and fundamentally unsocialist . Often, such freedoms are characterized as ‘bourgeois’ by some on the Left – not least the more authoritarian elements of the ‘far Left’. We hold strongly to the view that, on the contrary, these freedoms are absolutely central to a socialist society – and indeed have been achieved in Western societies by the struggles of socialists and other progressives over many years of campaigning and conflict with the forces of conservatism. However, these freedoms are necessarily constrained by the glaring reality of a class-based and grossly unequal social structure. The task of the Left is therefore to extend and enlarge these freedoms through the removal of class boundaries in a structural programme of reform. The essentially liberal frameworks of the political state which ensure ‘separation of powers’, constitutional safeguards for citizens, and an independent legal and judicial system are all elements fundamental to a socialist society. We would add also, in the context of higher education, that the autonomy and freedom of universities – currently curtailed severely in Britain and elsewhere by an overweening state and a strident ‘business culture’ – are equally fundamental bulwarks of a free, socialist society. Socialism cannot simply be imposed. There is, therefore, ‘no short cut’. It has to be the politics of the long haul. If democracy is central to socialism, its old bedfellow equality is equally so. The Labour Party has long since shifted its ground from equality to equality of opportunity – a crucial change as it heralded the commitment to a society of meritocratically determined hierarchy (see Crosland, 1956; Young, 1961). It is unrealistic to call for total equality: but the fairness and justice so central to socialist politics, and so lacking in practice if not in rhetoric from Labour governments, entails a rough equality in income, wealth and access to social services. This latter was in sharp contrast to the Labour Government’s structure for the Welfare State, in which, in John Saville’s words: ‘The middle classes get the lion’s share of the public social services, the elephant’s share

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of occupational welfare privileges, and in addition can claim their generous allowances to reduce their tax liability. “Who”, he asked rhetorically, “has a Welfare State?”’ (Saville, 1967, quoted in Coates, 2003, p. 268). As so often, it was not that the Labour Party failed to talk about equality, though as noted, since the 1950s this was watered down to translate as equality of opportunity: it was more that it persistently failed to deliver any significant equalizing policy initiatives. A similar syndrome has applied to the third element of the core ideological bases of socialism: the socialization of the economy. Again, it is not so much that the Labour Party’s historical commitment to public ownership was not radical enough – although it is clear from the debates in the Party in the late 1940s and again in the 1970s, that the leadership was opposed to any form of workers’ democratic control and saw public ownership within an entirely bureaucratic, corporate frame of reference. It was rather that the Party was not in practice committed to transforming the economy into a sufficiently socialized structure so as to destroy, once and for all, capitalist control. What then underlies the socialist conception outlined and what are its main differences with labourism? The fundamental division between the liberal ideology which essentially characterizes labourism, and the socialist position described here, resides in arguments about structural, class conflict within the context of capitalism. For liberalism, conflict exists in terms of ‘problems’ which need to be ‘solved’ . . . it can be ‘managed’ by the exercise of reason and good will, and a readiness to compromise and agree . . . politics is . . . a constant process of bargaining and accommodation, on the basis of accepted procedures, and between parties who have decided as a preliminary that they could and wanted to live together more or less harmoniously. Not only is this sort of conflict not injurious to society: it has positive advantages. It is not only civilized but civilizing . . . Conflict is ‘functional’, a stabilizing rather than a disruptive force. (Miliband, 1976, p. 17) For socialists, on the other hand, conflict is endemic in class societies. The prevailing notion that consensual solutions to issues of power – economic, political, social and structural – are both possible and desirable, is a snare and a delusion. Throughout its history, the Labour Party has been bedevilled by its deeply held belief that capitalism can be reformed, and that somehow class inequalities can be eradicated through reasoned discussion, persuasion, and above all through the political will of the people as expressed in an elected, majority Labour government in Parliament. In reality, capitalism depends for its very existence on profound inequalities of wealth and power: the structural interests of the social classes in capitalism are literally irreconcilable within the existing social and economic system.

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The fact that such irreconcilable conflict, based on the different interests and socio-economic position of classes in structures of inequality, both nationally and globally, is not even recognized by contemporary social democratic parties is irrelevant to the validity of the contention– though of course, such ‘false consciousness’ has been a huge problem for socialist advance in western societies, and the explanation of this phenomenon has been a core task for the Left. As Frederic Jameson has observed, there is absolutely no doubt that class differences, both nationally and globally, have hardened and deepened in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century: what is not yet apparent are the new structural formations which a changed neo-liberal, corporate capitalism will produce. We do not yet have an appropriate contemporary class analysis: but we certainly do have a continuation and exacerbation of class division, in an increasingly anarchic, rapacious and unstable world ‘order’ (Jameson, 1998). The final issue – of what sort of alternative political organization to the Labour Party was feasible – is one to which everyone on the Left, from the Labour Left to the wilder fringes of the extra-parliamentary Left organizations, have devoted much time, energy and discussion: and produced (as yet) no convincing solution. There are though a number of salient, and more optimistic, points to make. First, this is largely a matter of political pragmatism, not ideological purity or ‘high theory’. The more sensible of those on the British Left dismissed long ago the insurrectionist politics of the Leninist organizations as, at best, an irrelevance in the context of the advanced, liberal Western societies that have developed since the end of the Second World War (and there are anyway a whole series of other fundamental concerns about the centralized, bureaucratic and above all undemocratic and illiberal ideology of most of the sectarian Left). Thus, many on the Left, but not in the Labour Party, worked together over specific issues and campaigns with the Labour Left – for example, in the peace movement, and in the campaign to elect Tony Benn as Deputy Leader of the Party in the early 1980s. It is important to emphasize, therefore, that those of a Milibandian perspective should not, and do not, reject entirely working through and with the Labour Party. There is as little justification for anti-parliamentary cretinism as there is for parliamentary cretinism! It is rather that this parliamentarist activity has never been, and never can be, enough. The illusion that Parliament and the elected government is ‘in power’ was nicely demonstrated in the financial and economic crisis precipitated by the banks and other financial institutions in 2008 and beyond. It became clear – again – that the ultimate power resides in the complex of international, corporate capital. Secondly, there is a divide between those who were originally in the Communist Party, and those, mostly of a later generation, who did not go through the trauma of disillusion with communist orthodoxy. Once the blind alley of the Communist Party had been finally rendered redundant,

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following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ground was at least clearer for radical regrouping. Thirdly, and here we differ from the Milibandian perspective, there is now a real resurgence of civil society, a flowering of extra-parliamentary activism – on a whole range of issues and movements. The example of Obama’s use of a localized, internet-based campaigning strategy in the USA, has energized the radical Left (albeit briefly), and the potential of new technologies more generally has led to new possibilities for political activism – not ignoring existing institutions and traditional political parties, trade unions and so on, but complementing these with a wide range of other agencies for achieving radical change. This is all at a level of generality, necessarily so, given that such development is still at an early stage – and there are of course many dangers with technologies that are at least partly controlled by powerful capitalist interests. But, at the very least, this is a ‘site of struggle’ for the foreseeable future, and the mobilization of extra-parliamentary activism offers a partial solution to the long-standing problem of the cul-de-sac of an exclusive parliamentarism. The eventual emergence of a powerful, counter-cultural socialist movement is certainly not inevitable, but it does provide the potential for a positive response to the seeming impasse on the Left. A resurgence of civil society offers a way forward. In particular, the contemporary flowering, across virtually all Western societies, of popular, usually issue- based social movements coalescing around fluid but radical agendas, and cooperating fully without losing autonomy, presage new and exciting foci of democratic opposition to corporate capitalism (for example, the World Social Forum, global environmental movements etc.). One of the key areas is that on which this study focuses: higher education. This is, in sociological terms, an increasingly pre-eminent arena for the socializing of the most able and influential citizens. Higher education has always had a role as the socializing agency for the next generation of the ruling order, certainly from the beginning of early modern history. By the late twentieth century, however, higher education had become a central feature of ‘successful’ capitalist societies: it had, in effect, become a ‘capital good’, as well as a cultural asset, and is now of course a system which involves far more people, and therefore a wider and different process of socialization, than in any previous era. The chapters that follow examine in some detail key aspects of the Labour Party’s initiatives in higher education over the 1945 to 2000 period. In the final chapter (Chapter 10), we return to the broader analysis of Labour’s achievements, failures and future potential in this arena. Our overall conclusion to this brief discussion is clear. The Labour Party’s historical record in the key area of higher education should be viewed through the lens not of a fully committed socialist party, but rather on the assumption that the Labour Party is, with significant variance at different

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periods, essentially a party of modest social reform, committed to achieving a measure of greater equality and fairness in higher education, as in education generally: but always within the parameters of a capitalist system in social, and cultural, as well as in economic terms. In our view, more equal, democratic and viable alternatives remain to be devised and fought for, but these will not come through the existing ideology and structures of labourism. We try at various points in the chapters which follow to indicate the signposts to ‘roads not taken’ in support of our contention that the dead end of labourism is not the only option for those who wish to see progressive change: there are radical alternatives.

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Chapter Three

R. H. Tawney and the Reform of the Universities Tawney occupied a position of unique moral and ideological influence in the Labour Party for forty years or more from the time of the First World War. No other figure commanded such respect and affection across a wide cross-section (though by no means the whole) of the broad church of the British labour movement, and many leading Labour figures claim Tawney as a major influence and exemplar (Williams 1982, p. 22; Foot, 1962). Tawney is thus important in any analysis of the Labour Party’s general ideology over the twentieth century: but he has particular relevance to those interested in education policy, and the ideology that underpinned it, because of the centrality which education occupied in Tawney’s social theory, and the persistence and diligence with which he pursued both his educational practice and the development of progressive educational policies in the political arena (Wright, 1987). Relatively little attention has been paid to Tawney’s role in the evolution of higher education policy, however. This chapter analyses his contribution to that evolution in the context both of his general educational perspectives, and in relation to his strong moral, political and intellectual commitment to the Labour Party’s democratic socialist ideology. We argue that his policy concerns are remarkably relevant to the early twenty-first century; but also that his commitments to an expanded higher education as a vital component of an egalitarian and democratic society are lacking from today’s policy environment.

Tawney’s political ideology1 At the heart of Tawney’s political ideology was his commitment to ethical socialism: specifically, to Christian socialism. Dennis and Halsey claim, moreover, that Tawney was the ‘crowning figure of ethical socialism in the twentieth century’ (Dennis and Halsey, 1988, p. 149). For Tawney, his unshakeable belief in Christianity, a belief which survived virtually intact the horrors of the First World War, as well as the manifest evil of Nazism and the growth generally of totalitarianism in the 1930s and 1940s, was linked inextricably to his core political principles. What were the generic elements of English ethical socialism which were important for Tawney? In the English context, ethical socialism is first and foremost an individualist credo. One of

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its many contra-distinctions to Marxism is that it takes as its reference point the individual human being, rather than the collective group – the ‘social class’ or whatever. Ethical socialism has a central concern with the creation of the ‘good society’ and with the social policies which will facilitate its development. But primacy is accorded to private, individual virtue. ‘Circumstances can only make personal moral choices harder or easier: they cannot absolve the individual from making them’ (ibid., 1988, p. l). Ethical socialism thus emphasizes the importance of individual conscience, the role of service to the community and to others less fortunate, and the continuing moral choices we all have to make throughout life. As with so much in the traditions of non-Marxian socialism, ethical socialism finds much of its dynamism and its ‘bite’ by defining itself in opposition to Marxism – or more accurately, the Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union and its allies. Thus, in addition to the core values of the Left, of fraternity, liberty, equality and social justice, proclaimed since the eighteenth century, ethical socialists have incorporated both the tradition of democratic radicalism, and a stance which is explicitly anti-historicist (in Popper’s sense) (Popper, 2002). Similarly, ethical socialists have counterpoised to this supposed determinism an avocation of the power of moral character in the creation of the good society. Personal moral choice, dictated by individual conscience, was always the crux of the matter; and it was the creation of the best possible environment for making this choice which was the main justification for democratic socialist politics. Whilst ethical socialism does not entail Christian belief, there is a close connection conceptually and historically. In Tawney’s case, there is a fusion between the two: or rather, the socialist commitment was the natural concomitant of religious conviction. Tawney’s religion was both mainstream and non-intellectual, progressive and socially committed; it drew its inspiration from the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. Tawney joined the Christian Social Union as a young man and saw his overall political objective very much as the building of a ‘Christian social order’ (Sadler, 1983, p.24). However, the socially radical concerns resulting from this perspective on Christianity were accompanied by orthodox, even conservative, theological beliefs. Not only was Tawney a lifelong adherent to the traditional liturgy and ritual of the Church of England, but he also had a strong belief in the doctrine of original sin. This commits Tawney, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, to the conservative view that human beings and the societies they create are permanently imperfect: man is necessarily and forever a fallen species. And his pessimistic view of human nature and the intrinsic fallibility of human beings enabled Tawney to come to terms with his experiences in the First World War and with the later horrors of the twentieth century. Tawney’s Christianity was strongly Protestant. He rejected the ‘scientific, calculating and paternalistic tendencies’ of collectivism, embracing rather ‘a democratic socialism of responsible and participating individuals. Such

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socialism not only promotes individual development as an expression of a possible self: ‘it seeks to establish a social order which will realise that possibility’ (Passes, 1996, p. 12). Tawney’s Protestant Christianity ‘commends individual responsibility, respects diligence and demands self-discipline’ (ibid.). Stemming from his Protestantism, two particular themes stand out in Tawney’s politics: his commitments to fellowship and to equality. Men and women were created by God to live in mutual support and love for one another. As with William Morris, ‘fellowship’ for Tawney was central to the good life, service to one’s fellow human beings the supreme motivation. However, this is clearly a fellowship of autonomous, free individuals, living in a democratic polity. This then links to his belief in equality (and his famous book of that title is still the most impressive sustained essay on the topic in the British context) (Tawney, 1964). Tawney did not advocate equal incomes, nor did he support the state taking into common ownership private sector industry without compensation. But he did believe strongly that social justice was an a priori principle, and that this required that society should ensure, through redistributive taxation, a much fairer sharing of wealth between the rich and the poor. The ‘worst inequalities would disappear if everyone were to be raised in healthy conditions, given a good education up to the age of sixteen, knew that employment lay ahead and that there was protection against the risks of life’ (quoted in Wilkinson, 1998, p. 106). Tawney also believed strongly that idleness and frivolity were unacceptable; and that the encroaching materialism of our culture was pernicious. Tawney was also critical of trade unions when they engaged in what he regarded as greedy and self-interested industrial action on behalf of their members. There are several other important characteristics of Tawney’s general ideological stance. First, Tawney is notably ‘English’ in his attitudes. It may reasonably be held that this was not uncommon for a man of his time, birth and social location. Nevertheless, the strength and centrality of his Englishness is remarkable – though it should be added that he also had international interests and concerns (see, for example, his book The Condition of China (1933)). As Wilkinson has noted, the influences on Tawney, in addition to his Christian friends and mentors, Bishop Gore and William Temple, included key figures from English radicalism: William Lovett, the ‘moral force’ Chartist, who advocated education for working men as the catalyst for democracy; Robert Owen, whose industrial communalism appealed to Tawney’s democratic impulse; Matthew Arnold, particularly in his avowal of social unity and his concern over the decline of Christianity and its basis for social and political morality; and John Ruskin, with his (Romantic) belief that industrialists’ prime motivation should not be profit but the intrinsic human value of creative work (Wilkinson, 1998, pp. 103–4). Despite the attraction for Tawney of the idealism of this tradition, he was also a political pragmatist. Tawney identified with the British labour

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movement and its attachment to both Christian ethics and its rejection of extremism. In political life, the working-class labour movement’s ‘reason, their humour and their humanity’ protected them against revolutionary intent in relation to the bourgeoisie and the existing social order (Hobson, 1931, p. 49). Tawney believed that English culture had been essentially ‘benign and [provided] the intellectual and moral materials’ for the creation of a better world (Tawney, 1924, p. 33). Moreover, he believed British democratic socialism could and should lead the world, and provide an example for developing the good society. Like a very large proportion of men and women who have been prominent in the labour movement, Tawney, was a member of the English upper-middle class. In Tawney’s case, though, his elite network (or social capital) was particularly strong, especially so in terms of his school and university connections. Tawney, moreover, inherited a serious and perhaps unique tradition of educational and social thinking from Rugby and Balliol. The tightly knit elite of Tawney’s youth and adolescence was a particularly strong influence, not least in his adoption of a Maurician Christian socialism (see Sadler, 1983). Significantly, the emphasis both Matthew Arnold and T. H. Green gave to national reconstruction through education was one that Tawney was to make, in policy terms, his own (Gordon and White, 1979, p. 72). An important turning point was his break from the Liberalism of his predecessors and his enthusiastic embrace of the newly formed party of Labour. This markedly distinguished him from fellow Oxford undergraduates to whom he kept close, Walter Moberly and William Beveridge, but he nevertheless moved with confidence in policy-making circles and understood instinctively how the British governmental elite system operated – and many of his contemporaries occupied high places in the political or Christian hierarchy: Temple, for example, became Archbishop of Canterbury and Moberly became Chair of the UGC. It was not only his background and network contacts which facilitated this, however. His ideological perspective appealed to mainstream Labour thinking. Tawney rejected Fabianism because of its emphasis upon the collective, upon efficiency as the key attribute of socialism, and upon the need for a centralist and essentially paternalistic governmental structure. Moreover, as Passes notes, Fabianism does not respect individual personality: and this, for the Christian, is fundamental (Passes, 1994). Nevertheless, Tawney displayed in his political involvements many of the positive – as viewed from a ‘labourist’ perspective – attributes of the Fabian mindset (Miliband, 1973). He was above all pragmatic and realistic in his political objectives; he was a gradualist and evolutionist par excellence; and he rejected completely what he saw as the authoritarian, undemocratic and amoral politics of Marxism. He was, too, a tireless and effective member of numerous government commissions and committees, as we discuss in the next section.

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All this gave him great appeal to the Labour Party hierarchy: he was ideologically sound and reliable, and a very good ‘committee man’. This was combined, however, with a real affinity with Labour’s moderate, idealistic left wing. As discussed earlier, Tawney’s socialism was based in large part upon Christian moralism, and the same can be said of the moderate Labour Left for most of the twentieth century. His principled pragmatism fitted well with much of the philosophy of the democratic socialist philosophy of the Labour Left as articulated by leading figures such as Bevan, Cripps and, later, Michael Foot: and his frugal, almost ascetic, lifestyle, combined with sincere Christian moralism, appealed to the always emotional heart of Labour and its activists.

The centrality of education to Tawney’s social theory In one sense, everything in Tawney’s politics centres on the importance of education. Even more important than a socially just economic system, with a significant shift towards a greater equalization of incomes, was securing opportunity for all to benefit from educational opportunity. Education was thus a catalyst in two fundamental ways: it enabled individuals to acquire the knowledge, skills and wisdom which would lead to a fulfilling life, spiritually as much as materially; and, even more importantly, it facilitated a moral sensibility, and provided the basis for the creation of a participative, responsible democracy in which all citizens were involved and empowered. Education was thus in the end the key means to both moral advance and democratic citizenship in a free society: it was ‘the motor of social change’ (Dennis and Halsey, 1988, p. 198). William Temple expressed well this sense of the spiritual centrality in an article in The Highway: ‘[T]he real influence [of the WEA] will only be known when among the full-grown citizens of England there are many hundreds of thousands whose childhood was passed in houses full of a faith in knowledge which the WEA inspired and maintained’ (quoted in Sadler, 1983, p. 95). A notable academic of prolific published output and an activist in adult education, Tawney was closely involved in education for the whole of his life (Winter, 1971). Whilst this is not the concern here, it is worth noting that his life and work were of a piece: virtually everything he wrote is permeated by the same moral beliefs and convictions. He was also a dedicated and inspiring teacher, not least of course in his long association with the WEA and university adult education. Tawney had been a member of the executive of the WEA since 1905 and had been the principal, if anonymous, author of Oxford and Working Class Education (1908) (Terrill, 1973, p. 38). He began his path-breaking tutorial classes in Rochdale and Longton while still based in Glasgow and while contributing substantial articles and leaders on education to the Glasgow Herald and the Manchester Guardian.

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His main periods of advocacy and influence are during and immediately after the two world wars. As Wright notes, around the First World War, when he believed that the war represented a moment for radical social change, especially for education, his focus was on establishing a national system of secondary education (Wright, 1987, p. 22). Then, during and after the Second World War, his advocacy of the expansion of universities and the heightened role of the social sciences within them was the key aspect of his role on the University Grants Committee (UGC). This is not to suggest that Tawney simply transferred his interest from schools to universities, because he always saw the two as intimately related so that, for example, the expansion of higher education was absolutely dependent on the prior expansion of secondary schools. Through both wars he argued tenaciously for the reform of Oxford and Cambridge to facilitate greater access for working-class students, but after the Second World War he argued that the first priority of higher education was to produce more and better school teachers for secondary education. A third educational front was that of adult education, in which Tawney did not simply press for greater support for the WEA and other voluntary bodies but saw adult education as an integral function of universities and essential for enhancing citizenship.

Tawney and schools policy: ‘secondary education for all!’ Around the First World War Tawney’s priority was the 11–16 year age group and he closely studied youth employment in Britain and Germany. He reasoned that this group required the most drastic action because it would lead to the greatest social change (LSE, Tawney, 22/8), and his priority in this period was to expand secondary education and make it available to all. Beatrice Webb observed in 1918 that many informal groups were being formed by young men gathering around Sidney Webb and G. D. H. Cole (Barker, 1972). From these were established the Labour Party Advisory Committees (LPACs) and the LPAC on Education was very much Tawney’s creature. After such a disastrous war and in the light of the Soviet Revolution Tawney wanted to create ‘a sense of community’ for a divided nation (Barker, 1972, p. 36). But Tawney, for Barker, was not so much the font of ideas as the one who gave them form and publicity, especially in his Manchester Guardian leaders and in Secondary Education for All (1922). This policy statement, which the Labour Party Executive had urgently wanted published before the General Election in 1923, remained the basis of the Labour Party’s education policy for the next thirty years. For Barker it ‘drew on the concepts of citizenship, commonwealth, equality and social justice, and set the educational system in the midst of the struggle to replace a divided, materialistic society with one properly attuned to intellectual and spiritual values’ (Barker, 1972, p. 43).

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Tawney’s insistence on a ‘complete system of education’ rather than the piecemeal approach hitherto adopted by default was, if not completely original, both unusual and a forceful example of his philosophy of education. Tawney characteristically laid emphasis on the negative effects of the exclusion of able children from working-class families from secondary education with the consequence that national leadership was drawn from only an insignificant fraction of the whole population (Barker, 1972). While Tawney opposed private education because it exacerbated class divisions, he could not bring himself to propose abolition – not least because, like many Labour intellectuals, he greatly valued his own experience. This was a view shared by many of his contemporaries, such as William Temple, his lifelong friend and a fellow educational reformer and radical. Indeed, in Temple’s case, he ‘never questioned the existence of the Public Schools or doubted their role outside the State system’ (Sadler, 1983, p. 294). Tawney adopted instead a position of requiring that the Public Schools (so-called in Britain, though, in fact, private institutions) should be required to hold a licence from the Board of Education, specifying conditions of access. Similarly, although he linked common schooling to a common culture, he was not keen on the ‘multilateral school’ and encouraged vertical mobility by matching capacity to the best kind of education to develop it – an approach destined to appeal, much later, to New Labour. Another example of Tawney’s promotion of the work of others was the Hadow Report, The Education of the Adolescent (1926). (Although Tawney was seen as the main author, Barker notes that the educationalist T. P. Nunn was equally if not more important.) Hadow argued for reorganizing, in fact creating, an educational system based on a break at the age of 11 years, at which time a distinctly new educational phase should take place. At this point selection by differentiation was to replace exclusion largely by social class, in which all schools, technical, creative or grammar, should operate on the basis of universal standards of building, staffing and equipment. The leaving age was to be raised to 15 (though not the 16 years demanded by the Labour Party Conference). However, as Simon observes, this confirmed a significant political shift in the demands of the labour movement (which had previously argued for the organization of education on a working-class basis) to the national interest approach favoured by the Fabians (Simon, 1974, pp. 362–3). Tawney’s campaign on secondary education, then, emphasized three main policy objectives: first, all post-11-years’ education was to be understood as part of a national secondary system; secondly, all fees should be abolished and secondary education made free; and thirdly, in a utopian flourish, secondary education was to lay the basis for a truly democratic socialist society. It was not just about better opportunities for workers’ children but ‘complete educational equality’ and ‘the final abolition of the system under which the quality of education offered children depended on the income or position of their parents’ (LSE, Tawney, 22/8, p. 6).

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Tawney’s framing of these reforms within a discourse of ‘the nation’ set him at odds with the ‘class’ position to which the left wing, including Cole, adhered. In his ‘Memo on Educational Policy to be followed by a Labour Government’ (1929), he insisted that the Labour Party could demonstrate its concern with the ‘deeper and more permanent interests of the nation’ by taking a strong line on education (LSE, Tawney, 22/8, p. 6). His memorandum to the Board of Education on a National System of Education also stressed the place of education in creating national solidarity (LSE, Tawney, 22/4). It is reasonable to see Tawney diplomatically adopting the more pragmatic ‘national’ discourse in realpolitik policy circles, while on the more public platforms of the Labour Party and the WEA he inclined towards a more class-conscious approach (although this may indicate a deeper unresolved conflict in his ideological position).

Tawney and higher education: a national, accessible university system It is easy, when locked into the pragmatic detail of Tawney’s committee work, to miss the visionary radicalism of his perspective on the universities. At its high point, on the verge of the First World War, Tawney foresaw a fundamentally different kind of university education which did not cater simply for the liberal education and professional qualifications of a small fraction of young people from the upper-middle classes but was open to workers for periods of study throughout their lives. It was this radical, democratic conception of the future university, based on adult education provision, which continued to provide the cornerstone of his higher education policy. University education should not be conceived simply as what happened on university campuses for full-time students but as what took place wherever there was the motivation and the quality of tutor to enable it: ‘A University Tutorial Class is really the nucleus of a university established in a place where no university exists’ (Tawney, 1914, p. 3, emphasis in the original). In his article ‘An experiment in democratic education’, published in the Political Quarterly in May 1914 and later reprinted as a pamphlet by the WEA, Tawney put forward the argument for the universality of provision of university education. For many men and women, particularly those attracted to WEA tutorial classes, the motivation for university education was not material success or professional qualifications but what he called ‘spiritual energy’ and the desire for an egalitarian, humane and cultured society from which no one should be excluded by virtue of birth or occupation. It is not enough that a few working-class boys and girls should be admitted to universities, and that many more will be admitted in the future. We want as

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much university education as we can get for the workers who remain workers all their lives. (Ibid, emphasis in the original) The university tutorial classes provided by the WEA, Tawney insisted, could not simply be dismissed as sub-university standard: The verdict given in their report to the Board of Education by Professor L. T. Hobhouse and Mr Headlam, after an exhaustive examination of a large number of classes, that their work was ‘in some respects better, and in others not so good, as that of an Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate’, that the classes ‘tend to accustom the student to the ideal of work familiar at a university’, and that ‘as regards the standard reached, there are students whose essays compare favourably with the best academic work’, is substantially that of most observers who have had experience of teaching in a university and who have seen the work of the Tutorial Classes at first hand. (Ibid., emphasis in the original) Tawney went on to argue that: we must revise our conception of a university education so as to include in it all those, whatever their occupations, who are pursuing a regular course of university studies under the guidance of a university teacher . . . And we must find room in our idea of university for students of mature years, who carry on their education in the midst of the routine of their working life. (Ibid., emphasis in the original) Hence, universities should no longer be thought of simply as the ‘professional school of the brain-working classes’ tail-ending school life but as an open access system of lifelong education for workers and others: The conventional conception of education in England is of a continuous course of whole-time study from about the age of seven to that of twenty-one or twenty-two, and of university education as the final plunge in the bath of ideas before men ‘turn from books to life’. This view of the place of university education, admirably adapted as it is to the needs of those from whom the demand for university education has hitherto principally come, need not be discarded. But it requires to be supplemented by a realization of the function which universities can fulfil in providing for the needs of those whose economic career is moulded on a different framework from that of the professional classes. (Ibid., pp. 5–6, emphasis in the original) For Tawney this form of open-ended learning was an essential complement to the professional development characterizing actually existing university

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study and thus contradicted ‘the bad utilitarianism which thinks that the object of education is not education, but some external result, such as professional success or industrial leadership’ (ibid., p. 6, emphasis in the original). Tawney concludes by arguing that by taking to heart the lessons of the tutorial class movement, the universities themselves will become transformed: And it is, perhaps, not fanciful to say that the disinterested desire of knowledge for its own sake, the belief in the free exercise of reason without regard to material results and because reason is divine, a faith not yet characteristic of English life, but which it is the highest spiritual end of universities to develop, finds in the Tutorial Classes of the Workers’ Educational Association as complete an expression as it does within the walls of some university cities. To these miners and weavers and engineers who pursue knowledge with the passion born of difficulties, knowledge can never be a means, but only an end. (Ibid., emphasis in the original) Needless to say, this semi-mystical discourse of spiritual transformation is rarely found in his committee work and is reserved for his public platforms. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten when viewing his pragmatic, if not to say humdrum, proposals for university reform, just what a radical, romantic vision fuels them. Tawney’s engagement with university reform per se dates from the role he played in the campaign for a Royal Commission on the ancient universities at the turn of the century. The call was ultimately proposed in the House of Lords by Bishop Gore in 1907 but the driving force had been Tawney’s friend William Temple and other members of the Catiline Club, a leftish group of younger dons (Gordon and White, 1979: p. 126). Although not himself a member and using a nom de plume, Tawney wrote a series of articles in the Westminster Gazette on the elitism of Oxford and Cambridge and towards the end of his period at Toynbee Hall in 1906 he also enlisted Canon Barnett in the campaign. Another member of the Catiline Club, the classical scholar Alfred Zimmern, went so far as to advocate a period of employment for all prospective university applicants before they were allowed entry (ibid., p. 127). Archival material for Tawney’s subsequent thinking on university reform can be drawn from a number of sources: memoranda for Lindsay’s Balliol TT Club on Oxford Reform; memoranda for the Labour Party Advisory Committee on the Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge Reform; Cambridge Lectures on the Economics and Finance of Public Education; and memoranda on university and post-war reconstruction for the Labour Party and the UGC. In addition Tawney wrote over two hundred contributions to the Manchester Guardian on educational

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matters, of which six specifically concentrated on universities, with many others touching on issues of the universities and their place in society (McCulloch, 1996). Tawney was closely involved in the ‘TT Club on Oxford Reform’ convened by the political philosopher A. D. Lindsay at Balliol in 1919 with the intention of submitting a paper to the Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge (LSE, Tawney, 21/4). Tawney’s paper on ‘Present Discontents’, presented to the TT Club’s vacation meeting on 16 December 1919, contained five main conclusions: that Oxford students were drawn from too narrow a circle and were not representative of the national talent; that Oxford could not be considered as part of a national system of higher education; that Oxford was critically prevented from functioning as a unitary university by college independence; that the subjects taught neither responded to modern needs nor was there any independent research carried on, and this adversely affected the quality of teaching; lastly, especially in science, Oxford was run by out-of-touch ‘old men’ (LSE, Tawney, 21/4). Tawney further argued that, compared with the new ‘redbrick’ universities, Oxford was at the time both too expensive for poor students and failed to meet their needs. The expansion of the WEA, on the other hand, had shown that an increasing sense of responsibility for democratic government amongst working-class adults had nurtured a more intense need for education in human and especially political studies. Although this was usually thought of by the universities as ‘external work’, Tawney argued that it should not be assumed that all work should be done outside ‘or that it is not an integral part of the proper work of the university’ (LSE, Tawney, 21/4). Tutorial classes and especially vacational residential study should therefore be regarded as integral to the work of the university and not merely a charitable extra3. (Both Tawney and Temple had opposed in 1909 any idea of creating a special workers’ University College. They wanted the admission of working-class students ‘who by ability and character are able to profit from higher education . . . not a special caste institution by itself’ (Temple, 1909, quoted in Sadler, 1983, p. 116).) This call to arms was echoed in his subsequent ‘Draft Memorandum’ to the Labour Party’s Advisory Committee on Education (LSE, Tawney, 21/5). He saw the Royal Commission as offering a unique opportunity of democratizing education at the top, noting that simply because universities were colonized by the ‘well-to-do’ did not mean they were of no concern to Labour: ‘Oxford and Cambridge are the most conspicuous example of the way in which English education is still organized upon lines of class, and the result is not only that they do not serve the community as they should, but that their influence tends to give a wrong bias to the rest of the educational system’ (ibid.). Perhaps the most pressing reason for reform, claimed Tawney, was that they were inefficiently governed compared with newer universities because they lacked public representation to keep them in touch

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with the changing needs of the nation. A related paper by Hugh Dalton, from Cambridge, he noted, would offer a similar perspective (ibid.). Tawney’s views on university reform were also reflected in his Cambridge lectures in 1935 (‘The Economics and Finance of Public Education’). His focus was still largely on matters of inclusion and access although, as the title of his series indicated, he centred on the problems of public financing. Tawney related the opening and expansion of higher education to the reforms in the secondary system and made four main points: university education was more expensive in England than elsewhere, although scholarships, introduced in 1902, had helped to bridge the gap; while England had been comparatively late in publicly organizing higher education, its recent expansion was impressive, although technical education was still provided only on a part-time basis; the growth in the dimensions of higher education critically depended on the increase in student numbers moving on from elementary to secondary education and he noted that the free-place system (for secondary education) of 1904 was in some ways ‘the most revolutionary step in England’ (LSE, Tawney, 17/7, p. 31); and the increase in university recruitment was a direct consequence of the growth in the number of secondary school pupils, the lengthening of school life and the LEA scholarship scheme of 1920. Tawney claimed that the main beneficiaries of this increase had been the new civic ‘redbrick’ universities rather than Oxford and Cambridge (ibid.). Encouraging as these figures were, generally, there was still much to do and he noted that sociological research in Liverpool showed that there was still gross inequality of opportunity, Tawney noting: ‘once entry has been gained to a secondary school, the exceptional child of poor parents has as fair a chance as the average child of parents in a better position’ (ibid., p. 32). Tawney ably predicted what the response would be of the Black Paper writers of his day to the influx of students from the lower orders: Educational standards, it was said, would be lowered by an influx of pupils of inferior calibre: children with free places would inevitably be removed from the secondary school to benefit by it; the mysterious quality known as ‘tone’ or ‘morale’ would be injured; an intellectual proletariat would be created, with a distaste for wage-earning employment and unsuitable for any other. (Ibid, p. 34) Tawney’s belief that changes in secondary education and university access could increase social mobility was not encouraged by the resistance of vested interests: Such evidence as is available suggests that the coexistence in England of parallel educational systems, one public and one private, means that, although individuals from the strata using them meet, to a greater extent

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than in the past, in the Universities, the majority of the clientele still largely constitutes, as far as certain important ranges of business and professional life are concerned, non-competing groups, the barriers between which have been only slightly lowered by the small, though general increase in mobility caused by educational policy. (Ibid., p. 36) While Tawney’s educational thinking during the Second World War continued to pursue the essential linkage of secondary education and university reform, an important memorandum he wrote for the Labour Party entitled ‘Education and Post War Reconstruction’ also signalled the pressing need for access for mature students (LSE, Tawney, 23/1, p. 30–4). In the section on ‘Higher and Adult Education’ Tawney linked the expansion of universities to the growth in adult education, proposing that more residential colleges, some at least on the folk high school model of Sweden and Denmark, were needed for mature students of limited means. These should be accompanied by suitable accommodation and grant aiding for recognized voluntary organizations like the WEA which, he emphasized, had built ‘an important bridge from labour to learning’ (LSE, Tawney 23/1, p. 30). No doubt what Tawney had in mind was how quickly the thousands involved in WEA tutorial classes could expand the relatively small numbers of full-time university students. This important linkage was supported by a number of other proposals. Egalitarian access should be assured through adequate scholarships, including funding for part-time study, for all students. Since there was no uniform system of scholarships in Britain which coordinated grants from local authorities and bursaries from universities and colleges, the Board of Education should be the principal authority for such awards. Maintenance should be available to all who reached the required standard of entry and ‘special opportunities should be given to older part-time students already engaged in commerce or industry’ (ibid., p. 31). For school leavers, there should be a year out between school and university in which prospective students should mature through a year spent working or travelling, as Zimmern had advocated. Tawney also advocated significant changes in the curriculum to counteract what he thought of as ‘specialisms lacking an integrating principle’ or the entrenchment of disciplinary divisions, which failed to lend students a holistic view of the world. Here he advocated universities providing a General Degree (on the lines of the Scottish universities) which should include natural science and the humanities and elements of sociology and citizenship, leading to the study of ‘man in society’ and the contemporary international community. This was an important element of Tawney’s general strategy of creating an educated public for active citizenship, but it was also a stratagem to wean away the idealistic young from the appeal of modern dictatorships.

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It was for him, as it was for the members of J. H. Oldham’s Moot, with which he was associated, ‘closely related in school to the teaching of the Christian ethic’ (Taylor, W., 1996; Steele and Taylor, 2010). Above all, university growth should furnish a rapid expansion of teacher training to enable the projected raised school-leaving age, nursery schools and day continuation centres. Pragmatically, Tawney was also prepared to extend the two-year wartime degree for the time being.

Tawney’s role on the University Grants Committee (UGC) The most significant phase of Tawney’s work in the sphere of higher education policy arrived when he was invited to join the UGC, by its Chairman, Walter Moberly. Moberly and Tawney maintained their friendship from their early years, despite some quite strong differences of view from time to time. Moberly, for example, many years earlier in the context of the Birrell proposals for educational reform, had criticized both Tawney and Temple for ‘spreading dangerous views prompted by socialist motives and other anti-authoritarian ideas’ (Sadler, 1983, p. 43). The UGC had been formed in 1919 to distribute funding from the state to the universities in the first step towards creating a national higher education system. It advised the government and distributed public funding to the universities in a way that gave it, almost uniquely, relative autonomy from the Treasury (Carswell, 1985, p. 10). The value of Moberly’s chairmanship of the UGC is disputed. According to a later secretary to the UGC, John Carswell, Moberly, who had been appointed to the chairmanship in 1935, presided over a gently vegetating nine-man committee in a well-meaning but largely ineffectual manner. The attitudes of this complacent body, he records, were ‘paternalistic, sentimental and rooted in tradition’ (Carswell, 1985, p. 13). This view is contested by Harold Silver, who claims Moberly was a pivotal voice. On Silver’s account, Moberly’s book The Crisis in the University (1949) was ‘the first twentieth-century philosophy of education, embodying his advocacy of the university and of its transformation to respond to the values and needs resulting from the dangers and dilemmas of the times’ (Silver, 2003, p. 102). The end of the Second World War initiated a period of significant expansion in British higher education. In a flood tide of energy for reconstruction, during the latter stages of the Second World War and immediately after, a wave of reports advocated substantial expansion and reform of the universities (Lowe, 1988, p. 57). In 1943 an Association of University Teachers’ Report on University Development called for a 50 per cent increase in student numbers. This was followed by the McNair Report of 1944, which proposed that there should be 15,000 new teachers. The Percy Report on Higher Technical Education (1945), which Lowe calls of ‘enormous significance’ because

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it enunciated the binary divide of twenty years later, wanted a distinction between universities and technical colleges (ibid.). In 1946 the Barlow Report on Scientific Manpower proposed upgrading the five existing university colleges to full university status and creating at least one new university. The always latent potential of the UGC to exercise ‘leadership’ through its funding was not actually realized until the war, when, according to Carswell, ‘the Treasury decided to invigorate the formerly placid scene’ (Carswell, 1985, p. 13). The UGC’s former remit to distribute grants and publish information were significantly enlarged: ‘to assist in consultation with universities and other bodies concerned, the preparation and execution of such plans for the development of the universities as may from time to time be required in order to ensure that they are fully adequate to national needs’ (quoted in ibid., p. 14). The UGC thus found its scope for involvement, inherited from wartime central planning needs, considerably widened, enabling it to play a greatly enhanced role in university development. Annual grants to universities had doubled from before the war to £8m in 1945 and £20m in 1952–53. Tawney’s role was significant. Moberly’s letter of appointment to him, of 10 November 1943, said he wanted him for his engagement with the ‘whole educational problem: no one else could replace you in that sense’, but specifically to give leadership in the area of the social sciences for which £400,000 was earmarked (IoE, TY, 1/3/2). The UGC Minutes of 3/3/1944, (Appendix C) raised an important question for Tawney: how could the UGC and Vice-Chancellors’ Committee plan for university studies on a national basis rather than as individual units? (IoE, TY, 1/1/1). This climate of reform and expansion in which a number of distinct interests staked their claim – the AUT (Association of University Teachers) for greater professionalization, Percy and Barlow for an urgent increase in the number of professionally trained scientists and technologists, for example – originated in part from Tawney’s efforts within the Labour Party and elsewhere. But, as Lowe indicates, there was a pronounced division over how the role of universities was to be understood. While the powerful modernizing lobby argued for vastly increased scientific and technological training, conservative opinion was concerned about ‘cultural fragmentation’; inspired by Ortega y Gasset’s Mission of the University (1930), it wanted increased acculturation of the population at large. Tawney was sympathetic to both tendencies and while he urged the need for more technological specialists in what he hoped would be a post-war new order, he believed they should be embedded in a deeper understanding of democratic and humanistic study. This latter emphasis was not reflected in many of the policy circles on the Left (see Bocock and Taylor, 2003). In one of his most detailed memoranda to the UGC during 1946 Tawney outlined his proposals for restructuring the whole sector (IoE, TY, 1/3/3). He argued for two principal reforms: the need to establish new universities

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and university colleges on a regional basis, supported by what he called ‘local patriotism’, and also that Oxford and Cambridge should immediately expand student numbers. Tawney wanted universities to be brought into a national system of education as a common resource, rather than remaining a disparate and quasi-autonomous group of elite ‘finishing schools’, as he put it, but he also saw them as playing an important regional role. Tawney introduced his memorandum by noting that the UGC had discussed several times in the last eighteen months the issue of the desirability of an increase in the number of students to meet national needs and that it was generally agreed that not less than a 100 per cent increase was required. However, Tawney noted with some irritation that no practical steps had been taken by the UGC to secure the increase since its letter of May 1945, urging those universities that had not expressed a willingness to expand to reconsider their positions (ibid.). Things were being allowed to drift and the time had come for decisive action. Tawney drew attention to three key recommendations from the Barlow Report on Scientific Manpower (Barlow, 1946): the number of scientists should be doubled but not at the expense of the humanities; there should be a larger increase in student numbers than the estimates of growth submitted by the universities themselves (Sheffield, Liverpool and Leeds Universities were seen as candidates for immediate growth); several new university colleges and at least one new university should be created. Oxford and Cambridge should expand their smaller colleges and at least one other should be founded. Another university should be considered for London and others in Scotland, and the five existing university colleges should be given full university status at the earliest opportunity. Tawney also drew attention to elements in the Barlow Report that reflected his own long-term views – for example, that there was an ‘ample reserve of intelligence in the country to allow both a doubling of university numbers and, at the same time, a raising of standards’ (ibid., p. 3). Thus, he concluded, the UGC should decide at once the practical steps necessary for doubling student numbers in the next ten years. Tawney noted that, ‘a university is both a local and national institution’ and, since at present chances of local children entering local universities varied greatly, universities should note their national, not merely parochial, responsibilities. But to his great dissatisfaction and not a little annoyance, it was clear from the replies to the UGC that Oxford and Cambridge had no plans to expand and so had to be firmly encouraged to do so. He believed that their excuse that a college system could not be expanded was at best implausible, noting that new women’s colleges had been established in recent years, while other colleges could have annexes built and non-collegiate numbers could be expanded. He added mordantly that, ‘a college is merely a boarding-house plus sentiment. If more boarding-houses are provided the public will supply the sentiment’ (ibid., p. 7). Tawney insisted

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that Oxford and Cambridge had to explain to the UGC why it could not respond to the national emergency and requested a meeting with them after the 1946 summer vacation. For immediate and urgent action Tawney echoed and revised his proposals given to the Labour Party: that officials prepare a list of towns with more than 200,000 people, showing also the population within fifty miles, the number of secondary schools and their age 16–19 populations, and also the number of technical and training colleges. Officials were also to discuss with authorities an extra university for London, and groundwork should be undertaken for the founding of a new university – though no recommendations were made at this stage about its nature and location.

The Social Sciences Sub-Committee of the UGC While Tawney’s advocacy of reconstruction urged the UGC onto a radical path of reform, his work in leading the Social Sciences Sub-Committee was clearly where his main commitment lay. Although the UGC now shared his long-term commitment to a national system of higher education and, implicitly, a greater functionality, his deeper instincts were for reform of the curriculum and, in particular, placing social sciences at its heart. The Sub-Committee also included some of his closest political colleagues, such as Henry Clay from the WEA and G. D. H. Cole. Other members included Firth, Lionel Robbins from the LSE and eventually Hector Hetherington, Principal of the University of Glasgow. The groundwork for the Social Sciences Sub-Committee had been prepared by the Clapham Report on Social Sciences, on which Tawney, as well as Carr-Saunders from the LSE, Clay, Barlow, Robbins, Hetherington and Moberly, had served (Clapham, 1946). Clapham had to contend with the problem that in the universities the social sciences were regarded with some suspicion by both the natural sciences and the humanities. Donovan (2003) noted the sensitivities at stake and Clapham’s response: At the time of the Clapham Report, social science was taken by the academic establishment to lack the strict methodological rigour of the natural sciences while not possessing the intellectual respectability of the humanities which did not dare to harbour scientific pretensions . . . In spite of the prevailing hostile climate the report displays a rare degree of sophistication in its understanding of social science that is only ever occasionally glimpsed in later years. (Donovan, 2003, p. 6) Clapham found that the universities were ‘under-staffed and underendowed’, depending for funding on private enterprise and foundations

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such as Rowntree, and Booth and Webb, rather than routine allocations from the state. He concluded that ‘favourable consideration should be given for increased research university grants for these purposes and the UGC should consider the establishment of a sub-committee to advise on matters relating to the Social Sciences’ (Clapham, 1946). It was clear, then, that Tawney had at his disposal a good deal of information, well-formed discussion and, in addition, official approval for his proposed curriculum reforms. Generally, in response to the UGC’s enquiry into the provision of social sciences, it was evident that the record of the universities was at best patchy. Replies from Vice-Chancellors revealed that the classification of the social sciences as an academic field (let alone a ‘discipline’, ‘series of disciplines’ or ‘disciplinary area’) was not always clear and many registered great difficulty in finding competent tutors. But Tawney’s sub-committee’s budget of £400,000 and further funding for research, suggested a real commitment to tackle the problem and most Vice-Chancellors appear to have been sympathetic to the expansion of the field (or maybe just welcomed the additional funding). Tawney’s work had a significant impact: in 1946 only 35 (out of a total of 889) university chairs were in the social sciences but twenty years later the figure had risen to over 200 (Briggs, 2001, pp. 227–8). Tawney’s advocacy of a central role for the social sciences in the reconstructed university system and an associated general liberal curriculum was strongly supported by Labour organizations. The New Fabian Research Bureau pamphlet, No. 35, on State Education, edited by Barbara Drake, argued that the priority for universities was for a general education with admission by Higher Certificate. A long paper by the WEA, Report on Education Reconstruction (WEA, 1942), probably written by Harold Shearman, its Education Officer, wanted both higher standards and a greater breadth of learning in universities, with a ‘close understanding of the cultural needs of the age and society it serves’ (ibid. p. 29). Even technical studies and medicine should be broadly conceived with an understanding of social relationships and their implications (IoE, TY, 9/20). An offshoot of Tawney’s advocacy in the UGC was a reinvigorated campaign for a new university college on a site in the Potteries in North Staffordshire (see Chapter 4). Tawney’s long association with this area dated from his WEA tutorial classes at Longton in 1908 and Lindsay’s from a little later. Tawney’s strategic role combined with Lindsay’s passion and vision to drive the ‘experiment’ on and Lowe describes Tawney, Lindsay and Cartwright (the secretary of the North Staffordshire Adult Education Committee) as the key members of the ‘junta’ which in 1946 had devised plans for a ‘distinctly local university’ (Lowe, 1988). Michael Young described Keele as ‘the only important experiment in university education that conservative Britain has managed to produce in the last quarter of a century’ (quoted in Silver, 2003, p. 138). We discuss the origins and implications of Keele in greater detail in the next chapter.

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Conclusion Tawney was assiduous over a remarkably long period in the world of educational policy making. He was consistently both progressive in his ideas, and pragmatic in his judgement of the realities of the political and policy environment. Above all, though, he had a steady and unshakeable commitment to a set of ideas and aspirations, which centred on the importance of education, and the higher education experience in particular, both for the creation of a truly democratic society, and for the liberation of socially excluded individuals, especially working-class men. Tawney always remained part of a network of Oxford and particularly Balliol intellectuals, including later influential figures such as William Beveridge, William Temple, A. D. Lindsay and Walter Moberly; and his commitment to Christianity was lifelong. Tawney, from these roots in the liberal establishment, nevertheless pursued a range of strikingly contemporary concerns in higher education policy. He was a strong supporter of what we would now term ‘lifelong learning’, though always with a strong advocacy of the social purpose of such education, its vital contribution to the development of a truly democratic, egalitarian society, as well as its importance for economic advance. Connected to this, Tawney argued for a rapid and major expansion of the higher education system and of widening as well as increasing participation. Critics have argued that the dilemmas and fundamental flaws of parliamentarist labourism are writ large in Tawney (Miliband, 1973; Simon 1974). Whatever the rights and wrongs of this debate, Tawney undoubtedly combined pragmatism and principle in his pursuit of the progressive reform of higher education. Whilst his policy concerns were faintly echoed in New Labour’s policy agenda (1997–2010), his commitment to radical social purpose education for democratic advance was sadly absent.

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Chapter Four

The Only Place for a Socialist: Lindsay, Keele University and its Legacy The University College of North Staffordshire, which became the University of Keele in 1962, was the first fruit of the new thinking about universities emerging from the UGC during World War II. As a new kind of campusbased university, which attended to local needs but was not highly specialist, and which tried to introduce a more general curriculum liberated from the traditional disciplinary organization of knowledge, Keele became the model for the next generation of universities. As Gregor claims, Keele exemplified Benjamin Jowett’s nineteenth-century project of philosophic idealism and social obligation at Balliol College, Oxford, in a contemporary perspective: ‘It was in Keele that the new alignment between specialism and its context, which was to become a common concern in all the new universities, was first given systematic treatment’ (Gregor, 1983, p. 156). Organizationally too, as recognized in the UGC’s quinquennial report in 1952, Keele broke new ground in displaying important experimental elements for the new era in higher education. This chapter therefore looks closely at the political process of the foundation of Keele and at its legacy in the new ‘plate-glass’ universities of the 1960s. For Michael Young, Keele was the only important experiment in the new approach to universities in the post-war period (Silver, 2003, p. 136). Though not formally a part of Labour’s policy making, Keele was, in a sense, the Attlee government’s most memorable contribution to the future of universities in Britain, which is why we devote a chapter to it here. It may well also have been of direct service to the political fortunes of the Labour Party, for when Herbert Morrison visited North Staffordshire in 1951 to find out why, in the face of its General Election defeat, Labour had maintained its strength there, he was told it was due to the new university college. The ‘austere idealism’ of Keele was certainly in tune with the culture of the Labour Government (Gregor, 1983, p. 156). Thus, Keele was for many in the Labour Party a cause and its prime movers had close political connections: R. H. Tawney, a still influential member of the UGC, Alexander (later Lord) Lindsay, Master of Balliol and well respected by the new Labour Government, the Labour-controlled councils of Stoke and North Staffordshire and, not least, the WEA. Lindsay, who most clearly voiced the movement’s ideals, wanted a radically different kind of university that reflected both the ancient universities’ commitment to liberal humanist education and the contemporary relevance of the civic

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Redbricks to local needs, while aiming to produce a truly modern ideal of citizenship. Such was Lindsay’s prestige in Labour circles that when he died in 1952, R. H. S. (Dick) Crossman, at that time a young Bevanite maverick and co-author of the influential pamphlet Keep Left, seriously considered the possibility of taking over from him as Principal, noting in his diary: ‘It’s the only job in the whole of education which is open to a strong political socialist and it would be succeeding A. D. Lindsay’ (Crossman, 1981, p. 135).

Lindsay, moral philosophy and social action Lindsay was the bridge from Jowett’s Balliol to the founding of Keele. As one of the original WEA tutors in 1908, Lindsay had combined the idealist tradition with a commitment to social purpose for half a century. He was one of Labour’s most important thinkers about education and probably the most philosophically well-versed. Born in Glasgow, the son of the Principal of the United Free Church College, Lindsay was elected a Fellow and Tutor at Balliol, of which his Glasgow mentor, Edward Caird, was then Master, in 1906. Following Caird’s injunction that students should find out why amid so much wealth there was so much poverty, he was one of those, with Tawney, who immersed himself in adult education and the newly formed WEA. Following a distinguished war service he returned to Glasgow as Professor of Moral Philosophy from 1922 to 1924, notably setting up the university’s Extramural Education Committee (the forerunner of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education). At Glasgow, determined to reach out to the Clydeside ship workers (then coming under the revolutionary influence of John Maclean’s Scottish Labour College) Lindsay gave a series of lectures jointly promoted by the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the WEA. In these he explored the political economy of Karl Marx, whom he subtly recast as an ‘evolutionary’ rather than revolutionary socialist (Lindsay, 1925, p. 11). In 1926 he returned to Oxford as Master of Balliol College and subsequently became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford (1935–1938). In common with Tawney – and beguiled by the WEA’s aura of ‘wonder and delight’ – adult education was central to Lindsay’s vision of a university (Scott, 1961, p. 63). With Tawney he had been one of the first tutors in the pioneering tutorial classes established by the WEA and Oxford University in North Staffordshire, and supported the path-breaking report Oxford and Working-Class Education (1908). Tutorial classes were specifically nonvocational study which emphasized teaching and discussion rather than formal lecturing, mostly in the arts, social sciences, philosophy and history. Working men who attended these classes often became true disciples and Lindsay’s close ally in North Staffordshire, Ernest Cartwright, became a key agent in the campaign for a University College of North Staffordshire.

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Scott claims that what the WEA activists wanted from the university were ‘weapons’ to understand and handle ‘power’, which strongly influenced Lindsay’s thinking about education (ibid, p. 70). He admired the social inventiveness of adult education and the combination of democratic control and academic standards assured by the Tutorial Classes Committee, which benefited the working-class movement and the universities alike. He drew an example from the way WEA tutors brought back to Oxford new subjects of interest such as ‘social’ history, pioneered by Tawney, especially. While he compared the progress of students in tutorial classes favourably with conventional undergraduates, he believed workers had to learn about academic standards (ibid., p. 72). Above all he was driven by the social justice philosophy that characterized the movement and was fond of quoting the Levellers’ refrain: ‘The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he’ (ibid.). Lindsay fused his experience of adult education with new thinking, especially that accompanying American and European experiments in higher education combining specialist and general education. This drew on a wider debate on the function of universities and the need for ‘cultural synthesis’ that dated back to Abraham Flexner’s criticism, (based on three lectures he had given at Oxford in May 1928), of both British and American universities’ increasing absorption in vocational studies (Flexner, 1930). A key point of reference for Lindsay was the report of the Harvard Committee, General Education in a Free Society (1945), written by the faculty at Harvard University, on how, in an increasingly specialized educational system, a general education for citizenship could be preserved and strengthened. The Harvard report required that all students should share a common core of knowledge that would include a firm grasp of the country’s rich cultural heritage and the nature of the changing society in which they lived. It should comprise teaching about the physical world, man’s place in society and man’s relation to man. These themes, the authors insisted, should recur thematically both in high school and at college so that by the end a common bond for all citizens would be forged. What may well have appealed to Lindsay, according to Scott, was the uniting of two great American principles, the ‘Jeffersonian’ one of the selection and training of all young people of great promise and the ‘Jacksonian’ one of the education of the masses as enlightened and responsible citizens (Scott, 1961). Significantly, this new thinking was given greater urgency by the rapid cooling of American and British relations with the Soviet Union in the late 1940s that was to lead to the Cold War. James Conant, the President of Harvard, who appointed the Committee, later described himself as a ‘cold-war warrior’, expressing the same concerns about the spread of Soviet communism as would Lindsay, himself. Both emphasized the strength of the liberal ‘Christian’ tradition in preserving social cohesion and in drawing the sting from Marxist ideology in a perhaps predictably catastrophist

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way – much as Lindsay had hoped to do in Glasgow in the1920s. Lindsay shared Conant’s belief that the continuance of the liberal and humanist tradition was ‘essential if our civilization is to be preserved’ (Harvard, 1945, viii). For Lindsay the problems of the British universities echoed those outlined by Harvard. He felt there was a loss of synthetic power which had become manifest in a series of debilitating intellectual and cultural separations, such as that of specialist studies from general understanding; of intellectual development from the all round development of the individual; of the intelligentsia from ordinary life and in different specialist views of the world that could not always be integrated. Another key work for Lindsay was Universities in Transformation (1940) by Adolph Löwe, whom he probably met through Oldham’s Moot, in whose debates on universities Löwe played a significant role (Steele and Taylor, 2010). For Löwe, British universities traditionally offered three important elements: a specialist professional training, the art of living together in a college system and a Weltanschauung through which they could hold values and perspectives in common, or at least discuss their differences in the same conceptual language. In modern times, however, technical demands had increased academic specialization, leading to the disappearance of the college system from all but the ancient universities and the disintegration of ideological cohesion. While welcoming the introduction of Modern Greats (PPE) at Oxford, which was inspired by Lindsay, Löwe thought it remedied the situation only in part (Scott, 1971, p. 337). The problem of the new expanded university intake was that undergraduates were decreasingly from the same ‘unitary’ public school background and no longer instinctively talked a common language. As at Harvard, a common ideological core had to be re-established if knowledge was to resist fragmentation, while more unorthodox ideas were to be ‘discouraged’. A third deep influence over Lindsay’s thought was the vein of idealist philosophy prominent in both Glasgow and Oxford when he was an undergraduate and which never left him, despite the onslaught from linguistic and analytic philosophy that shortly emanated from Cambridge and became especially dominant at Oxford. A number of commentators have drawn attention to this, particularly Gordon and White (1979) and Robbins (1982). On his return to Glasgow as Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1922, Lindsay’s inaugural lecture fulsomely acknowledged his debt to the idealist tradition of Edward Caird and Henry Jones (Lindsay, 1922). Caird and Jones developed highly influential theories of the state and citizenship and the role of the universities in promoting social harmony and justice (Turner and Hamilton, 2006). At Oxford, Gallie notes that Lindsay also refined the collectivist side of this approach to include an enhanced role for individuals, who should exercise moral authority within the group. The essence of democracy lay in ‘free

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associations’ such as churches, universities, charities, cultural associations and trade unions (the distant origins of British Prime Minister, David Cameron’s, ‘Big Society’). In rescuing the moral autonomy of the individual, while seeing the collective as the source of identity, Lindsay, as well as Cole and Tawney and others caught up in the Guild Socialist movement, saw this as an attractive alternative to Fabian brute statism. Lindsay further drew on thinking about universities from several contemporary European sources, although two were especially notable. The first and perhaps more conservative source was Ortega y Gasset’s recently translated Mission of the University (1946), a somewhat pessimistic reflection on the fragmenting of cultural and epistemological unity (Scott, 1971, p. 346). Lindsay took from it a number of elements which were in a sense already half-articulated in his general philosophy, including: the need for the cultural unity of the medieval universities, which was being replaced by the training and research ethos of the modernist Berlin/Manchester model; and the rise of what Ortega called the ‘new Barbarians’ who were learned in one thing and ignorant in everything else. Third, the conventional equation of ‘science’ with ‘inquiry’ was essential but not sufficient and was in need of some kind of ‘spiritual’ supplement. Finally, he felt, culture was a question of proportion, a quest for integration and seeing the whole, in the terms T. S. Eliot had used in his influential essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919). A second European source was Karl Mannheim, whose views on sociology and planning were influential. Lindsay was in part responsible for securing an academic post for Mannheim, as a refugee like Löwe from Nazi persecution during the late 1930s, and there was considerable mutual intellectual admiration between the two men. Mannheim, who had sent him his revised Ideology and Utopia in 1940, admired Lindsay’s The Modern Democratic State (1943) and this led to a fruitful exchange of ideas. Like Eliot, Mannheim was a leading intellectual force in Oldham’s Moot and had contributed forcefully to its debates on culture and university policy (Steele and Taylor, 2010). Lindsay wanted Mannheim to ‘turn your great mind’ onto the subject of a new school of sociology, psychology and anthropology (quoted in Scott, 1971, p. 341). Mannheim’s stress on a ‘science of society’, which coincided with Tawney’s view, as the new core of university education was very appealing and he saw Keele as a laboratory for research on social and industrial problems. Like Mannheim, he was fundamentally opposed to ‘value free’ sociology on the old positivist model (Scott, 1971, p. 344). Lindsay therefore brought to the campaign for a university college in North Staffordshire a cluster of related elements: an idealist vision of the social function of the university grounded in the Christian neo-Hegelian idealism of Jowett, Caird and Jones; a concern for the role of citizenship and the importance of adult education drawn from his work in the WEA; a fear of the effects of over-specialization and cultural fragmentation, reflected by

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the Harvard report; a remedy for the decline of communal Weltanschauung as expressed by Löwe and the related spiritual cohesion of Ortega; and finally, the central place of ‘social science’ in the new conception of a university. Very much a part of the broad Labour church, in which he had been an educational advisor before the war, Lindsay was both the conservator of the older vision of socially committed, liberal education and the visionary of the universities’ place in the new egalitarian Britain, which lay at the heart of Labour policy.

The local campaign for a University College of North Staffordshire After a prolonged campaign that had united the local Labour councils, the adult education movement and senior members of Oxford University, the University College of North Staffordshire welcomed its first students in 1950. While it was the dedicated commitment of the North Staffordshire Adult Education Committee that had kept the project alive for thirty years, the leading member of this ‘junta’, as Lowe later called it (Lowe, 1969), was Lindsay. It was in effect the first significant attempt to create a university college in England ab initio for over a century and it became a university only ten years after Lindsay’s death (Gallie, 1960, p. 44). In line with the demands for university colleges in the industrial north and midlands – as in Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham – in the late nineteenth century, local aspirations for higher education were the primary motivation. Although, as with the civic Redbricks, the Stoke proposers wanted a higher education institution to service local industry, a significant difference was that it was not Liberal industrialists who led the charge but Labour local authorities. Local pressure for a university college had dated from the 1890s, with calls for Chairs in Chemistry and Engineering (Lowe, 1969, p. 42). The proposal failed to receive enough funding support from local industry and, instead, the local authorities of Stoke and Staffordshire founded the Central College of Science and Technology for technical instruction and research into pottery and mining (Malbon, 1954–55, p. 34). While this partly fulfilled a local aspiration for a well-trained workforce, it did not entirely satisfy the broader Labour political movement. In 1908, excited about Mansbridge’s proposal for WEA/Oxford tutorial classes in Rochdale, a local government officer, Ernest Cartwright, successfully petitioned Oxford University to sponsor a similar tutorial class in the Potteries town of Longton. This led to enduring friendships between Tawney and Lindsay, its first tutors, and the movement was further strengthened by the Oxford Summer Schools and supported by Mansbridge’s book University Tutorial Classes (1913). The

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Adult Education Committee, formed at that time, promoted classes across North Staffordshire and petitioned the Oxford University Tutorial Classes Committee (TCC) to appoint Tawney on a permanent basis as Resident Tutor for North Staffordshire in 1918 (ibid., pp. 34–5). Cartwright made clear the region now needed a college for the development of the individual as a whole person, rather than the ‘workman’, which should be non-utilitarian and aimed at the full development of personality. Supported by other tutorial class students in the local press in 1919, he proposed a college to forward industrial and commercial progress and develop ‘enlightened’ citizenship (Lowe, 1969, p. 42). While initially little came of this, by 1920 the WEA had already established a flourishing network of branches to which Lindsay gave further encouragement in 1925, claiming the local movement had attained such a size that it could dream of creating a real ‘people’s university’ (Scott, 1971, p. 380). Despite its powerful organization, however, for the next twenty years ‘dreaming’ was about the sum of it.

A modest proposal The context for the renewed proposal for a university college, following the end of World War II, was radically different. Now there was a Labour government with, for the first time, a substantial majority. Following the tabling of a number of reports commissioned during the latter period of the war, such as those of Barlow and Percy (see Chapter 3), university expansion was, despite its other priorities, a necessity. This was supported by the UGC, as we have seen, which had urged all universities to make plans for doubling the number of undergraduates by the end of the decade. Because not all universities were prepared to agree to this, amid much grumbling the prospect of founding new higher education institutions was aired. Universities then were largely of two types: the ancient establishments of Oxford and Cambridge, collegiate and humanistic; and the civic ‘Redbricks’, as they were increasingly known, that were based in the industrial towns and had a greater commitment to science, technology and the applied social sciences. Neither model in itself seemed quite adequate to the campaigners in Stoke, who wanted highly qualified graduates for the regional pottery and mining industries but also wanted more teachers, social workers and administrators with an academically informed grasp of the community’s economic and social needs. While a high degree of specialism was welcome, they also wanted an educational model that looked much more like the inter-disciplinary classes of the adult education movement, drawing on economics, politics, social history and philosophy but without hard and fast disciplinary boundaries. On Lowe’s account, a series of coincidences had placed supporters of the scheme in influential positions: Tawney (as we have seen in Chapter 3)

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was at the UGC and was Chairman of its well-funded Sub-Committee on Social Sciences, Cartwright was on the North Staffordshire Committee for Adult Education (NSCAE) with Lindsay, now Master of Balliol, as its Chair representing Oxford, and Gladys Malbon, a staff tutor for the Oxford TCC, its secretary (Lowe, 1969, p. 43). The NSCAE represented a considerable consolidation of local interests and included representatives from Stoke City Council, Staffordshire County Council, the WEA and the Oxford Delegacy. A key ally was the ageing but energetic Vicar of Etruria, Reverend Thomas Horwood, the leader of Labour’s group on Stoke City Council who ‘galvanized and cajoled the city council to provide the funds and drive through the bid for a new university in North Staffordshire’ (Easom, 2007; Gallie, 1960, pp. 47–8). Tawney set the ball rolling by informing the NSCAE, in January 1946, that his old ally, Hugh Dalton, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, had made funding available for university expansion and would consider new proposals – but advised that the Committee should move fast (Malbon, 1954–55; Scott, 1961, pp. 312–13). Local MPs Ellis Smith and Barnet Stross, with Malbon and Carr, met with the UGC’s representatives Moberly and Tawney in March 1946. They argued that there were not enough university places for local applicants in a region that had such a successful record of university-level adult education. They wanted to keep their Oxford links and for the college to be residential but, more controversially, proposed that they should confer their own degrees. In reply, while modestly encouraging, the UGC specified there was to be no new building and that a strong measure of local support would have to be demonstrated. On 2 May, with the encouragement of J. F. Carr, Director of Education, the Labour-controlled Stoke Council set up a special committee to investigate the provision of a university college in principle, composed of representatives from North Staffordshire, the WEA and Oxford University, which was called the ‘University Exploratory Committee’ with Lindsay as its Chairman (Malbon, 1954–55, p. 35). Thus it was that a combination of political opportunity, personal ties and deeply embedded labour movement networks united to develop the process of founding a new university college for the North Midlands. A fire was lit, but in other political circles it was viewed as a Labour plot to spend public money on sectional interests: the North Staffordshire Sentinel was swift to challenge public funding for a college ‘run by Socialists for Socialists and propagating chiefly Socialist education’ (quoted in Mountford, 1972, p. 53, note 5). There was little to fear, however, from courses in ceramics and sociology, which were the burden of the Committee’s modest proposals to the UGC. Lindsay had made it clear to Moberly in a personal note that he did not want to create a replica of other university colleges and that he intended to engage colleagues such as G. D. H. Cole and Karl Mannheim who had been thinking about ‘the problem of Modern Universities’ (quoted in Mountford, 1972, p. 50). For its part, the Exploratory Committee’s ‘Memorandum

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to the UGC on the Proposal for a University in North Staffordshire’ of 11 November 1946, proposed a local centre for higher education that would offer only one Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree of three years, bringing together sciences and social studies with an optional fourth year for training in teaching or social administration. It would also offer a Bachelor of Science (BSc) honours degree that would centre on physical chemistry, with physics and biology as subsidiaries (Lowe, 1969, p. 44). Thus, far from being an ideological imposition of an already determined form of ‘socialist’ university, it actually showed quite a pragmatic understanding of the needs of industry and community, as understood by local Labour representatives and adult educationists. Mountford noted that the representatives from Manchester University, who later examined the proposal, could find no evidence of ‘political’ origins (Mountford, 1974, p. 67). The discourse of ‘regionalism’ in the proposal was subtly complemented by one of ‘modernity’, which called for ‘an experiment in Higher Education suited to the needs of a period of intense social change’ (Malbon, 1954–55, p. 37). The Committee wanted a university for the twentieth century that overcame the division between arts and sciences and what Moberly was calling ‘the evil of departmentalism’. The tasks of the modern citizen and the study of modern society should be central to the curriculum, combined in some way with degree-level vocational courses and freed from the constraints of the London External Degree Programme (which bound other university colleges). These should include teacher-training linked to social studies (rather than psychology), to cater especially for teachers recruited to the new secondary modern schools brought about by the Education Act of 1944. A further vocational qualification was indicated by the many new careers in social and public administration suggested by the expansion of the Welfare State (ibid, p. 38). North Staffordshire, the Committee argued, was an ideal site for such an experiment, since it presented many typical problems thrown up by modern industrial conglomerations such as those posed by technical innovation in the pottery and mining industries. The college could become a ‘social laboratory’ for industries and for local communities in the post-war economy (ibid.). In the Committee’s view, substantial credibility for the proposal was evident in the number of extramural students that had already benefited from its traditional association with Oxford University. The flourishing adult education network in North Staffordshire, it claimed, gave substance to the figure of ‘the student member intellectually disciplined by the formal work of his class and zealous in the community whose affairs he helped to govern’ (quoted in ibid., p. 41). The proposed university college would be complementary to all institutions and associations in the area concerned with higher education, whether through technical or adult education. The UGC, however, was concerned about the limited ‘national’ significance of the proposal and called the Exploratory Committee in for

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talks. Gladys Malbon, who was there, claims diplomatically that the initial proposals were subsequently ‘modified and enriched’ in discussion with the Ministry of Education and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, as well as with the local authorities in North Staffordshire. The revised proposal was then discussed by the UGC on 3 December 1946, which eventually, with the urging of Tawney and Moberly, recommended that it would ‘consider sympathetically’ the proposal ‘provided that the basis of studies in Science and Arts be adequately broadened’ (quoted in Mountford, 1972, p. 55). Moreover, the UGC had both to placate rumblings from the existing university colleges, fearful of being leapfrogged, and massage the break with precedent in departing from London University external degrees. Moberly insisted on adequate arrangements for sponsorship by a university or other universities to be made. Lastly, the UGC wanted to be assured that the proposal could ‘be brought in line with university policy for the country as a whole’ (quoted in Malbon, 1954–55, p. 36; Mountford, 1972, p. 56). The significance of this last criterion was that, much to the dismay of some of the campaigners, it effectively downgraded the proposed regional focus of the college and moved the proposal onto, as far as the UGC was concerned, safer policy territory. The Exploratory Committee had little option but to accept the desired ‘national’ emphasis on the need for more adequate provision and entered the next stage of the campaign. It began negotiations with other universities, sought to consolidate local finances, explored possible sites, started the process of drawing up a charter and canvassed for a principal. Lindsay himself had raised the possibility of sponsorship by other universities, probably on the recommendation of Hector Hetherington, former Principal of Exeter University College. Now Principal of Glasgow University, Hetherington had been Lindsay’s successor to the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in 1925. For Mountford, ‘Hetherington came to play a progressively influential role, not least when questions of academic freedom and the independence of universities were concerned’ (Mountford, 1965). Meetings to discuss Keele involved Charles Morris from Leeds, Janet Vaughan from Somerville, John Fulton from Balliol and Thomas Hodgkin from the Oxford Delegacy (Adult Education Department). Cole was absent but promised to prepare notes on the curriculum, based on those published in his article for the Political Quarterly in 1944 (Cole, 1944). Despite heckling from the Sentinel, which continued its ‘School for Socialists’ line and demanded instead that the existing technical college be upgraded, the Exploratory Committee had some reason to believe the wind was set fair. But it reckoned without the CVCP, which the ever-cautious Moberly then decided to consult. The CVCP’s meeting in April 1947 concluded that there was ‘no prospect of gain’ in promoting new institutions of higher education, when existing universities could be resourced to accommodate the necessary expansion. Moreover, the North Staffordshire

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proposal appeared to be more like a new type of technical college than a proper university and hence degree-granting powers could not be given without ‘serious detriment to the whole university system’ (quoted in Mountford, 1972, p. 58). Concerned that Stoke was leapfrogging the queue, the CVCP issued further warnings about the effect of the proposal on other university colleges and universities. A further blow was the CVCP’s revelation that Hugh Dalton shared the Committee’s view on the ‘inadvisability of founding a new university at this stage’ (ibid.). Given the Exploratory Committee’s reasonable expectations, this was an unexpected blow.

The compromise curriculum Curiously, what was to emerge following the CVCP’s rejection of the proposal was arguably more radical in form and owed much to Lindsay’s reading of Scottish generalism and American experimentalism. Lowe’s view that ‘Lindsay and Fulton bamboozled the idealistic if naive local WEA enthusiasts who wanted a two-faculty university to teach only social sciences to trade unionists and medicine to those who would treat the industrial diseases of the region’ seems a little harsh (Lowe, 2003, p. 327). There is no evidence that Lindsay at this stage wanted anything other than what the committee asked for and it was only when it was rejected that he turned to a more theorized approach, drawing on contemporary discussion of a variety of university models. Far from being demoralized by the CVCP’s reaction and Moberly’s caution, Lindsay immediately swung into action and on 14 May 1947 opened a House of Lords debate on university education. Clearly stung by the way non-governmental bodies were being allowed to dictate policy, it was in effect a call to arms to the Labour Government to take up the issue of university education rather than leave it to entrenched interests. He called for a Departmental Committee to be appointed on which the UGC would be represented but would not be allowed to dominate. Lindsay reminded their lordships that the conclusions reached by the recent (but neglected) committees of enquiries into universities centred on issues of social justice (Hansard, 1947). In summary, he argued that the Government was already committed to the expansion of university education but needed to understand the effect of this ‘revolution’ on the university system as a whole. While the Butler Act of 1944 had removed the great reproach to British education – that so few received secondary education – ‘education for all’ (echoing the title of Tawney’s 1922 Labour Party policy pamphlet) was not simply a call for an expansion of the grammar schools but presumed a wholly new tripartite system. The expansion required of university education, therefore, had to be considered in the same light. Lindsay reminded the House of the need for more scientists, as outlined by the Barlow Report (1946), as well as for dramatically increased

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numbers of teachers, ‘professional men’ – especially doctors – and the newer professions that had not hitherto relied on universities for education, such as those involved with the technical aspects of business management and social services. Similarly, due to the rapid progress of scientific knowledge, there was an increasing need for refresher courses. Lindsay confessed: ‘I ought to believe in knowledge for its own sake – but I really do not think knowledge is much good unless you manage to spread it through the people and use it in the population’ (ibid., p. 7). While he also called for the training of many more adult education tutors to cater for those intelligent working people who had never had the benefit of a university education and were now clamouring for it, this apparent ‘argument from utility’ rang alarm bells amongst his Oxford colleagues. Turning to what kind of higher education was now required, Lindsay insisted there was no reason why the extra funding for university expansion promised by the Chancellor, Hugh Dalton, should be confined to existing institutions. The Government should urgently consider the proposals for new university colleges, as already asked for by Stoke, Carlisle, York and Brighton for example, which need not conform to either the civic Redbricks or Oxbridge models nor be fettered by London external degrees. He drew attention to the experiments in American university education, especially its small colleges like that at Annapolis and MIT-type technological institutions, and suggested that some new institutions might eschew higher degrees and consider Bachelor degrees only. The very high proportion of young people attending universities in the USA, compared with Britain, he noted, was extraordinary and the great technical efficiency of America was clearly connected with this figure. In support, he quoted the rather anecdotal observation of one American Professor of Physics who, while applauding the standard of British graduates, claimed that because of the much greater numbers of Americans with some higher education, only in America could the insights of research be widely diffused (ibid., p. 706). Lindsay finally turned to the immediate object of his frustration over the Stoke proposals, the UGC. Much as he admired its work of protecting university independence, it was, he believed, not the right body to consider the kind of changes possible. He claimed university freedom was often ‘justifiably disturbed’ by government commissions and one such was now urgently needed (ibid.). The promoters of the Stoke experiment wanted an institution that bore a close relation to the distinctive characteristics of the locality by including courses such as the study of pottery, social services and adult education, which would include a Chair in Ceramics coupled with an emphasis on social studies. Why, he concluded, should this not be carefully considered? Although Lindsay’s speech was calculated to challenge settled opinions of the Conservative majority in the Lords, not to mention many of his Oxford colleagues, Labour’s Lord Chancellor, Viscount Jowitt, was remarkably

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amenable to his proposal. Jowitt agreed that in the context of advice from ‘sponsoring’ universities, the people of North Staffordshire had the right to set their own examinations and, catching the mood of the debate, concluded: ‘Might that not be an experiment worth making?’ (quoted in Mountford, 1972, p. 62). It was not until the following year, however, that the North Staffordshire Exploratory Committee and the UGC met again and, in a marked change of tactics, Lindsay proposed a decisive change of approach in the curriculum. Despite his arguments in a House of Lords speech emphasizing local concerns, the focus shifted from the regionalism and technological training at the heart of the original proposal to an attack on academic specialization. After protracted negotiations Lindsay and his former colleague from Balliol, John Fulton, revised the original curriculum in favour of something with a fuller academic range and staffing (Lowe, 1969, p. 48). Lindsay wrote to the UGC, in January 1948, that the Exploratory Committee was now more concerned with providing a curriculum for the BA which would break down the departmentalism he regarded as so harmful in much modern university teaching, rather than with concentrating on specialization in subjects especially suited to the region (ibid., p. 50). While not rejecting a national focus, Lindsay had thus now reintroduced an anti-specialization argument to enhance regional concerns. The optional fourth year for training, proposed in the original curriculum, was dropped and replaced with a general first year designed to combat intellectual isolation and departmentalism. Although it now more closely resembled the Scottish model, this compromise was to become symbolic of Keele’s difference in the English context. Lindsay also opposed offering a wide variety of honours courses because of the inevitable tendency, as he saw it, towards specialization; and he proposed instead six paired subjects for honours: chemistry and physics, history and English, and economics and politics. The three-year ‘ordinary’ pass degree that had been originally proposed now became an honours degree which, with the addition of the Foundation Year, would make it a four-year degree. Lowe notes that by the time the first students were admitted in October 1950 the curriculum bore little resemblance to that proposed in 1946. John Fulton’s role in composing the new curriculum was a personal epiphany, Lowe believes, that determined the shape of his future career, concluding: ‘So immersed were he and Lindsay in the arguments on the reform of the universities that they led the North Staffordshire Committee away from their local vision to one which sought to meet wider national needs’ (Lowe, 2003, p. 327). So dazzled by Fulton were the Keele Committee they demanded he should become their first Principal. Fulton declined to be put forward for the post of Principal, however – and instead became Principal at Swansea University College – but the fruits of his labours were arguably also evident when he became the first Vice-Chancellor

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at Sussex, as we shall see later. In effect it spearheaded a new approach to cross- and inter-disciplinary teaching that was to characterize the new generation of universities of the 1960s. Had Lindsay compromised? He was towards the end of his career and now terminally ill. Genuinely affected by what he knew of changes in the USA to combat specialization, he was also still committed to the ‘studium generale’ introductory year of the post-war reformed German universities, which he had had a hand in introducing. He admired the four-year Glasgow MA degree and the work on redesigning the ‘Ordinary’ effected by A. C. Bradley and Gilbert Murray, claiming: ‘it requires one’s whole imagination and energy to teach the ordinary class’ and, that arts education should be a general education through rather than about the subjects treated (quoted in Scott, 1961, p. 348). Lowe’s conclusion perceptively catches the moment of change: So, whilst it was from the local adult education movement that the idea of a University derived, and largely because of the strength of that movement that the scheme survived, it is not surprising that the College which was established in 1950 bore a closer relationship to the thought of the day than to the local movement by which it was conceived. (Lowe, 1969, p. 52–3) Walter Moberly, as Chairman of the UGC, was won over by the way the revised curriculum confronted the problems of departmentalism and understood the desire of the committee not to be confined by the London external degree. Echoing Jowitt’s earlier comment, he pronounced it ‘an experiment to be tried’ and was supported by twelve of the thirteen UGC members. Under the new proposals, it was intended that the teaching of social studies and science, whose main purposes were to train teachers and social workers, should be combined on the Oxford Modern Greats model (Scott, 1961, p. 317). Manchester, Birmingham and Oxford Universities would share the sponsoring duties, while Balliol might even share the teaching staff. All agreed that the University College should be ‘an experiment in Higher Education suited to the needs of a period of intense social change’ (ibid.). Some pitfalls remained. Ongoing rumblings from the Sentinel questioned whether it would become ‘a University dominated and controlled by local authorities’ (ibid.). In response, Stoke and Staffordshire Councils gave assurances on the college’s future independence and, as Malbon notes, its Charter in fact gave more power to its academic community than that of any previous university to theirs (Malbon, 1954–5, p. 46). A Principal still had to be found, however, and on John Fulton’s first refusal, it also seemed inevitable that Lindsay would be approached; and, so it was – he agreed in September 1947. As Lowe has it: ‘When they failed to get their

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first-choice Principal, it was Lindsay, already suffering from cancer, who was turned to in order to devote the final two years of his life to building a university which would enshrine his ideals, his linkage of moral philosophy and social action’ (Lowe, 2003, p. 326). The Academic Council was formed in July 1949, the Charter was sealed and the University College established. The college grew steadily during the 1950s and in 1962 was granted full university status.

Keele’s legacy and the ‘New Universities’ How much then did Keele influence the new generation of universities, many of which, with names such as Kent, Sussex, Warwick, Lancaster, York and Essex, would sound like a cast list from a Shakespeare history play? But in the decade between the granting of Keele’s Charter in 1951 and that of Sussex, the first of the ‘New Universities’, in 1961, British society changed significantly: ‘the lean and austere days of Lindsay and Keele had come to fruition in the economic heyday of Macmillan’s government of the early 1960s’, writes Gregor (Gregor, 1983 p. 158). Although strictly speaking the new universities of the next decade were the product of Conservative policy, it could legitimately be asked what they owed to the post-war Labour-inspired ethos. Even with the new-found affluence of the late 1950s, Conservative Education ministers still had to battle with the Treasury for higher education funding. The way was led by David Eccles, who argued a now familiar Labour theme that universities were ‘an economic investment’ and it was continued by his successors Edward Boyle and Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham). The change of tone was confirmed in 1961 when Macmillan set up the Robbins Committee to review the needs of higher education. It was a most important moment. Silver remarks that Macmillan’s decision effectively ended the tradition of having ‘no policy’ towards universities and that they should now be articulated into a system (Silver, 2003, p. 184). This was what Tawney had urged for over two decades. How did the UGC react? Hitherto, as we have seen, it had been sceptical about the need for new universities, arguing that expansion could be contained within existing institutions. However, in its quinquennial report in 1952, the UGC recognized three important experimental elements in the foundation of Keele, as follows: Lindsay’s educational ideas; conferring its own degrees under sponsorship; and, crucially, for the first time the proposal was backed by the British state. This latter point was to be the key to the development of the new universities (Perkin, 1969, p. 61). For Stewart, Keele could be considered thus as a fundamentally new kind of political venture: ‘Although the initiative (came from Stoke) and not from the UGC, there was a sense in which Keele could be said to have been founded by the

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State’ (Stewart, 1989, p. 56). An Association of University Teachers (AUT) report of 1958 called for at least five new universities, which should follow the Keele precedent in awarding their own degrees (ibid., p. 63). In the wake of Keele’s foundation, the UGC had warmed to Brighton’s proposal for a new university college (strongly backed by Quintin Hogg, then its local MP). In 1958, under pressure from Eccles, the Treasury both announced it was raising its long-term target for student places from 106,000 to 124,000 and gave its support for the Brighton proposal. When the Director of Education at Brighton, W. G. Stone, submitted his proposal to the UGC, he had Keele in mind as a prototype (Mountford, 1972, p. 286). Significantly, the man Lindsay and the Exploratory Committee had wanted to become Keele’s Principal and who had played such a large part in reformulating its curriculum, John Fulton, became the first ViceChancellor of what became the University of Sussex. Keele, Fulton claimed in 1972, broke the ice for the new academic generation: ‘The battle for Keele was no pushover, it had to be fought all the way, and in fighting with success that battle, Keele smoothed the path for all new foundations which have come after it’ (quoted in Stewart, 1989, p. 56). Through founding schools of study rather than subject departments, Sussex was perhaps the closest to Keele in breaking down academic disciplinary barriers, which Fulton’s successor, Asa Briggs, described as ‘redrawing the map of learning’ (quoted in ibid., p. 289). Following Sussex, proposals from York and Norwich gained approval in 1960, while Essex, Kent, Warwick and Lancaster followed in 1961. With the publication of the Robbins Report in 1963, Stirling was founded in 1967, (the only new university to adopt the Scottish four-year degree) and the New University of Ulster at Coleraine in 1968. However, none of the new universities followed Lindsay’s dream of creating a ‘common core of knowledge’. Diversity rather than unity was increasingly the common theme of the 1960s and several of them, York, Lancaster and Kent, for example, returned to the collegiate model of Oxford and Cambridge. Many of Keele’s other features were adopted though, including: closer staff-student relations, wider representation on governing bodies and a greater concern for the ‘learning experience’. All the new universities thereafter had out-of-town campuses, though none quite as isolated as Keele, and worked closely with local councils – although regional interests were quickly subsumed by national ones. Lindsay’s pragmatic disdain for post-graduate research, which he took from the American junior college model, was not emulated. All the new universities offered higher degrees from the outset and had aspirations for research excellence, which generally were rapidly attained. Organizationally, all the new universities accepted the principle that government approval for finance was essential and that responsibility for planning was to be shared between the UGC and the local promotional

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boards. In a refinement of the Keele sponsorship principle, Academic Planning Boards were established in consultation with the UGC to advise on drafting a Charter and choosing a Vice-Chancellor; and the universities had full degree-granting powers from the outset (Mountford, 1972, p. 287–8). Unlike Keele, which had initially to confine its intake to 600– 800, the new universities were expected by the UGC to aim at recruiting 3,000 students each. They also differed as much from each other as from Keele. Sussex and East Anglia were most committed to schools of study rather than disciplinary departments, of which there were four in Sussex and eight in East Anglia. York was more departmentally organized but allowed for broad studentdetermined curricula. Lancaster corralled related subjects into Boards of Studies and required students to include at least one non-specialist subject in the first year (a ‘Distant Minor’). Essex created schools from grouped departments such as physical sciences, mathematical studies, social studies and comparative studies. Warwick similarly included engineering science and molecular science, with all students expected to attend the first-year ‘critical inquiry’ course. Only Kent adopted ‘faculties’ but made integrated studies the focus of the first four terms’ work, emphasizing connections between related subjects (Mountford, 1972, p. 290–1). Stirling introduced a preliminary course that reflected Keele’s first year, ‘Approaches and Methods’, but later abandoned it; like Keele, it successfully integrated its professional training for teachers into a degree course. Ulster similarly provided integrated professional training. Moreover, the experimental interdisciplinary urge continued into new combinations of subjects and methods such as the programmes of Intellectual History at Sussex, Renaissance Studies at Warwick and Religious Studies at Lancaster. Influenced by this climate of experimentation, some of the civic universities began to offer combined degrees with interesting linking topics, such as Philosophy and English at Leeds. It should not be forgotten that university expansion during the 1960s continued elsewhere. Royal Charters were given to Aston University (1966), the University of Bath (1966), the University of Bradford (1966), Brunel University (1966), City University, London (1966), Herriot-Watt University (1966), Loughborough University (1966), the University of Salford (1967), the University of Strathclyde (1964) and the University of Surrey (1966), most of which were previously colleges of technology that provided higher education in some form. Although most used the more conventional disciplinary model, experimental and new cross-disciplinary courses were widespread. These universities concentrated mainly on technological and applied science courses with some innovative social science developments, for example Peace Studies and Inter-Disciplinary Human Studies at Bradford. None had medical schools and few had pure science or the full range of traditional Arts disciplines

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Conclusion Keele was unique because it represented the convergence of three powerful educational and political forces: the social purpose tradition of Jowett’s Oxford University, the adult education movement, and municipal Labour. They were crystallized in Lindsay’s vigorous advocacy of the project to the 1945 Labour Government, the majority of whose backbench working-class members registered the WEA as their most significant source of education. The third converging force, the local labour movement, controlled all the local councils and the three parliamentary seats in North Staffordshire. Lindsay’s demand for an entirely new model of university that combined the best of Oxford and Cambridge with the best of the civic Redbricks, while distinct from both, coincided with the rebirth of the spirit of ‘liberal education’ but in a distinctly Cold War climate. Many in the universities were uncomfortable with what they saw as the increasing ‘over-specialization’ of academic subjects, in the service of science and technology and the artificial separation of subjects, such as politics and history. The call made in government commissions, especially in the reports of Barlow and Percy, for universities to concentrate their energies on producing yet more technicians and scientists, only fuelled their concerns. Both the Labour and Tory governments knew that Britain needed such specialists to compete industrially with the much larger numbers of specialists then produced in the United States, Germany and above all the Soviet Union. But they were also anxious about the potential loss of a social cohesion implicit in a higher education system that failed to produce a common culture and ideological unity. Lacking the optimistic nationalism of the United States, Germany’s traditional cultural cement of Bildung, or the controlling orthodoxy of the Soviet Union’s Marxism-Leninism, many in both government and the universities, as a priority, wanted to re-establish a ‘spiritual’ unity among their graduates. But Lindsay’s almost mystical belief in the organic unity of knowledge was not necessarily attractive to those in the Labour Party who believed specialization was essential to a reformed and expanded higher education system. For many Frederic Ashby’s ‘technological humanism’ which prioritized specialization in the context of liberal studies, would appear more relevant (Silver, 2003, p. 170). For Collini, Lindsay’s ‘paradox of denial’ meant that despite being an intellectual himself, he was very sceptical of the claims of an intelligentsia (Collini, 2006, p. 460). The ‘intelligentsia’ was, in turn, very sceptical of Lindsay, some of his Oxford colleagues denouncing what they thought of as his latter-day Frankenstein’s monster at Keele, as trading away Oxford’s liberal traditions ‘for a nasty mess of socialistic, dubiously religious and dangerously authoritarian aims of his own’ (Gallie, 1961, p. 71). Despite its radical beginnings and path-breaking curriculum, Keele no longer excites educational passions, because its example has changed both

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later and older universities in the ways outlined above. But old habits have persisted and despite Lindsay’s crusade against specialization, what Collini calls ‘the departmental imperative’ has reasserted itself almost invariably, as at Sussex and other 1960s universities (Collini, 2006, p. 464). Curriculum experimentation was also not assisted by the rigid categories of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which promoted disciplinary units of assessment over all else. Keele was, however, both a uniquely Labour contribution to the shape of modern universities and a romantic attempt to rejuvenate an ailing liberal humanism. Michael Young’s belief that Keele was the most important experiment in universities in the post-war period may be right, but clearly another powerful vein of opinion wanted demonstrable economic relevance from its universities rather than a humanistic ‘education for citizenship’. Henceforth, two paths of mutually contradictory reform in the universities could be seen emerging among those who were concerned about higher education in the Labour Party; and these we shall examine in Chapter 6.

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Chapter Five

Labour Party Intellectuals and the New Sociology By the end of the 1950s, the arenas for thinking about education within the broader Labour Party had changed markedly from those immediately following the end of the war. The older generation of intellectuals, grounded in the public service tradition of Arnold’s Rugby and Jowett’s Balliol, was fading. Lindsay died in 1952 and, after a long period of illness, Tawney died in 1962. Tawney’s left-Fabian colleague, the ‘sensible extremist’ G. D. H. Cole, who had campaigned for social research as a basis for policy, died in 1959 (Wright, 1979, pp. 1–10). His own pursuit of curriculum change in higher education towards the social sciences (exemplified in his article in the Political Quarterly (Cole, 1944)) was widely debated, while his teaching at Oxford had influenced many Labour politicians, including two future leaders of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson. His energetic development of the Fabian Research Department (FRD) had confirmed it as one of the leading policy research units in the UK. Cole had set it the task of providing the labour movement with all the necessary information for dealing with government and employers (Wright, 1979, p. 88). But despite Cole’s concern with learning, and especially adult education, the FRD’s output on education was fairly patchy. Subsequently, however, the Fabian Society became an intermittent but valuable source of policy thinking on education and the universities. In the wider intellectual climate of the Left, other influences included the philosopher John Macmurray, whose promotion of the Scottish ‘democratic intellect’ tradition was closely related to the vision of Lindsay – whom he followed from Glasgow to Balliol. Roy Lowe notes the significant place he occupied on the Left in the intellectual arguments about reforming universities: [W]hen Macmurray participated in the debate on the needs of the universities, he lined up with the criticisms made by Lindsay and others of over-specialization. He argued in the Universities Quarterly in 1944 that there was a pressing need for the unification of Arts and Sciences. The university, he said, ‘existed for disjointed specialisms’. Macmurray gave strength to the new universities movement with his suggestion that ‘it may be easier to achieve a new cultural synthesis in places where an old one has not to be displaced or overcome’. (Lowe, 2003, p. 22)

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Like Cole, Macmurray represented a strand on the Left that tried to make an accommodation with Marxism, but a Marxism that was freed from the mechanistic materialism of the Soviet variety. In books like The Philosophy of Communism (1933), Macmurray tried to reconcile Marxism with religion and especially ethics. Although he rejected orthodox Marxism’s economic determinism and the collectivism that, in his view, subordinated the individual to the state, he was convinced of the need for the state to pursue social justice and collective ownership of the means of production in order to enable fully individual growth and a properly communal life among the people. Macmurray’s brand of philosophical inquiry however suffered with the onset of the Cold War and his influence began to be felt more in psychology than in the emergent discipline of sociology (Costello, 2002). Balliol gave way to the LSE. Increasingly, a younger generation of social scientists, economists and educationalists was becoming evident in Labour intellectual circles. Many benefited from the reforms pursued by Tawney and Lindsay that had cajoled the universities into enhancing the place of social sciences and making curriculum changes that called for greater sociological contextualization of study. Many of Labour’s new intellectuals were now gaining senior academic posts in the social sciences and, inter alia in that new field, the Sociology of Education. Although Michael Young was never content to rest in one place for long but flitted blithely between the academic, political and publishing spheres, resting only to found a new educational institution here (the National Extension College) or write a path-breaking satire there, The Rise of the Meritocracy, (1958), he was in many senses the bridge between the intellectual traditions of Labour and the new professional sociologists. Young considered Tawney his mentor and first mover but his bohemian upbringing at Dartington College meant he had little in common with Tawney’s fairly traditional brand of Christian Socialism. As a student at LSE he also knew Laski and Cole and was for a time a member of the CPGB, remarking: ‘I feel strongly drawn to the Socialist Party but the Communists are certainly more intelligent people’ (quoted in Briggs, 2001, p. 40). He worked closely with Tawney as President of the WEA and for Cole’s Nuffield College Reconstruction Survey in 1941, where he was seen by Margaret Cole as ‘a very new recruit to the barely recognized study of sociology’ (quoted in ibid., p. 58). In 1943 he worked for the Political and Economic Planning (PEP) group that produced the Beveridge Report in 1943 and the following year moved on to the Labour Party Research Department, where he played a large part in drafting the party’s manifesto, ‘Let Us Face the Future’, in 1945. So Young was very much a key, if backroom, figure in shaping the direction of the reforming 1945 Labour Government, where he continued Cole’s role in attempting to establish social research as central to its policy making.

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Young was also close to Crosland, with whom he worked on the New Fabian Essays group, but often in complete disagreement, and Briggs sees a ‘creative tension’ between them. While they agreed on the need for comprehensive education and the ending of public school privilege, he strongly disagreed with Fabian centralization and saw himself in the William Morris, Guild Socialist decentralizing line, frequently complaining at Attlee’s failure to examine this kind of (what might now be called ‘Big Society’) socialism. Briggs notes subsequently the widespread influence of E. P. Thompson’s William Morris (1955, 2nd ed. 1976) on Young’s circle (ibid., p. 104). Young’s own influence on the new generation of sociologists was widely cited and he was held in deep affection (see Halsey, 1996). A further element in the grounding of the social sciences in British academia were European émigré intellectuals such as Karl Mannheim, at the LSE and the Institute of Education – although arguably his influence was more marked on policy students than educationalists. As Floud and Halsey noted ‘education was for him sociology in action. His notion of “social education” was of a planned educative society, based on a sociological understanding of the structural needs and possibilities of a “democratic” (industrial) order and implemented with the aid of social psychology’ (Floud and Halsey, 1958, p. 173). With his fellow émigré, Adolf Löwe, briefly at Manchester University before the war (as we saw in Chapter 3), Mannheim brought a European dimension to thinking about universities generally and reinforced the idea of higher education as a system and a necessary part of national social and economic planning. As a leading member of Oldham’s Moot during the war, his structural diagnosis of British society and his promotion of democratic planning had a considerable impact on both Walter Moberly, the Chair of the UGC, and Fred Clarke, Director of the London Institute of Education (Steele and Taylor, 2010). Mannheim’s pursuit of the goal of a broader notion of the social sciences, rather than simply a statistically based sociology, created an important new tone in academic circles. During the 1950s a number of influential sociological studies exposed the ideologically contrived basis of ‘intelligence testing’ and gave flesh to the issue of class discrimination in education. For example Floud, Halsey and Martin’s Social Class and Educational Opportunity (1956) was one of the first systematic attempts to show the socially determined nature of educational achievement. Jean Floud also later gave persuasive evidence to the Robbins Committee attacking the criterion of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests. She argued that the idea of intelligence as a factor determining future attainment was ‘scientifically virtually valueless’ (quoted in Simon, 1992, p. 235). Floud’s advice was: ‘There is no iron law of the national intellect imposing an upper limit on the educational potential of the population. What only the few could do yesterday the many can do today’ (British Government, 1963, p. 52). According to Simon, who worked with Floud at Leicester, this contributed to Robbins firmly rejecting the concept of ‘a strictly limited and biologically

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determined “pool of ability”’ so valued by conservatives (Simon, 1998, p. 236). (Floud’s equally esteemed brother, Bernard, was later considered for a government post by Wilson but was rejected on the grounds of security, MI5 advising that his links with university communists posed a security risk (ibid.)). This factually based and scientifically driven approach to policy making was becoming unavoidable and Crosland regularly met with the new sociologists at private dinner parties as a kind of private think tank (Glennerster, 1997). Crosland, although he appointed A. H. Halsey to be his educational advisor, was nevertheless contemptuous of expert opinion such as that propounded by Newsom’s committee (Lawton, 2005, p. 74). Halsey had been Floud’s pupil at LSE and became the doyen of the new generation of labourist educational sociologists. From a working-class, south London family, Halsey was a ‘scholarship boy’ who went to what he described as the ‘curiously provincial’ LSE to study sociology, then almost the only British institution to take it seriously as an academic discipline (Halsey, 1996, p. 45). Here, his fellow students, a group he characterized as the first group of career sociologists in Britain, included Ralph Dahrendorf, J. A. Banks and Olive Banks (the only woman in the group), David Lockwood, Michael Banton, Basil Bernstein, Percy Cohen, Norman Dennis and John Westergaard. Halsey noted that virtually none of them was from a privileged background and like himself came mostly from lower-middle or working-class politically radical families (ibid., pp. 45–6). While the campaigns of Moberly and Tawney in the UGC during the 1940s to establish the social sciences eventually resulted in no less than twenty-eight new university departments of sociology being formed in Britain during the 1960s, many giving Chairs to Halsey’s peers, sociology was never quite ‘respectable’. It was thus a kind of triumph of labourism, so much so that the eminent French sociologist Raymond Aron, visiting Halsey in 1965, remarked that ‘British sociology is essentially an attempt to make sense of the political problems of the Labour Party’ (ibid., p. 44). According to Halsey, it was Harold Laski, (although he was a political scientist rather than sociologist, and an important influence on Ralph Miliband), who had made the LSE ‘an intellectual instrument’ for the 1945 Labour Government (ibid., p. 48). Laski laid the intellectual groundwork and Halsey imbibed ‘the excitement of the social sciences’ from LSE’s tutors, which cosmopolitan group included at that time, Tawney himself, Lionel Robbins (later to chair the Government Committee on Higher Education), Karl Popper, Maurice Ginsburg and Harold Laski. David Glass and Jean Floud were his ‘seniors’. Popper’s ascendancy at LSE and the success of his The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), Halsey claimed, made it difficult for Marxism to gain recruits – John Westergaard and Ralph Miliband being two of the few exceptions – but it was nevertheless a part of the debate and Marx, like Talcott Parsons, had an honoured but not dominant place (ibid., p. 57). Significantly, however, it was the American Edward Shils, sharing his appointment with the University of Chicago, who was instrumental in

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drawing Halsey into sociology and giving him a taste for American and European research in the area. With Shils’s encouragement Halsey spent a year at Stanford in 1956 at a crucial moment for the American university system. It was exactly at the time Clark Kerr was building Berkeley to match the pre-eminence of Chicago, Columbia, Harvard and the Ivy League universities. Here he worked with one of the new higher education theorists, Martin Trow, who became a lifelong friend and with whom he subsequently wrote the highly acclaimed The British Academics (1971), and America became Halsey’s ‘favourite foreign country’ (ibid., p. 64). Struck by the Americans’ earnestness for education, he was fascinated by the way education had become a kind of ‘secular religion’ that – as was not the case in Britain – seemed to him to open up opportunities to even the lowliest child. Not surprisingly, therefore, at first querulously, he decided he wanted to ‘translate the American attitudes across the Atlantic’ (ibid., p. 65). In a remarkable kind of Hollywood reverie, emanating from his reflections on the film of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Halsey wrote in his autobiography that: California was and remains a symbol of promise, of modern times, of new life, of realizable human prosperity. Californian education was thus my equivalent to ethical socialism and the link of thought to action as an academic sociologist. (ibid., p. 66) You can even glimpse, alongside John Macmurray, John Wayne leading the wagon train into the sunset. Even more curiously, for him ‘a new sense of Englishness’ was set free by his wide-eyed view of America’s ideal of expanding opportunity. He appeared wilfully blind to the manifest inequalities and injustices of the American system, still reeling, especially in California, from the McCarthyite purging of its left-wing writers and film makers. Despite scathing critiques of the widespread racialism and prejudice in the Southern states by fellow sociologist, C. Wright Mills, and the violent harassment of the civil rights movement, Halsey saw only a land flowing with milk and honey. Nevertheless with a renewed proselytism, Halsey became almost ‘religiously devoted to the idea of spreading sociology as a mode of understanding the modern world’ (ibid., p. 74). (This was not however without some misgivings about not following his ‘hero’ R. H. Tawney into adult education teaching for the WEA.)

America: ‘land of opportunity’ Thus it was clear that for Halsey and for many of the LSE group who were soon to be embedded in European and American professorial networks, the

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view of the future they offered Labour was most definitely not Soviet nor was its methodology Marxist, though both of course would be scrutinized, but rather it was America, ‘the land of opportunity’, to which, bizarrely, they turned for inspiration. This was also grist to the mill for Anthony Crosland. Crosland was of course well accustomed to New World optimism through his American wife Susan and anyway had no sympathy for Marxism – his trenchant The Future of Socialism (1956) was ‘almost a sacred text for the right wing’ (Lawton, 2005). Halsey’s collaborator, Martin Trow, was convinced that Clark Kerr’s reforms in California were also influential, noting: ‘What Crosland and Weaver were doing, in a different way and in a different context, reminded me of what Clark Kerr and his colleagues had created in California in the early ’50s, that is, a Master Plan for higher education’ (Trow, 2005, p. 8). Increasingly, politicians and theorists now looked west to America for stimulation. Silver commented that the American George F. Kneller’s work, Higher Learning in Britain and America (1955) was a cutting dissection of the British system, which Kneller found notable for its lack of purpose. The Harvard Committee’s General Education in a Free Society (1945) was, as we have seen for Lindsay in the previous chapter, a signal point of reference in 1950s debates (Silver, 2003, p. 132). Apart from the impressively high participation rate in American universities, other elements of interest to Labour’s thinkers and sociologists were Roosevelt’s New Deal, Dewey’s promotion of the democratic ideal and the defence of liberalism in the face of Soviet Marxism. This was backed by personal opinion, as Noel Annan recalled: I remember one evening in the autumn of 1959 in Cambridge asking [Lionel, later Lord] Robbins back to King’s College, where I was then Provost, after we had met as electors to a chair and listening to him tell how impressed he had been that R. H. Tawney, who might not have been expected to have praised anything in capitalist America, had applauded American universities. Tawney was convinced of the benefit which America gained by what to English eyes seemed to be an incredible number of adolescents getting the chance to continue their education. To the end of his active life, Robbins continued to press British universities to follow America and broaden their degree courses. But, I think, Robbins assumed that the American university system could be transplanted without realising on what it rested. (Annan, 1982) Clark Kerr’s The Uses of a University (1963) had attempted to update Newman for the modern age but, according to Scott, even this was too late because the American post-war settlement that relied on the welfarist legacy of Roosevelt’s New Deal for legitimation ‘was about to crumble before Vietnam and post-structuralism’ (Scott, 2005). Despite Halsey’s enthusiasm, Scott

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argues, it was anyway more relevant to the US west coast than its more fragmented east and Europe. However, the shift away from an older concern for the autonomy of universities towards a persistent Labour theme of ‘public interest’ is quite marked. Tapper notes that in their joint work, The British Academics (1971), Halsey and Trow are among the first to acknowledge that, as a manager of economic growth, the state would have a major interest in higher education (Tapper, 2007, p. 9). This emerging ideology of the economic use of universities would inevitably put into question the role of the UGC as principal defender of liberal education and its replacement by a more state-friendly body. Thereafter there was a gradual mainstream acceptance that higher education should serve the economy while widening opportunity, a marrying of economic and social goals, the latter remaining firmly subordinate. In this sense it was redolent of Fabianism but signally inarticulate about the broader socialist humanism of the labour movement. The reborn British sociology movement, pioneered by Tawney and Cole (neither of whom, paradoxically, were sociologists), initially informed by European émigrés and shouldered by Halsey and his colleagues, was clearly an antidote to Soviet Marxism. Introduced at the height of the Cold War, when the Labour government stood four square with the United States against its former Soviet ally, it offered a form of social analysis that underlined the persistence of the problems of social class, while rejecting the need for social revolution and the end of the capitalist system. Aron was certainly right about its dedication to addressing the problems of labourism, and the effect of its academic studies was to produce a vast output of statistical and social analysis to inform policy making, which even the incoming Conservative governments of the 1950s could not ignore.

Labour’s education study groups and policy making The products of sociological analysis were increasingly evident in the Party’s own study groups. Labour had taken an active interest in educational reform from its inception in the early 1900s, which virtually coincided with the formation of the WEA. But it was Tawney’s chairmanship of its Education Study Group from World War I that had focused its energies clearly on policy reform. Initially, as we have seen in Chapter 3, it was concentrated on ‘Secondary Education for All’, echoing the title of Labour’s 1922 document written by Tawney. But it was not until World War II, again largely through Tawney, that it turned its attention to the universities and what subsequently became known as higher education. (As Silver makes clear, before1945 ‘higher education’ meant grammar schools not universities and was not used for the university sector until David Eccles became Minister of Education under Harold Macmillan in the late 1950s. The

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concept of higher technical education first appears in the Percy Committee following World War II, which released it from its previous connection with secondary schools only (Silver, 2003)). The Labour Party’s Study Group on Education, which had been initially convened by Tawney before World War I, was a central point for policy making. Its membership during the 1950s included Arthur Greenwood, R. H. S. Crossman, Harold Shearman, Ray Gunter, Hugh Gaitskell and Tawney himself. Of the new Labour leaders emerging in the post-war period, perhaps the one who most obviously carried Tawney’s flame for educational reform was Crossman, who became Labour’s Spokesman on Education and Science prior to the 1964 election. As a leading Bevanite, he was seen as a maverick of the left in the party and had a stormy relationship with his fellow Wykehamist, Hugh Gaitskell. With the Cold War advancing he became tenaciously anti-communist and edited the widely influential collection The God that Failed in 1949. By the 1950s, after teaching philosophy at Oxford and tutoring for the WEA, Crossman emerged as one of Labour’s leading educationalists. Despite his strong support for Wilson following Gaitskell’s death, however, Wilson never gave him the job he ‘confidently expected’ as Minister of Education (Howard, 2009). But Crossman’s energetic work on education and science between February 1963 and October 1964, in Tam Dalyell’s view, had transformed Labour’s standing in the eyes of the educational and scientific world and had probably swung the election in Labour’s favour (Dalyell, 1989, p. 106). His campaign centred on the critical shortage of qualified teachers, without whom, he argued, the ‘equality of educational opportunity’ advanced by Crosland in The Future of Socialism would be stillborn. Small classes, the privilege of the few, as he knew well, should be the right of every child in Britain. As soon as Robbins’s Royal Commission was set up, Crossman persuaded Labour’s National Executive Committee to establish its own working party to study the problem and swiftly assembled an intellectually and politically powerful group that included Professor Lionel Elvin, Director of the London Institute of Education, W. B. Inglis, Head of Moray House, Edinburgh, and Marjorie Macintosh, Chair of the London County Council (LCC) Education Committee (ibid.). Significantly, he also invited Professors Claus Moser, Richard Titmuss and Michael Young for their social science perspectives. According to Dalyell, who watched at close hand, Crossman ‘inveighed against the discrimination which gave a middle-class child six times as good a chance of reaching higher education as a working-class child’ and pointed out on numerous platforms across the country that: ‘if the increase in higher education recommended by the Robbins Committee were implemented, while the size of primary and secondary classes in working-class areas were left unchanged, this discrimination would get worse and not better’ (ibid., p. 109). This farsightedness was indeed worthy of Tawney and, for Dalyell, Wilson’s incoming government in 1964 was much the poorer for Crossman’s absence

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from the Ministry of Education and the galaxy of talent he might have recruited to the cause, not least Eric (later Lord) Ashby and Vivian Bowden. With Crossman at Education the future of higher education in Britain almost certainly would have looked markedly different. Instead, of course, it was Labour’s other prominent intellectual, Tony Crosland, whose contribution we shall examine more thoroughly in a later chapter, who Wilson appointed to the Ministry of Education. Crossman had clearly given much thought to the problem of the universities. In 1957 he had submitted a paper to the Labour Party’s Education Study Group in support of a memorandum from the Fabian Society demanding a Royal Commission on the Universities. It demonstrated just how exercised Labour’s privately educated leaders were on the subject of the universities (Crossman, 1957). In the case of the elite education given by universities, he could make the meritocratic point that: ‘If elite education only meant the provision of education suited for developing the talent of this gifted minority, no Socialist could have any objection to it’, so long as it did not mean provision for the already privileged (ibid.). He also cautioned that defenders of the system would allow the admission of working-class children only in so far as its elite nature was not compromised, as was the case with ancient universities already. However, debating whether elite schools should be made open rather than private, he demurred, pleading a special case: ‘[I]n British democracy a Socialist system of State education must leave room for a private sector’ (ibid., p. 3). Nevertheless, he admitted that the existence of the private sector was harmful to the community because it created an ‘Establishment’ with a set of cultural values hostile to technology and applied science, and claiming a false sense of superiority. And this could not be allowed to stand in the way because the country needed a huge increase in technical literacy and improved status for the technologist. So it was necessary to ‘shake our Arts courses loose from an obsolete classical humanism’ and to challenge the dominance of élite institutions (ibid., p. 5). Crossman further argued that the number of places in universities and institutes of technology must be increased ‘even at the cost of “lowering standards”’ and that the status of Redbrick universities must be raised (ibid.). A later memorandum from the Group, entitled ‘The Universities’, in which it seems Crossman’s paper was largely accepted, calls for greater state control over universities; courses relevant to the community, especially in science and technology; expansion even at the cost of lowering standards; the abolition of fees; the establishment of a Royal Commission; an increase in working-class numbers and a reduction in specialization; and, finally, a reduction in the close connection of universities with public schools (Labour Party, 1957). Crossman continued to convene an informal group on higher education which included at times Eric Robinson, Tyrrell Burgess and Richard Layard, but its deliberations were ignored by the incoming Labour

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Government in 1964 and Crossman played no further role in educational policy making (Robinson, 2006). The theme of a Royal Commission, however, was taken up in 1959 by Graeme Moodie in a Fabian Research Paper which argued that the UK needed more ‘highly trained’ citizens (Moodie, 1959). For the increasing number of school leavers wanting further education, Moodie argued there should be a much greater variety of opportunities and the state must be prepared to bear the cost. In an implicit criticism of the traditional UGC approach, Moodie was not prepared to let the universities continue to go their own way and for the state merely to underwrite their decisions. This left two possible alternatives: university standards could be raised, but the government should create other kinds of institutions for apprenticeship and professional training. Alternatively, the government could create an open system on the American model while developing Oxford and Cambridge and a few other universities for the (meritocratic) elite. By the time of this paper, the UGC had of course already shrewdly agreed to the creation of Sussex University and six other new universities in 1957. Moreover Keith Murray, who had succeeded Moberly as Chairman, most emphatically did not want a Royal Commission, regarding the UGC itself as a standing commission. Just as forcefully, the Labour peer, Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, a persistent campaigner for university reform, disagreed and wrote an article in the Universities Quarterly listing areas for scrutiny. He drew widespread criticism from universities but strong support from politicians and the press, claiming universities are ‘complacent, complicit and powerful’ and are ‘controlled by the UGC’ (quoted in Silver, 2003, p. 143). He initiated a number of debates in the House of Lords that focused attention on the failings of government provision for university and technological education. Lord Simon was the father of Brian Simon, who was to become a leading social historian of education on the Left and a prominent member of the CPGB and, briefly, a Labour Party advisor on education (in 1938). Lord Simon’s final contribution to public life was to introduce a motion in the House of Lords on 11 May 1960 calling on the Government to establish a committee to inquire into and report on tertiary education (Jones, 2006). However, the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, brushing aside calls for a Royal Commission and, going over the head of his Minister of Education, David Eccles, appointed his old friend Lionel Robbins in 1961 to chair a committee to advise on the future of the universities with, in Robbins’s view, the most ambitious terms of reference for higher education to date. According to Silver, Macmillan’s decision to set up Robbins effectively ended the tradition of leaving the universities free and autonomous, untrammelled by government ‘interference’, and ushered in the era of directive policy, of building them into a ‘national system’ (Silver, 2003, p. 184). As we have seen, this was very much in line with Labour thinking and quite opposed to the views of ‘Tory traditionalists’ and others, who

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insisted on university independence. Eccles, who was widely regarded as the chief architect of post-war educational expansion, would not have disagreed with Macmillan’s line but he was regarded by Macmillan as ‘vain’ and ‘bumptious’ and was sidelined (Barnes, 1999). In response to the appointment of the Robbins Committee, Labour’s leader, Hugh Gaitskell, hastily established a study group on higher education under the chairmanship of Lord Taylor in 1962. The Committee’s membership included the MPs Tony Crosland, Fred Willey, H. J. Boyden, Margaret (Peggy) Herbison and Enid White, and co-opted the social scientists, John Vaizey, Jean Floud, Richard Titmuss, and the historian Asa Briggs. Peter Shore and Crossman were on the original Committee but subsequently resigned and Peter Hall, Brian Abel Smith and Arthur Skeffington were occasional members. Howard Glennerster, from the Labour Research Department, was its secretary and the Committee took evidence from the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions (ATTI) as well as the National Union of Students (NUS). It was also given access to some evidence submitted to the Robbins Committee. Some of the most radical evidence heard by Taylor’s Committee was contained in a paper from Noel Annan, then Provost of King’s College, Cambridge. Annan recommended allotting all university places proportionately according to school type, such as LEA maintained, grant-aided and independent, as the most effective way of influencing Oxford and Cambridge’s admissions policy, rather than abolishing entry by colleges (the existing Labour Party position). This would of course dramatically reduce the numbers from the private sector – and would cause temperatures to rise proportionately. Following Lindsay’s line, he also wanted to end what he called ‘the curse of departmentalism’ over the national need for more scientific and mathematical education and proposed that Labour urgently take up the causes of the colleges of advanced technology (CATs) for degree-awarding powers and status (Labour Party, 1962a). The Committee also considered a paper from the London University’s Institute of Education, which was given in evidence to Robbins and argued against developing a general degree like that of the American liberal arts colleges. Instead it urged the liberalizing of professional studies by linking vocational and non-vocational honours degrees across colleges. The Institute also endorsed the Fabian and Association of Education Committee’s suggestions of regionally organized higher education authorities, and proposed that a Labour government should explore the possibility of organising non-university colleges and CATs as colleges of higher education. It was clear from minutes of the Committee’s meetings that there was thought to be a matter of great political urgency of reporting before the Robbins Committee, which they feared was in favour of a ‘crash programme’. Taylor’s own view was that the idea of maintaining a university for the elite no matter

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how that elite was formed, was simply a subtle way of keeping real power in the hands of those who already had it (Labour Party 1962b, p. 6.2). Taylor’s Final Report, published as The Years of Crisis (1962), however, eschewed much of this debate and diluted what remained. Nevertheless, a Guardian leader applauded its ‘spirit’ and the ‘sociological vision’ that made Taylor’s proposals relevant to the rest of Labour’s programme (Guardian, 1 March 1962, p. 1). The headline proposal was for the creation of forty-five new universities over the next twenty years, though mainly derived from existing CATs rather than wholly new institutions. A more contentious proposal, reflecting much of the preceding debate, was for the financing of universities to be removed from the hands of the Treasury and given to the Ministry of Education. Taylor’s rationale for this was that Treasury control of the UGC minimized the government’s impact on universities and fostered isolationist policies that were good for neither society nor universities. Instead, there was a need for the new post of Minister for Higher Education to plead the case. The new Minister would be responsible to the Minister for Education, not the Chancellor and Treasury. The UGC, Taylor concluded, must now be transformed into what he styled a National University Development Council, which would be responsible for ten-year planning. This new body would be complemented by four or five regional committees for implementation, which would later grow to ten or twelve. Despite Taylor’s industry, his report was effectively swept aside by the publication of the Robbins Report the following year. It could be argued, of course, that Macmillan’s decision to set up Robbins was itself influenced by Labour’s long-term agenda for higher education. Robbins, who believed that no committee had ever before had the brief to review the ‘national’ situation, certainly appeared to think within the ambience and discourse of Fabian policy making. He saw higher education as a public service with considerable dependence on the state, and believed that the machinery of government was necessary to regulate the sector but was concerned that this could be balanced with academic freedom. Crucially, he reflected the distinctly non-Tory and remarkably Fabian belief that there was a need for a ‘system’ to replace the universities’ largely uncoordinated activities. He even adopted Tawney’s phrase about the ‘reserves of untapped ability’, which he agreed were confirmed by sociological and psychological witnesses to the Committee (quoted in Silver, 2003, p. 182). Although, generally, the Labour Party applauded Robbins’s commitment to university expansion and the systematization of function, there were dissenting voices. Michael Young, for example, saw the Robbins Report as ‘fundamentally a Conservative document’ that ignored the possibilities of the new communications technologies and still adhered to selection at 18 plus and 11 plus (quoted in Briggs, 2001, p. 218). Instead, he called for a ‘continuing revolution’ in higher education and, as we shall see in

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Chapter 7, Young campaigned steadily for a ‘University of the Air’. As our next chapter makes clear, the incoming Labour Government in 1964 largely adopted Robbins’s emphasis on expansion but – in face of its own specialist advice and committees – opted for the binary policy, the most signal effect of which was to leave the elite universities largely untouched and still served and protected by the UGC. Unhappiness with the binary system and the class privileging of the universities persisted within the Party and within two years a new study group for further and higher education was established, in 1967. This was chaired by Geoffrey Rhodes MP and included fellow MPs Tom Bradley and Ron Brown, as well as the historian Tony Corfield, Stella Greenall, the widely respected official of the National Union of Students, Chris Price, formerly PPS to Tony Crosland, Eric Robinson of the ATTI, Ron Wallace, Lady White, Lord Wynne-Jones and Sue Lancaster, who was the group’s secretary. The group met 29 times and reported no less than six years later in 1973 (Labour Party, 1973). Other occasional members of the group included the long-term champion of the polytechnics, Tyrrell Burgess. The report was tabled as an opposition Green Paper. Reflecting the radicalism of the 1968 generation, it advanced probably the most utopian proposals for further and higher education that Labour had yet considered. It was, predictably, promptly shelved! Perhaps its most significant ideological move was to reconsider the proposals for a comprehensive higher education system first proposed by Robin Pedley and adopted by the CPGB (examined in detail in Chapter 8): ‘Our aim is to extend the true concept of comprehensive education to the post-school sector’ (emphasis in the original, ibid., p. 37). It suggested a completely new framework for post-16 education, which should be viewed as a single system. This new structure would abolish the distinctions between further, higher and adult education. For 16–18 year olds, or post-compulsory education, there would be a ‘Tertiary’ level with LEA responsibility. But all provision thereafter would now be called ‘Adult Education’, regardless of the former institutions composing it (ibid, p. 37–9). Overseen by an Adult Education Commission (AEC) and complemented by Regional AECs with executive and planning powers, it would be an open system that synthesized liberal and vocational education. Resources would be reallocated on a basis of regional need (especially polytechnics) and libraries shared. Student loans and taxes would be replaced by universal grants, which would also be made available to part-time students. Although it certainly surfed the zeitgeist, and reflected pre-binary policy on a unitary system with regional devolution (close to Tawney’s heart), there seemed to be little support in the Party as a whole, which was now more concerned with industrial unrest and Heath’s three-day week. When Labour came to power the following year in 1974 a succession of Education Ministers, Reg Prentice, Fred Mulley and Shirley Williams, failed to offer significant new proposals. In 1977, the year Reg Prentice crossed the

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floor to join the Conservative Party, Williams publicly re-endorsed Robbins, whose objectives she claimed were still relevant. This meant instruction in skills appropriate for the labour market, promoting general powers of the mind, advancement of learning, and the transmission of common culture and common standards of citizenship. Content with the variety of individual institutions of higher education, Williams wanted ‘a speck of each in all’ (Williams, 1977). In the same year, however, Colin Crouch and Stephen Mennell, for the Fabian Society, mounted a curious defence of binarism ‘to take the pressure off universities’ (Crouch and Mennell, 1977, p. 30). They noted the emergence of a hierarchy in the American system despite its commonality of degrees which, except in some elite universities, were of a lower standard than in British universities. In summary, universities should remain academic and polytechnics ‘vocational’ but disparities should be reduced and facilities shared. Significantly, Crouch and Mennell were responding to a right-wing analysis of university policy by A. T. Peacock and A. J. Culyer, Economic Aspects of Student Unrest (1969), which had proposed consumer choice and a market mechanism to create wider diversity of educational provision, and which, ironically, was to appeal very strongly to New Labour nearly three decades later. By the mid-1980s, a new, almost world-weary, ‘post-modern’ tone had come to prevail, perhaps best summed up in another Fabian pamphlet by the young Editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement, Peter Scott (Scott 1985). For Scott, the radicalism of the 1970s was long past, and his view was that a major current in the Labour Party still had faith in ‘some vague strategy of enmeshing the universities with the public sector through a gradual process of regionalization of HE’ (ibid.). Inevitably it would be ineffective, however, because there was ‘no will to establish truly credible alternatives to the universities’ like the Grandes Ecoles in France, as Labour was never sufficiently anti-university (and rightly so). For Scott a more sensible university policy should maximize personal and collective opportunities for advanced education rather than posing as an ideological spearhead of social change. Nevertheless, Scott believed ‘a new structure’ for higher education was desirable. Higher education needed much greater national coordination through new means such as an advisory commission for higher education, a statutory council and a new ministry for an expanded higher education to bring what he called an eighteenth-century governance of higher education into the twentieth century. As the binary system appeared increasingly arbitrary, Scott argued that the university sector should be expanded to include most polytechnics and a few other colleges in order to create, once more, a unitary system. However, Scott argued for greater variety within a unitary system through diversifying funding and forms of accreditation. Many polytechnics should continue to be funded locally and some should

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remain within the structure of CNAA awards, which some older universities could also adopt for certain courses. This change could affect the polytechnics’ more flexible relations with colleges of further education (FECs) and so a corollary would be to establish an extensive network of local colleges of advanced education from existing colleges of higher education (CHEs), further and adult education. These would act as feeder institutions and the main vehicles of continuing education, through an enhanced credit system to be regulated nationally rather than by local universities. The main advantages of the structure he was proposing would include general accessibility analogous to that offered through the American community colleges, complemented by more flexible forms of learning. An expansion of distance learning by various media – but without the tight articulation of Open University courses –could be very diverse, ‘entrepreneurial’ (an increasingly familiar term for Labour) and relaxed, while enabling greater access to universities. As in the USA, the distinction between further and higher education would atrophy, however the new structure would require greater public control. HE in Britain was in Scott’s opinion ‘a public enterprise publicly financed’, but nobody was taking broad strategic decisions (ibid., p. 25). Thus the unitarianism that had historically marked all Labour’s academic advisors was reasserted to integrate the polytechnics into the university fold. Similarly, the old fascination with the flexibility and openness of the American system continued, while now complemented by a taste for its ‘entrepreneurialism’ – unlikely to be a term Tawney would have favoured. Labour’s experiment with an alternative public service tradition of higher education was also over, but so was traditional university autonomy and the UGC. Ironically, it was the Conservatives who put the main elements of this in place a few years later in the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act and the consensus prevailed. Almost entirely absent from later policy considerations, however, was the concern for technological and scientific higher education that had marked the post-war decades. Britain was now ‘post-industrial’, it seemed, and certainly the Thatcherite economic policies of the 1980s had shifted the emphasis to the service sector, while traditional industries (and their troublesome unions) were left to the mercy of ‘market forces’. Finally, with the ending of the Keele experiment in a four-year general degree and the inter-disciplinary experiments of the new ‘plate-glass’ universities, most of which abandoned their early curriculum flexibility in favour of a return to ‘disciplinarity’, the ideal of culturally based generalism passed out of favour. The outcome was, curiously, a mix of Fabian-lite national/ public control of universities orientated towards a utilitarian ‘vocationalism’ and the Conservative-inspired market forces doctrine. Labour’s Educational Study Groups no longer exercise its MPs and social scientists. While the Fabian Society still publishes occasional articles and issues on education,

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other independent think tanks like Demos and the Institute for Public Policy Research fill the vacuum. Although the Sociology of Education no longer stirs the blood in Labour circles, reports from campaigning groups like the Sutton Trust show how necessary radicalizing research and practice remains. Such reports made uncomfortable reading for New Labour, showing, for example, the decline in social mobility and the persistence of class privilege in education at all levels that seriously distort the ideal of an egalitarian society.

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Chapter Six

More Robinson than Robbins: the Evolution of the Polytechnics under Labour Even before the World War One, it had become increasingly clear that all advanced, developed societies needed an expansion of education and training at all levels in science and technology. By the 1930s this need had become even more critical: Toby Weaver (whose role is discussed in detail later in this chapter), for example, contributed to a Fabian pamphlet on Technical Education (Drake and Weaver, 1936). In Britain, this need was particularly acute, given the depredations of wartime and more particularly the rapid reemergence of Germany and Japan, as well as the USA, as modern, efficient industrial and technological powers. Two reports had been commissioned by the Government in the later stages of the World War Two, and the resultant proposals in the Percy Report (1945) and the Barlow Report (1946) advocated the rapid expansion of scientific and technological higher education, including the creation of new technological universities (Bocock and Taylor, 2003). Three themes dominated Labour’s post-war agenda for higher education – although it has always to be emphasized that Labour’s strong emphasis in this period was upon schools reform. That said, these three themes were recognized by the Government as of great importance: science and technology, expansion (and access), and the appropriate models of university education. These three themes – with science and technology broadened into a more generalized concern with vocational education and training – persisted throughout the remaining years of the century, and indeed beyond. There was abundant evidence in the post-1945 world of the need across many of the newer labour market sectors for an increasingly skilled workforce (Urwich, 1947; Carr-Saunders, 1949). Attlee himself was in no doubt of the importance of this issue: he regarded it as ‘a very serious matter as we cannot hope to solve our post-war problems unless we can increase the supply of trained men and women in the various departments of our national life’ (Attlee, 1945). Labour was also convinced that university expansion, particularly because of the need for more scientists and technologists, was essential. However, this was not a course that the universities were initially keen to take. Before World War Two, there had been tacit agreement that the UGC (Government) grant would comprise no more than one-third of any university’s income, with responsibility for the other two-thirds resting with the institution (endowments and fees) and its locality (Gosden, 1991). Attlee complained

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that the universities were ‘making no serious attempts to increase their numbers’ (Attlee, 1945). But no realistic, tangible moves were made by the Government to adopt this ‘understanding’ of the funding base. The debate over the appropriate model for universities echoed these two themes. The Government was committed to the expansion of the system, primarily to meet the need for a new cohort of scientists and technologists, but it was silent on whether such an expansion – and curricular reform – should come within the existing university system, or through a radical reorganization into a binary structure. In reality, the Labour Government in this period had no coherent strategy for higher education. The desire to expand higher education, largely to increase the numbers of graduates in vocational, and scientific and technological subjects, was constant: but the means and the structures by which this could be achieved remained a problem, both ideologically and politically, for successive Labour governments. Possibly the closest thing to a clear post-war philosophy was Ashby’s Technology and the Academics (1958), which argued for the need for what he called ‘technological humanism’, since classical humanism no longer tapped into the zeitgeist. Ashby held that the British universities were very late in their adoption of science and had only belatedly responded to technological competition. Technology was the core of the new humanism and universities must renounce their cherished traditions and adapt. Specifically, he advocated that specialist studies should be the core around which liberal studies should be grouped. Ashby was in many respects a bridge between the classical liberal education and generalist approaches of Tawney and Lindsay and those who demanded more specialization. Labour, however, did little to articulate this analysis into detailed, practical policy proposals. By the time the 1964 Labour Government took office, issues of science and technology had assumed an even greater importance. Harold Wilson centred his government’s image on its modernity, its commitment to the ‘white heat of technology’. There was a widespread acknowledgement of the need for significant expertise in both the further education and higher education sectors to ensure the appropriate supply of a highly trained science and technology workforce necessary for a modern, competitive economy. There was, importantly, far less emphasis – in fact, no emphasis at all – given to the contribution which higher education could make to the development of democratic civil society. However, the Labour Party, and the wider labour movement, were increasingly divided over the appropriate future for the whole tertiary education sector. Most Labour leaders supported, at least in principle, liberal education perspectives, as articulated and practised by Tawney and Lindsay, in which universities (and the WEA) should attempt to produce active citizens with well-developed social, political and critical understanding. However, there was a feeling, both in some trade union circles and on the Fabian wing of the Labour Party, that this traditional approach was

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‘old-fashioned’ and not capable of meeting the nation’s pressing economic needs. As far as the trade unions were concerned, there was a demand for more pragmatic, industry-related education which would serve directly the ‘real world’ work issues faced by ordinary members. As well as the fact that the traditional day-release, liberal education courses provided by universities and the WEA were necessarily restricted to relatively small numbers of trade unionists, there was a view in the trade union establishment (though not one shared by the Left of the movement) that the more theoretical, conceptual aspects of this provision – labour history, social theory, economics and so on – were removed from the day-to-day reality of workers’ lives. (Holford, 1993). To an extent this view represented the long running division in trade unionism between left and right – between those who wished to challenge and change capitalism, in part through trade union activity, and those who saw the role of trade unions as being to protect and enhance their members’ interests in terms of wage levels, job security and so on (Taylor et al., 1985; Coates, 1974, 1986; Holford, 1993). Indeed, most trade unionists saw universities as the bastions of the privileged classes whose individualistic culture and conservative social attitudes were inimical to progressive working-class values. In the minds of many trade union activists, who still had a lingering attachment to ‘Independent Working Class Education’, ‘liberal’ education and conservatism were thus conflated, and the strong distrust of universities which was common among Labour MPs from working-class backgrounds amounted in some cases to outright opposition. To those whose education had finished at secondary level or had continued part-time in technical colleges and who were probably active supporters of the WEA or the Labour Colleges, universities, though often respected, even revered, were seen to have only marginal relevance in practice (Millar, 1993; Holford, 1993). The universities’ reluctance to open their doors to working people (save for the few scholarship boys), or to examine seriously their curricula or modes of teaching, only confirmed their antagonism. Hence the Labour Party could generate little serious interest in university policy on the backbenches and even less in the constituencies. In contrast, amongst the fast unionizing professionals in the technical colleges, significant thinking about higher education, if not universities, was proceeding apace. The acknowledgement that scientific and technological education was of paramount importance gave impetus to those who believed that there was an alternative and increasingly necessary tradition of tertiary education where this skills-orientated philosophy was central. This led eventually to the formation of the binary, and subsequently the specifically polytechnic, policy articulated most forcefully by Eric Robinson (Robinson, 1968). And from this evolved the whole development of the more vocational, skills-orientated ideology of the mass higher education system that came into being in the last decade or so of the century.

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However, before looking at Eric Robinson and the lead-up to Anthony Crosland’s ‘Woolwich speech’, we should discuss, first, the role and ideological perspectives of the Ministry of Education and its strong desire to retain control of the responsibility for the Further Education sector (the Ministry became the Department for Education and Science (DES) in 1963.) Secondly, we should analyse in this context the perspectives of the leaders and educational theorists of the academic community. The Robbins Committee on Higher Education (1963) favoured the rapid expansion of the university system (Silver, 2003; Shattock, 1994) but clearly opposed the creation of a binary system. Robbins recommended that the existing universities, plus the rapid creation of several new large universities, should expand both the range and scale of their roles and activities, but within the existing culture and structures. Although, as David Watson and Rachel Bowden have noted (Watson and Bowden, 2002, p. 11), Robbins had indicated that beyond his reform ‘something would have to be done about technical higher education’, he continued to oppose the binary policy as being unnecessary and irrelevant. For example, in his 1971 autobiography, he argued that, contrary to the rhetorical claims of its advocates in government and in academic circles, universities did have the expertise and aptitude to undertake vocational and technical education of a standard appropriate to higher education. ‘What I do not understand was the ultimate philosophy inspiring the idea of the binary system – the extended separation of two rival sectors’ (Robbins, 1971, p. 281, quoted in Silver, 2003, p. 189).

Toby Weaver and philosophical pragmatism There were two complementary strands of opposition to the Robbins proposals within the DES. There was, first, a general shift away from the philosophical idealism, as opposed to pragmatism, that had characterized much of the culture among the higher ranks of the Civil Service in the DES. Toby Weaver, who was to be the prime mover in the DES in the formation of the polytechnic policy, was very much a part of this trend in ideological thinking. Weaver, who had been brought up in Stafford Cripps’ household, was very much a Fabian. Perhaps unusually for a career civil servant, Weaver was well in touch with contemporary philosophical debates and it is worth dwelling for a moment on the philosophical grounding he believed they gave him. He noted that his ‘greatest intellectual debt is to John Macmurray. He it was who made clear to me once and for all the relationship between knowledge and action. His thesis is best summed up in his own words, “All meaningful knowledge is for the sake of action, and all meaningful action for the sake of friendship”’ (Weaver, 1994). For Weaver, the Cambridge philosopher A. N. Whitehead had already ‘made it clear that a properly educated person should develop the capacity

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to cope with his life satisfactorily and that knowledge was not an end in itself but the means to purposive and rational action’ (ibid.). But this belief was greatly reinforced by his reading of Macmurray’s 1953 Gifford lectures The Self as Agent (Macmurray, 1957) which made it clear that knowledge was for the use and benefit of mankind and that knowledge alone got you nowhere until you learned how to apply it. Macmurray’s pragmatism and ethical stance had been reinforced by his reading of Marx during the 1930s. Although he rejected what he saw as Marx’s economic determinism and the collectivism that, in his (Macmurray’s) view, subordinated the individual to the state, he was convinced of the need for the state to pursue social justice and collective ownership of the means of production in order to enable fully individual growth and a properly communal life among the people. Macmurray’s key perception, however, was that, ontologically, action preceded thought, rather than the other way round. Only when action failed to produce results did reflective thinking take place, in order to solve the problem. This was a classically pragmatic and empiricist perspective. The prioritizing of action in this way was taken by many to spike the guns of the philosophical idealists in the universities who, while content to think long and deeply, rarely foresaw its consequences in action – nor, indeed, were they particularly interested in any consequences. Hence, among professionals frustrated by the universities’ lack of enthusiasm for change, an intellectual rationale was constructed for a more pragmatic approach which put vocationalism (leavened heavily by liberal studies) at its core. For Weaver, and Tawney too, Macmurray provided intellectual support to what was becoming a ‘new universities’ movement, Tawney claiming that ‘it may be easier to achieve a new cultural synthesis in places where an old one has not to be displaced or overcome’ (Tawney, 1944: 328). Weaver was thus very sceptical of what he perceived as Robbins’s elitist ‘ivory tower’, and conservative perspective on university expansion. By the time he came to formulate policy proposals for, initially, Edward Boyle, the Conservative Secretary of State, and subsequently his Labour successor, Anthony Crosland, he had developed a strongly pragmatic and applied view of the future policies that the Government should prioritize. By then, I suppose (certainly my critics would accuse me of this) I had a prejudice against the dominance of academic criteria throughout the whole of education. Whether it was for the wretched little boys and girls at Dagenham or the smooth young gentlemen from Eton, by then I think I had reached the conclusion that there must be some more general and empowering thing that education could do for the great majority of the population (not excluding the comparatively small minority who had the good fortune to get higher education). There must, I felt, be some way of making higher education more accessible and more helpful to the great

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run of intelligent young men and women who did not want primarily to become scholars, and whose virtues were not primarily to be measured by their capacity to get first class honours degrees (notwithstanding that I had achieved that goal). (Weaver, 1994) The issue of whether or not such a stance implied, or even entailed, the acceptance of a two-tier system of higher education, with technical and vocational education necessarily regarded as ‘second class’ or inferior, was a question Weaver does not seem to have addressed. It is, however, an argument to which we return in the conclusion to this chapter. The second strand of the DES’s perspective was, though, even more important than this strong ideological commitment to a higher education system much more geared to the needs of society and the economy, and under public, democratic control. Both the Government and the DES officials were very reluctant to relinquish their policy (and financial) control over the expansion of higher education. John Carswell, at the time Secretary to the UGC, in his analysis twenty years later of these issues, agreed that it would have been impossible for ‘a Labour Secretary of State [to take] institutions from urban local education authorities which were predominantly controlled by Labour, and [bring] them under the same regime as the universities’ (Carswell, 1985, p. 93, quoted in Silver, 2003, p. 188). Others, too, were highly resistant to Robbins’s recommendations. Noel Annan, for example, agreed that although Robbins had said that higher education was certainly, indeed perhaps first, concerned with instruction in skills, the trouble was that the skills were not identified nor was it even asked whether the teachers of these skills existed in sufficient numbers (Annan, 1982). But, already enraged that they had lost the CATs to the university sector, the most stringent opposition came from within the Ministry itself. As Annan noted: The Department of Education and Science was appalled by the Robbins report. They regarded the proposals to remove so many institutions from the public to the university sector as insupportable. What was this but to encourage every college to abandon the kind of technical education so necessary for the middle grades of industry? Would not colleges join the rat race of snobbery and be tempted to drop teaching part-time students, who now obtained modest but decent qualifications, in the hope of offering courses which led to degrees instead of to diplomas? How could any government permit the training of teachers and the numbers trained to pass out of their control, as Robbins proposed, and into the hands of the universities? (Ibid, p. 4)

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Toby Weaver strongly agreed: The main feature of the report was that all higher education should be virtually under the aegis of universities, that it should not be controlled by the Ministry, that there should be a separate Minister for Higher Education (in order, in my cynical way of thinking, that higher education should not be contaminated by school administrators), and that gradually the best of the technical colleges should follow in the footsteps of the colleges of advanced technology and be promoted to universities as they became worthy of joining the university club. (Weaver, 1994) The DES officials were not going to let the regional technical and teacher training colleges easily slip out of their jurisdiction and Weaver set about dismantling the Robbins Report. In a revealing memorandum, sent to Boyle some time later, Weaver included the verses of rhymed response to Sir John Maud’s toast at the Twenty Club (an organization for senior officials with twenty years’ service in the Ministry) on 24 April 1964. Verses 34 and 35 on Robbins, almost certainly written by Weaver, were: ‘His chapter shunned us like the plague’ and ‘Our FE Colls-, though broad in scale. / He thought of as merely dam’ Techs’ (Boyle Papers, 660/8854). It is worth noting, too, Boyle’s admission that Weaver’s argument was so persuasive that the Conservatives also would have adopted a binary policy. He indeed replied to Weaver’s subsequent inquiry about his position, that ‘You are completely justified in your recollection that Quintin [Hogg] and I had concluded in favour of the binary policy before the 1964 election’ (Boyle Papers, 11799/1). The opposition to the Robbins proposals, at least in this key area of policy, was thus formidable. The scene was set for a radical initiative by the incoming Secretary of State, and Crosland certainly had the ability and the self-confidence to undertake this role. Crosland was in fact the ideal man for the job. First, he was an ‘insider’, a Wykehamist and former Oxford don, so the university power brokers held little fear for him. Second, he was highly critical of universities and their stuffiness and elitism. (In her entertaining and shrewd biography, his wife, Susan Crosland, records his disdain for Vice-Chancellors who ‘went on as if their precious universities weren’t already rich and successful’; and his comment that ‘Tomorrow I shall tell the Vice-Chancellors they can stuff themselves’ (Susan Crosland, 1982, p. 147)). Finally, he was arguably the most able intellectual in politics: and his books The Future of Socialism, and The Conservative Enemy were not only the key texts of revisionist social democracy, but also laid great emphasis upon neo-utilitarianism, Fabianism and a modernist approach. (Boyle wrote that The Future of Socialism was ‘surely the most impressive contribution by any politician to serious thinking on politics/economics/social science since the war’ (Memo on Crosland 3/8/1976, Boyle Papers, 660/56325).)

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For Kogan, Tony Crosland stands out as ‘one who operated as an intellectual of the highest calibre whilst playing a full part in the politics of the party and of the polity at large’ (Kogan 2006, p. 73). Curiously, however, The Future of Socialism devoted only 20 pages to education; Lawton notes that despite the title of Chapter 12, ‘The Influence of Education’, it contained only eight references to the subject, three of which were to books and one article from a scarcely scholarly source, Harper’s Magazine (Lawton, 2005, p. 71). Nevertheless, there is one luminous paragraph in the chapter that holds a clear key to Crosland’s future policy: Where Britain lags behind the US is not in the calibre of the top academics or ‘grammar school’ section of the population but in the average technical ability lower down the scale. From this point of view we positively need less concentration on an educated élite and more on the average standard of attainment. It is here that Britain is always the weakest; and America gains competitively far more from having eight times the proportionate number of students in (often second-class) universities, than Britain gains from having public schools and grammar schools. (Crosland, 1956, p. 270) Like Weaver, he too seemed to have in mind a multi-layered system that admitted of a ‘second’ level. In all these ways, therefore, the ‘polytechnic idea’, within a binary higher education system, fitted a powerful modernizing current. This was despite the fact that Crosland’s advisors and dinner-table colleagues like Halsey, Vaizey and Kogan – and virtually all polite thought – were strongly in favour of a unitary system. Robbins personally had no doubt that the binary idea was ‘reactionary and half-baked’ (quoted in Halsey, 1992, p. 111). Kogan later noted the irony of Crosland’s position: ‘Unlike his Swedish counterparts, this leading theorist of egalitarianism did not support the more full-blown equality implicit in a unitary system. Instead, he had hoped that separate but equal systems would emerge, quite contrary to his own policies for secondary education’ (Kogan and Hanney, 2000, p. 126).

The creation of the polytechnics Although several policy analysts – notably Eric Robinson (Robinson, 1968) – had advocated various versions of the polytechnic idea – Anthony Crosland’s announcement of the new binary policy in his famous Woolwich speech, on 27 April 1965, still came as a great surprise. The ‘polytechnic era’ lasted from 1965 to the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992, when polytechnics were translated into (‘the new’) universities. Crosland was strongly influenced not only by Weaver and the DES officials, as discussed, but also

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by Eric Robinson. Robinson’s ATTI paper was, as Pratt has noted, very prescient, forecasting the growth of service industries and the expansion of humanities, social science, business and para-medical education, emphasising the importance of mature students and proposing the amalgamation of major technical and other colleges (including teacher education). (Pratt, 1997, p. 8) It was clear that, led by Edward Britton and Eric Robinson, the ATTI had quietly developed a coherent strategy for further education (in which higher education was playing an increasingly important role) and, in the wake of the disappointing outlook for the colleges from Robbins, urgently lobbied for an alternative (Burgess, 2005). The ATTI produced two policy documents, on the teacher training colleges and the technical colleges, which were immediately drawn to Crosland’s attention. The view of the ATTI was that the FE sector presented a kind of corollary to comprehensivization in schools, since it catered for a wide range of students and what would now be called ‘learning styles’. Entry to the sector was largely open for all age ranges, especially for mature students, offering both full-time and, crucially, part-time study. It had developed courses and certification to degree level in technical subjects (a fact agreed by Robbins and the universities in their recognition of the Diploma in Technology) and was increasingly designing innovative courses, often multi- and inter- disciplinary, around business and social studies. It argued that it was FE rather than the universities that was responding to the needs of the modern economy for specialists, technicians, administrators and managers. Robinson robustly pointed out the ignorance of these developments on the part of Left intellectuals, noting that the most spectacular post-war expansion of higher education had been in the technical colleges because of pressure from progressive employers and from employees: ‘This was not policy led through political decision making but the Left was indifferent. The overwhelming majority of adults got formal education through the technical colleges but the Labour Party was not even aware of this’ (Robinson, 1968, p. 16). Robinson’s approach was supported intellectually by the construction of an alternative tradition of higher education stretching back to the midnineteenth century. As always, educational provision and structure were determined by social class hierarchies . Thus, the Mechanics’ Institutes, in which the polytechnic tradition had its origins, and later the technical colleges, were necessary for the development of the skilled working class required for the evolving nineteenth century capitalist structures. It is true that in the late nineteenth century the newly created university colleges in the industrial towns and cities of the United Kingdom – Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, and so

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on – were founded primarily because local industrialists and politicians wanted a source of relevant technical expertise for their own particular regional context. But, in all cases, such university colleges rapidly broadened their curricular provision and embraced a generally traditional university culture. In effect, all attempted to model themselves broadly on the culture and liberal educational ideology – though admittedly not on the detailed collegiate structure – of Oxford and Cambridge. As Pratt has argued, this is an example of the ‘academic drift’ inherent in the British system, a persistent and dominant cultural tendency in Britain which Labour has done little if anything to contest. For Eric Robinson, however, and for other advocates of the polytechnic idea, what was required was a new structure of higher education, parallel to, though markedly different from, the universities, but equal in status. Such a commitment, Robinson argued, should be central to the democratic socialist politics of the Labour Government. The Robbins Committee proposals for expansion were, in his view, elitist and conservative: ‘Under Robbins a great number of the colleges might eventually become universities. They were the ducklings of higher education and some of them might grow into swans. We are suggesting ducklings should grow into ducks’ (Robinson, 1968, quoted in Silver, 2003, p. 187). Such institutions should be characterized by open, flexible structures, and by a commitment to providing programmes that were relevant to industries’ and the professions’ vocational needs. Above all, however, polytechnics must be student-centred. Robinson put this succinctly and with emphasis in his book The New Polytechnics (1968): The polytechnics should attempt to redress the balance by making their students their priority consideration unambiguously and without fear or favour – students should come before subjects, before research, before demands of employees and before demands of the State. (Robinson, 1968, p. 91) Crosland’s policy stance was thus influenced by these two complementary arguments: the vested bureaucratic interest of the Ministry’s Fabian officials; and the missionary, labourite zeal of the activist professional staff of the technical colleges. In his Woolwich speech (and against the objections of his advisors) Crosland built on this to provide a coherent rationale for a dual system. There was, he argued, an increasing national need for vocational, personal, and individually tailored courses, which could not be met by the universities. If these came to be seen as an explicit ‘professional ladder’ system, this would diminish the public sector (by which he meant the technical colleges) and intensify the pressure for increasing the funding support to the existing, hierarchical culture of higher education. Moreover, he made clear his view that it was in the public interest that a significant part of

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higher education remained under the control of the democratically elected government: only thus could there be an assurance that the system would be responsive to society’s needs. Finally, he maintained that Britain could not stand up to foreign competitiveness by downgrading the non-university professional and technical sector (Pratt, 1997, p. 8). Later, as Pratt notes, in his Lancaster University speech in 1967, Crosland added an emphasis – like Robinson – upon ‘providing higher education for working people and their children’ (ibid., p. 8). Crosland further emphasized the history and traditions of the technical and vocational institutions: the ‘polytechnic idea’ did not evolve in a vacuum, but stemmed from a tradition as honourable and excellent in its way as that of the universities. Pratt has summarized the service tradition from which the polytechnics arose as ‘responsive, vocational, innovative and open’, in contrast to the autonomous university characterized as ‘aloof, academic, conservative and exclusive’ (ibid., p. 9). Crosland and Weaver created the polytechnics in part to avoid the ‘academic drift’ (which, as noted, had bedevilled the whole system) in which at different periods new institutions – whether the nineteenth-century civic university colleges or technical colleges – had inexorably changed their nature and become more ‘academic’ in order to move up the hierarchy of institutions. Polytechnic advocates therefore emphasized their distinctiveness in terms of flexibility of mode (with proper provision of part-time study opportunities), work-related skills and vocationalism, and a commitment to the locality and the region. Above all, there was a visionary commitment to creating a student-centred culture. In as much as research activity was an aim, it was construed very much as applied, practically orientated research. With hindsight it is easy to see that this aim of distinctiveness, with its progressive commitments both to a more practical, pragmatic and ‘relevant’ curriculum, and to a more flexible, democratic and inclusive culture, was always ambitious. Nevertheless, the polytechnics developed, prospered and survived in an increasingly volatile policy context for twenty-six years. However, as Pratt has rather dryly observed: ‘One of the reasons for the longevity of the policy was, perversely perhaps, the lack of interest shown in it by the Prime Minister of the Government that launched it’ (Pratt, 1997, p. 19). Harold Wilson not only distrusted Crosland for his backing of Gaitskell in the leadership elections and his ambitions for the Treasury but seemed somewhat oddly infatuated by the idea of a ‘University of the Air’, as we shall see in the next chapter.

The polytechnic era: 1966––92 Having announced the new, radical policy, Crosland delegated the detail and the implementation to an expert group (including Eric Robinson

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and Edward Britton, who had co-authored the ATTI Report), chaired by Reg Prentice, who was appointed to the new post of Minister of Higher Education. The resulting White Paper in 1966 recommended the establishment of 28 polytechnics: by 1973 there were 30 designated polytechnics (twenty-nine in England, and one, Glamorgan, in Wales). Ulster Polytechnic was created in 1971. A further four – Humberside, Bournemouth, Anglia and West London – were added between 1989 and 1991. Between 1966 and 1989 total enrolments in the polytechnics increased by about 60 per cent; and nearly threefold (to 454,000 students) by 1992–93. However, much of this latter expansion was due to the amalgamation with the colleges of education. Significantly, part-time numbers declined proportionately. (It was not until 1987 that part-time student numbers again reached the 1971 total.) Comparisons are difficult, however, not least because of the emergence of the Open University in the 1970s, (see Chapter 7). Mature students, particularly those less than thirty years of age, continued to form a major component of the polytechnic student body. Thus, by 1979 for example, the polytechnics and colleges recruited more than twice the number of full-time mature students as the universities. By 1992 ‘the gap had widened for full-time students to a factor of three (Pratt, 1997, p. 73). In the next year more than 100,000 full-time mature first-year students enrolled in the polytechnics and colleges, compared with 31,000 in the universities. By 1991, 46 per cent of students in polytechnics were female (a similar picture emerged in the universities). But, as in universities, there was a predictably marked difference in subject enrolments: in engineering, 4per cent were women, whereas in the Arts the figure was 55 per cent. The real difference with the universities in this context lay in the pattern of social class recruitment: 28 per cent of the degree-level students in polytechnics were from manual working-class backgrounds (33 per cent in Higher National Diploma (HND) courses), compared with 19 per cent in the universities. The profile in terms of types of students differed too: in 1991, there were significantly fewer postgraduates in the polytechnics, compared with the universities; and, whereas the polytechnics had developed several courses at sub-degree level, in the universities there were few such courses, and largely confined to specialist areas of extramural and continuing education provision for adult learners. Overall, then, the polytechnics were reasonably, but not overwhelmingly, successful in broadening their student base, and expanding their total intake of mature students, women, ethnic minority students and – to an extent – those from a working-class background. Progress on all these fronts was modest, rather than spectacular – but progress it was. In terms of flexibility of mode, polytechnics were certainly at the forefront of innovation, for example, in the development of modular and credit-based structures. This

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is one of the many respects in which innovations in the polytechnic sector set a pattern which was followed, eventually, by almost all institutions in the whole university sector. The picture regarding curricular development, and the creation of a student-centred culture, is rather more complex. Robinson’s original, radical vision was for a curriculum centred on a student’s ‘future vocation’ (Pratt, 1997, p. 109). He decried the artificial concentration upon single disciplines in the university system. Prefiguring post-modernist critiques of education (Taylor et al., 2002), he argued that ‘academic subjects have grown into ‘intemperate monsters, each with its array of fanatical partisans [so that] any attempt to devise a course of vocational or liberal education is perverted into a mere assortment of academic bits, each controlled and dispersed by the appropriate subject priests’ (Robinson, 1968, quoted in Pratt, 1997, p. 109). Whilst not adopting this polemical view of subject disciplines, the polytechnics did attempt to move away from the dominance of nineteenthcentury disciplinary constructs. From the outset, polytechnics developed inter-disciplinary subject programmes. Cultural Studies and Media Studies, though much derided in some elite circles, were a remarkable outgrowth of this experimentation. Others were in vocational and applied areas, some emphasizing placements and partnerships with the relevant professionals and employers. Part-time degrees, shunned by the older universities, also flourished. Their freedom of manoeuvre, however, was circumscribed by the creation in 1964 (following the recommendation of the Robbins Committee) of the CNAA (Council for National Academic Awards). The CNAA continued in existence until 1993. Originally, it had responsibility for technology, and art and design courses but, as Watson and Bowden have indicated, it ‘rapidly established a position as the academic “conscience” of the system, setting and establishing standards as provision widened and grew’ (Watson and Bowden, 2002, p. 12). The CNAA and its committees were staffed very largely by experienced, senior university academics, complemented by members with administrative and financial expertise. The crucial issue of appropriate standards for acceptance of programmes by the CNAA was thus based on essentially university criteria. In the early years there were, naturally, concerns about the ‘standards’ issue, defined as how best, in the polytechnic context, to assess ‘university standard’. Nevertheless, the CNAA developed a culture that was both rigorous and responsible, and educationally progressive. New fields of study rapidly emerged, centred on both vocational and interdisciplinary degree programmes, the large majority in new curricular areas. Polytechnics, with CNAA support, also pioneered ‘sub-degree’ provision (HNC, HND, Dip HE, and diplomas in a range of health-related areas such as nursing and midwifery).

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Watson and Bowden summarize well the particular ethos developed successfully by the CNAA: Several key university-based figures were sucked into membership of Boards and Panels, subject networks were thus built up that cut across the divisions in the sector, and a strong ethos of leadership and innovations in ‘course development’ was fostered (almost as a counter-part in terms of professional esteem and promotion to the function of ‘research’ in the universities). (Watson and Bowden, 2002, p. 12) However, the polytechnics always had problems in two areas of their operation: funding structures, and a persistent lack of resource; and governance. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons that governments persisted with the polytechnic model was that it provided higher education at much cheaper unit cost than the universities. The details of the complex and tortuous funding structures that developed are not the concern here – the focus is rather upon the relationship between Labour Party ideology and higher education policy development, and the polytechnic era. However, it is clear that funding issues were driven, first, by the severe restraints upon Government resources to fund what was a necessarily expanding system of higher education; and secondly, by a strong desire on the part of Government to exercise a far greater degree of central, state control of the overall development of the higher education system through the polytechnics. (Governments were far less able to exert direct pressure on the more autonomous universities, though pressures in this direction steadily increased throughout the period.) A third funding factor, which links directly to the governance issue, was the uneasy relationship between the polytechnics and their local education authorities. Clearly, most LEAs felt far less engaged with their polytechnics – which increasingly became national rather than local institutions – than they did with the schools and FE colleges which by definition were concerned entirely with providing education for the children, adolescents and, in the case of FE, adult learners of the locality. The funding trajectory which emerges parallels that of governance: there was a fairly rapid erosion of LEA control and policy and a move towards a nationally organized, effectively state-controlled bureaucratic structure (in terms of funding structures). For example, the establishment of the National Advisory Board (NAB) in 1982 marked the formal transition to a national funding system, leading eventually to the PCFC (Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council) and HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England). Governance in the polytechnics was very different to that obtaining in universities, largely because of the LEA’s initial control of funding and policy. The governance function was explicitly the responsibility, not of academic staff via their Senates as was the case, at least formally, in the universities, but of a combination of senior management and LEA

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bureaucracy, albeit with substantial staff representation on their Academic Boards. From the outset, therefore, the polytechnics were by definition, to quite a large extent, ‘managerialist’ and ‘bureaucratic’ (Bargh et al., 1996). This managerialist culture has remained, albeit softened to an extent by their later gradual integration into the wider university sector and its historically rooted and (increasingly quasi-) autonomous culture and practice. Eventually, as a result of the 1988 Education Reform Act, polytechnics achieved ‘corporate’ status, under the aegis of the new national body, the PCFC. The effect was to diminish substantially ‘the local authority’s presence on the governing body, and reflected the Government’s concern that the institutions should serve economic and national needs. Local authority representation was limited to not more than three; the polytechnics nominees could be no more than five’ (Pratt, 1997, p. 292). The general conclusion to be drawn is that this whole process strengthened the power of the state, and reduced the role of the local authorities. For the Fabian wing of the Labour Party at least, this centralization of control in the hands of the state and its bureaucracy was seen as necessary for the achievement of a more egalitarian, or rather, more meritocratic, system, serving the needs of the wider society. (This was also, of course, a keynote of the policies of the Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997: despite all the rhetoric of the free market, the period saw an unparalleled centralization of power in the hands of the state.) In the higher education context, Silver is surely correct in his conclusion that: ‘The Robbins Committee, Crosland and the binary policy, the polytechnics and the CNAA formed a transition to the agendas of the extraordinarily strengthened position of the state in dealing with higher education’ (Silver, 2007, p. 195).

The polytechnics: success or failure? Did the polytechnics achieve the high hopes of their creators – Robinson, Crosland, Weaver et al.? And, to echo John Pratt’s question: why, if the polytechnic policy had been so successful, was it abandoned in 1992 when polytechnics were translated to universities and thus became part of a formally unitary sector? Moreover, and of particular importance in the context of this study, did the polytechnics provide, even potentially, a viable and realistic articulation of a socialist higher education policy? Certainly, the polytechnics were successful in providing ‘different kinds of education to increasing numbers of different kinds of people in different ways’ (Pratt, 1997, p. 308). As Watson and Bowden have noted, it was the polytechnics, not the universities, which ‘shouldered the burden of the social agenda’ (Watson and Bowden, 2002, p. 20). At the time of their translation to universities in 1992–93, the statistics certainly corroborate this claim.

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Figure 1 Widening Participation in UK higher education by different types of university, 1993. Pre-1992 universities (1993)

1992 universities (1993)

percentage

percentage

Women

49.6

49.0

Age 21+

17.0

34.2

Socio-economic group IIIM – v

22.3

32.4

A-level entrants

83.9

58.5

Ethnic minorities

8.5

14.4

(Table from Watson and Bowden, 2002, p. 20; Source: NCIHE (1997))

Equally, it is the polytechnics which provided the Government with a financially viable means to move to a mass higher education system. They also maintained the more open-access tradition of the non-university sector and they provided successfully a whole range of new subject areas in vocationally orientated programmes. Within this they developed an impressive variety of flexible structures – through inter-disciplinary degree and sub-degree courses, and through modular and credit-based innovatory systems. The polytechnics had proved responsive to the needs of students from a wide range of backgrounds and personal circumstances (including substantial numbers of mature students); and, similarly, were responsive to the needs of employers and professions. In the end, though, the polytechnic experiment did not transform higher education in Britain: or, rather, it did not transform it in the democratic socialist directions that Robinson and others had envisaged. Because the polytechnics succeeded, in the ways indicated, at a far cheaper cost to the Government, this facilitated the ensuing decades’ persistent squeeze on university funding, and the increasing level of central state control. ‘The polytechnics – and subsequently all universities – faced growing problems of maintaining quality in an expanding system with diminishing resources; their staff were stressed and treated less as professionals and more as employees in an increasingly managerial culture’ (Pratt, 1997, p. 308). By the time of their translation in 1992–93 to university status, the polytechnics had moved quite a long way towards a university culture. They had changed from being primarily local to largely national institutions and their governance arrangements and patterns of student recruitment exemplified this change. Effortlessly, they adopted the accoutrements of the university culture: Directors became Vice-Chancellors; degree ceremonies became, often risibly, ‘traditional’; and most had aspirations, only occasionally realized, to attain reasonably high research status in the Research Assessment Exercise. On the other hand, of course, the universities became in the 1980s and 1990s far more like the polytechnics than had been the

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case in the 1960s and 1970s. (As Tyrrell Burgess was later wont to remark, after 1992 it was not so much that the polytechnics had become universities but that the universities were increasingly like polytechnics.) In part, this was reflected in much greater central state control and sharply reduced funding; but it was also evident in the adoption of modularity and credit, in the acceleration in the number of vocationally related programmes, and in the priority given to ‘knowledge transfer’ activities and even, to an extent, to widening participation and social inclusion policies and practice. The outcome of this ‘blurring of boundaries’ in the period since 1992 has hardly fulfilled the hopes (and in their more optimistic moments, expectations) of the advocates of the ‘polytechnic idea’ in the 1960s. Was this the result partly of extraneous factors and partly of Government and its agencies reneging on the original commitments; or was there something flawed in the original prospectus of Eric Robinson et al.? Of course, the answer is ‘both’. The seemingly inexorable intensification of marketization, globalization, and neo-conservatism in late capitalism has been pervasive across the whole of British society, and indeed western societies generally. And Robinson et al. can hardly be held responsible for the betrayals, failures and philistinism of New Labour (Coates, 2003; Taylor, 2005, 2006.). Just as the advocates of the ‘polytechnic idea’ had seen their development as emancipatory and socially transformative, so did those who were engaged in adult and continuing education envisage the potential of the lifelong-learning agenda in the early years of the New Labour Government of 1997. (In this case, the outcome was rather more clear-cut: as in other areas of New Labour’s social policy, very little of the original impetus and idealism were realized over the following decade (Taylor, 2005, 2006; Fryer, 2004)). Having noted these severe reservations, it is nevertheless important to emphasize that the world of mass higher education owes much to the polytechnic experience – and arguably would be considerably the poorer, in terms of progressive educational ideas and structures, had they not been created. The problems, in our view, are more fundamentally systemic and ideological. It is our contention that the shortcomings of the eventuating higher education system in Britain, in terms especially of its potential place in a democratic socialist social policy formulation, are in part inherent in the original polytechnic prospectus. This argument is based on four linked contentions. First, that the much vaunted ‘vocational relevance’ argument in reality meant inevitably a subjugation of educational programmes, and the educational experience for learners, to the needs of public- and private-sector employers. Secondly, and more importantly still, it entailed a tacit acceptance of the cultural assumptions inherent in the dominant free-market environment. Hence, for example, students and learners rapidly became ‘customers’ and consumers; higher education institutions became managerialist in their governance and overall culture, with the academic

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collegiality (the ‘community of scholars’ notion) a seeming irrelevance, and academic criteria and status subordinate to financial and ‘corporate’ agendas; and the individualist, materialist culture of the wider society dominated the academic environment, so that students’ primary concerns became the gaining of certification in a ‘relevant’ subject, so that their employability and salary level prospects were at the highest level possible. Interest in, and a pure appreciation of, education and knowledge for their own sake – as an a priori good – became something of a rarity amongst the student body (and, arguably, with the culture of the audit and the RAE rarer too amongst academic staff). Not all these ills can be laid at the door of the polytechnics of course; but it is surely beyond dispute that their creation and the culture they embodied, especially at leadership level, supported and exacerbated these cultural trends. Third, the vocational emphases of the polytechnic advocates, and subsequent polytechnic practice, predictably degenerated too often into uncritical, instrumentalist training. Arguably, the essence of the idea of the university is to provide an intellectual environment where sceptical and critical modes of analysis and discussion are predominant, where the prevailing ‘common sense’ of the day is critiqued, and where all accepted modes of thinking are challenged. Such a precept only needs to be stated to see how far removed that ideal is from the practice of university institutions in the early twenty-first century. Finally, whilst there is much to applaud in the polytechnics’ commitment to access and social inclusion, this is essentially an articulation of the ‘equality of opportunity’ principle so central to Crosland’s wider social democratic revisionism in The Future of Socialism, which had tacitly replaced the focus on simple ‘equality’ in Tawney (most notably in his influential book, Equality, (1931)). Equality of opportunity is far from being achieved of course: one has only to look at the persistent differences between A-level scores in the maintained and independent sectors, and the consequent high percentage of entrants to Oxford and Cambridge who were educated in the public school system. Nevertheless, the significant benefits to relatively disadvantaged learners resulting from the creation of the polytechnics must be emphasized. The polytechnics led the way in increasing absolute numbers of working-class and generally educationally disadvantaged students studying in higher education. Given the seemingly intractable inequalities of British society this is no mean feat. However, even if full equality of opportunity were ever to be achieved, the questions remain. Equality of opportunity leads not to significantly greater equality of wealth and power in the wider society, but to the creation of a more meritocratic, but still essentially hierarchical, system. (As Alison Wolf has emphasized, family background remains the most important determinant of educational achievement, and subsequent career (Wolf, 2002, pp. 224–56)). Those from the most privileged backgrounds, will always

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gravitate to the ‘best’ universities, and subsequently to the most materially rewarding and socially powerful occupations and positions in the wider society. Still more fundamentally, if ‘access’ and social inclusion merely result in more people from the lower socio-economic backgrounds being well qualified in business studies, law, and the applied sciences, and absorbing the individualistic and hierarchical culture now so prevalent in universities, that will hardly advance the prospects of a more equal, more humane, more cultured, more democratic – in short, a more socialist – society. Even those in the Labour Party and the wider labour movement who are committed socialists have never believed that a socialist society will eventuate solely through a progressive educational system. This is at bottom a political issue, not an educational one, and as Ralph Miliband often reiterated, ‘politics is about power’. But education, and in particular higher education in the era of the mass system, has a potentially key role to play in the process. For all its undoubted radicalism, and solid educational achievements, the ‘polytechnic idea’, and its subsequent implementation in practice, was not conducive to the creation of that wider social purpose, as articulated by Tawney, Lindsay and the earlier pioneers of a progressive, socialist education system. Perhaps, though, in the wider political context this ambitious goal is not achievable. After all, the funding and associated resources allocated to the polytechnics were never commensurate with those obtaining for the universities, whose secure position as institutions serving predominantly the interests and perspectives of the ruling order was never seriously challenged. Neither Crosland nor Wilson displayed any conviction about taking on the vested interests of the universities or in preventing them from interlocking with the social elite. It was left, paradoxically, to Margaret Thatcher, with her populist ideological confidence, to create any turbulence at all in this arena. At a different level, it could be argued, too, that innovative, important and radical though it was, the creation of the Open University did detract from the potential of the polytechnics to cater for part-time, adult learners on a basis of open access. And it is to a consideration of the other great Labour innovation in the period, the Open University, that we now turn.

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Chapter Seven

Wilson’s Baby: Michael Young, Jennie Lee and the Open University The creation of the Open University – proposals for the new institution were announced in February 1966, shortly before the General Election – was very much a Labour Party initiative, and more particularly an idea that Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister from 1964 to 1970 (and again from 1974 to 1976) claimed as his own, and supported tenaciously. Indeed, as his biographer notes, the successful development of the Open University was the ‘achievement . . . above almost anything else in his career [for which] he most wished to be remembered’ (Pimlott, 1992, pp. 513–14). Harold Wilson was, however, by no means the only Labour Party figure behind the development of the Open University; Michael Young and Jennie Lee in particular played key roles. And the ideological conceptualization of the Open University differed sharply amongst both leading Labour figures, and amongst those engaged professionally in the Open University itself – notably the University’s first Vice-Chancellor, Walter Perry. The main objectives in this chapter are thus, first, to delineate this development, and the reasons for the Labour Party’s strong avowal of the Open University initiative. However, even here an immediate caveat has to be entered: many leading Labour figures, including Anthony Crosland, the Secretary of State for Education, were very sceptical about the Open University and its high cost. Pimlott remarks that: ‘On occasion, Wilson had to fight his own Education Minister, as well as the mandarins. The Secretary of State shared the view of some of his advisors that there were better claims on educational money’ (Pimlott, 1992, p. 514). Second, we discuss the differing political and ideological views of the leading Labour Party, and Open University professional staff on the nature and purposes of the new institution. Third, and linked to this latter discussion, we examine the degree to which the Open University made initially, or later, a significant contribution to the Labour Party’s proclaimed egalitarian and democratic aspirations for higher education.

‘The University of the Air’ and the antecedents of the Open University. Harold Wilson never deviated from the notion that he alone was the originator of the Open University idea. ‘The Open University was conceived’,

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wrote Brian MacArthur, ‘on Easter Sunday, 1963, in the Scilly Islands home of Harold Wilson, newly elected leader of the Labour opposition’ (MacArthur, 1974, p. 3). This was perhaps justifiable, or at least excusable, hubris on Wilson’s part: the Open University would certainly not have come into being, at a time of severe economic difficulty, had Wilson not championed it over its crucial first years. Nevertheless, the general idea of the Open University had been around for many years. MacArthur records that, as early as 1926, J. C. Stobart had mooted the idea of a ‘wireless university’; Sir George Catlin had made similar proposals in 1946; and the ITA had published a pamphlet on the topic by George Weddell in 1961 (which had been passed on to Harold Wilson); and, of course, Michael Young had written and campaigned on the issue in the early 1960s (as we discuss below) (MacArthur, 1974, p. 3). Also in the early 1960s R .C. G. Williams of the Institute of Engineers made proposals for a ‘Televarsity’ (Pratt, 1971, p. 7). One striking common characteristic of all the early advocates, including Harold Wilson, was the very strong emphasis upon the new technology of the media, especially television, and its educational potential: hence the early provisional title of the ‘University of the Air’ rather than the subsequent ‘Open University’. Similarly, in March 1963, a Labour Party study group under Lord Taylor (as we noted in Chapter 5) presented a report about the continuing exclusion from higher education of lower-income groups. They ‘proposed an experiment on radio and television: a “University of the Air” for serious, planned, adult education’. Edward Boyle, too, was of the view in 1963 (when he was the Secretary of State for Education in the Conservative Government) that ‘in the long-term at any rate, a separate [television] channel for a direct teaching service [would] be required’ (quoted in Briggs, 2001, p. 185). This whole dimension had immense appeal to Harold Wilson, and goes a very long way to explain his enthusiasm for the Open University. As is well known, Wilson in the 1960s presented the Labour Party as the party of the new era, foregrounding the ‘white heat of technology’, and envisaging a new society more open, more meritocratic and with more technologists and professionals. This was very much a new Fabian vision, and drew inspiration from the ‘founding text’ of Gaitskellite revisionism, Crosland’s The Future of Socialism (1956). There was a genuine ideological base, therefore, to Wilson’s position on the Open University: but there was also a shrewd political and tactical motivation. To begin with, the modernizing rhetoric was contrasted favourably with the supposedly old-fashioned Conservative Party, led after Macmillan’s fall in 1963 by the positively antediluvian Sir Alec Douglas Home, formerly Earl Home (the ‘14th Earl’, as Wilson disparagingly referred to him). Second, Wilson had been influenced by his frequent visits to the Soviet Union, where he had been impressed by their distance learning

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developments using television; and with the fact that 60 per cent of Soviet engineering graduates obtained their degrees following correspondence courses, plus television and radio lectures, and a final year at university in either Leningrad or Moscow. Similarly the enthusiastic advocacy of his political friend Senator William Benton, the Chairman of Encyclopaedia Britannica, who had piloted teaching films marketed through the encyclopaedia, also attracted Wilson’s interest. Third, the potential economies of scale of the proposed ‘University of the Air’ appealed. As Leslie Wagner has argued, in its early years, the Open University’s costs were ‘less than a third of other institutions’ as far as unit costs per undergraduate were concerned. Moreover, the capital cost per Open University student was only around 6 per cent of that in a conventional institution, and this reduces to 3 per cent if residential costs are included. On the other hand, there were high production costs for television Open University programmes (£150K to £250K in the early 1970’s), and for initial curriculum planning. Overall, in Wagner’s judgement, the Open University was cheaper because there were few capital costs and, crucially, because it was ‘specifically geared to mass higher education’ (Wagner, 1974, pp.21–7). This emphasis was short-lived, however. Both Jennie Lee, the minister appointed by Wilson to champion and develop the Open University in her role as Minister of the Arts, and Walter Perry, the Open University’s first Vice-Chancellor, were implacably opposed to the notion of the ‘University of the Air’, but of course equally passionate about the idea of an open university. Lee’s and Perry’s crucial roles are discussed below, but, first, attention must be turned to Michael Young and his relationship with the Open University idea. Young was a key, and innovative, Labour Party figure as well as being an outstanding academic applied sociologist.

Michael Young Michael Young had a profound influence upon the founding of the Open University. He was more generally a significant, radical, though maverick, figure in Labour’s social – and in particular educational – policy development in the decades following the end of the war in 1945. Ultimately, though he was effectively excluded from any central managerial or policy role in the University’s development. There were two main reasons for this: one of substantive policy, the second to do with Young’s character, style and reputation. Michael Young was a great enthusiast for the expansion of post-school education. But for him, what was needed was a broad-based college, not specifically a university. Moreover, he saw educational technology – and specifically the role of television and radio for bringing educational opportunity to large numbers of people across a variety of levels – as the key attribute

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of such a new college. Young was convinced, particularly following his involvement with the Plowden Committee, that inequality and the consequent lack of educational opportunity for the mass of working-class people, was the key educational problem. As Asa Briggs put it, ‘the lower the social class, the greater the degree of educational wastage’ (Briggs, 2001, p. 187). To this end, Brian Jackson and Young founded the National Extension College (NEC), based at Cambridge, in 1963. Part-time tutors from several institutions were involved, including the University of Cambridge, Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, and the Universities of Birmingham, Hull, Keele, and Harvard. The NEC was a good example of Young’s ability to innovate, to inspire others with his vision and to create something out of nothing. The NEC had no government grant, but relied on funding from industry and on communications technology. Young wrote a series of articles in Where? magazine calling for action, building on the NEC, to develop an ‘Open University’. A number of others at this time, including Professor Harold Wiltshire of the Department of Adult Education at Nottingham University and Peter Laslett of Cambridge University were also actively engaged in these and related discussions. But it was Michael Young who was the leading advocate and enthusiast. At this time Young had become a lecturer in sociology at the University of Cambridge, the first to be appointed, in 1960. At the same time David Lockwood was appointed Senior Lecturer, and later became Professor of Sociology at Essex University (‘a real sociologist’ as Young himself acknowledged (Briggs, 2001, p. 192)). Although ‘untouched by any Cambridge spell’, and finding Cambridge ‘uncongenial’ and full of academics ‘so pleased with themselves for being there’, Young nevertheless engaged in educational innovation with his usual enthusiasm (Briggs, 2001, p. 193). For example, he advocated the creation of two Cambridges: one for term time, and the second for the vacation – ‘Cambridge as it ought to be’ (Briggs, 2001, p. 193). Although he had some supporters for his idea, including Peter Laslett and Hugh Morrison, Senior Tutor and Vice-President of Churchill College (where Young became a Fellow), Cambridge then as now was an extremely conservative institution. Young’s cause was not helped when he approached Battersea College of Technology for academic staff to teach at his ‘second’ University of Cambridge. This led to his initiative being dismissed as ‘Battersea University in King’s Parade’ (Briggs, 2001, p. 194). A much more modest venture did eventuate: an academic teaching symposium, organized jointly with the Cambridge Board of Extramural Studies, was held at Churchill College in March 1963. The weekend residential course attracted 50 committed mature students (half of them teachers), and involved a remarkable collection of academic talent – for example, Richard Stone, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Richard (later Lord) Kahn, and Kenneth (later Sir Kenneth) Berrill. As Briggs notes, ‘the right collective noun for this group of tutors was galaxy’ (Briggs, 2001,

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p. 195). These detailed anecdotal examples, which could be added to, are indicative of both Young’s strengths and weaknesses. Innovative, dynamic and interesting, certainly: but Young was also a maverick, constitutionally an anti-establishment figure always critical of authority and careless of the shibboleths of standards, quality, and ‘appropriateness’. Young’s enthusiasm did not fit politically with any of the key interest groups. He was indifferent to the bureaucratic and territorial boundaries between sectors – higher, further, community education and so on. For him, what mattered was devising imaginative, innovative means of spreading educational opportunity, and the excitement and democratic impetus that this would provide. Young was thus committed to adult education broadly defined: but he was not at all interested in or involved with the formal structure of University Adult Education (the ‘Extramural Empires’ which Stuart Marriott has written about so eloquently (Marriott, 1984)). Again, temperamentally, this sort of educational ethos and its institutional politics were anathema to him. Similarly, and in the context of the politics of the development of the Open University, Michael Young was out of sympathy with the Labour ideology of Harold Wilson’s government, and particularly with the perspectives of Jennie Lee, the key figure in taking the University forward. Although Young was a close friend of Anthony Crosland, and although Crosland, in Cabinet, urged his colleagues to approve Young as the Open University’s first ViceChancellor, Jennie Lee refused point blank (Hollis, 1997, p. 303). She was doubtful, with good reason, of Young’s managerial ability, and of his general ‘reliability’ – always a key attribute as far as politicians are concerned. The overriding reason, however, was Lee’s unshakeable commitment to creating the Open University as a university with the highest academic standards. This contrasts sharply with Young’s prospectus for a wide-ranging, open-ended college. It is to a consideration of Lee’s central role, and her perspective, that we now turn.

Jennie Lee It is much to Harold Wilson’s credit that he appointed Jennie Lee as Minister for the Arts in 1964. Wilson himself had of course been a member of the Bevanite wing of the Labour Party, albeit somewhat semi-detached. Indeed, he, and John Freeman, resigned from the 1950–51 Labour Government with Aneurin Bevan over the imposition of prescription charges. Following Bevan’s untimely, tragic death in 1960, Jennie Lee was devastated and ‘lost’ both politically and personally. Wilson, like many others in the Party, was concerned about her welfare and Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark and a leading Labour Left supporter, approached him to see whether he ‘could help Jennie in any way, find her work to do’ (Hollis, 1997, p. 274).

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(Others who were concerned and tried to help included the playwright, Arnold Wesker, who involved Lee to good effect in his radical arts initiative Centre 42, and the novelist, Doris Lessing, who suggested this involvement initially.) Until this intervention by Wilson, Lee had felt that with Bevan’s death ‘she was finished’ (Jeffrey, 1997, p. 24). Although she was formally a very junior Minister, she was a leading Labour Party figure, and had direct access to the Prime Minister, bypassing not only her own senior Minister, Anthony Crosland, but also her own senior officials, much to the irritation of all concerned. It was her utter determination and commitment, allied to Wilson’s own, which secured the Open University’s future in difficult times. As discussed earlier, Lee was determined to exclude, effectively, Michael Young from the Open University. For example, when the Sunday Times published an article on Young’s contribution to the Open University, Lee replied at length, insisting that Michael Young ‘played no part in the early struggle to overcome the resistance of the educational system’ (Hollis, 1997, p. 304). Jennie Lee was certainly a decisive minister. After only four days in office, she abolished the recently established BBC-led Committee on the ‘College of the Air’, although proposals were almost at the stage for presenting to Ministers. Lee wanted a proper university, awarding degrees and making no compromise on academic standards. Why did she feel so strongly on this point? Brian MacArthur suggests that she saw the Open University as ‘an abiding memorial to Aneurin Bevan, a graduate of the National Labour College, offering a University education to those (like him) who were deprived of it, mainly by their social background, earlier in their lives. Only the very best, therefore, was good enough’ (MacArthur, 1974, p. 6). There is much truth in this. In her role as Minister for the Arts she found a cause, not only with the campaign for the Open University of course, but with a range of initiatives in the arts, pre-eminently with the foundation of the National Theatre, another testament to her remarkable ability and vision, which were instrumental in the creation of long-lasting national institutions. In all these contexts she was given invaluable support by Lord Goodman, with his unparalleled political acumen and network contacts. Jennie Lee’s personal and political background are also important explanatory factors in her outstanding political success: in her ministerial role Lee was an ILP activist and militant. She had been brought up in the Scottish working-class labour movement and was an archetypal product of that very particular culture: deeply socialist but also very Scottish and with a bitter resentment of what was perceived as the bourgeois, capitalist dominance of the English ruling class. Lee was a romantic and a campaigner, an emotional rather than an intellectual socialist, and never happier than when campaigning against the established order (including the Labour leadership) on specific causes which she perceived to be in the interests

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of the working class. Only the best was good enough for the working class. At the outset, Lee stated that she ‘was not interested in having the next best thing, a poor man’s University of the Air . . . we should set our sights higher than that’ (Hollis, 1997, p. 307). She wanted a university that was, in her biographer’s succinct phraseology, ‘autonomous, independent, degreegiving, with a Vice-Chancellor of impeccable standing . . . open in access, uncompromising on standards’ (ibid., p. 307).

Critics of the Open University idea It was fundamental as well for the future survival of the Open University that Jennie Lee and Harold Wilson held firm in their commitment: the opposition was formidable, near universal in the educational world, and intensely expressed. At this point, therefore, before tracing Lee’s successful leadership of the Open University project, and the key role of Walter Perry, its first Vice-Chancellor, we should examine the perspectives of the various critics of the idea. The educational establishment, both in government and civil service and in the governing circles of the universities were quite content to accept the creation of the polytechnics, which they regarded as useful, clearly second-class, training establishments for the less able students, and implicitly intended to cater for the skills needs of lower-middle-class and working-class young people. The proposal for an Open University was quite different. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (CVCP) ‘did not believe a further higher education”institution”, as they carefully described the Open University, was”necessary” . . . [a]bove all, members of the CVCP did not believe it could be a proper University . . .’ (CVCP, 1967). The educational press was at best lukewarm. (The Times Educational Supplement, for example, stated that ‘a University is not a mode of mass communication, it is a community’ (Times Educational Supplement, 1965).) Similarly, the world of adult education was opposed, though there were some, such as Harold Wiltshire, Professor at the University of Nottingham, and Roy Shaw, Professor at Keele, and later Secretary General of the Arts Council, who were enthusiasts from the start. The leaders of university adult education were opposed partly on grounds of what might be termed conservative imperialism: why should a new, fashionable toy of politicians be allowed to trespass upon its extramural domain? This was risky, unproven, threatened standards and did not connect to the various shibboleths of the joint tutorial class, the ‘liberal tradition’ and so on. But there was also a clear, and perhaps more justifiable, economic argument. The Responsible Body (RB) grant from the DES, which had provided the bedrock of earmarked government funding for extramural provision since the early twentieth century, amounted in the mid-1960s to approximately £1m annually (which

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was around one-tenth of 1 per cent of the entire education budget). The initial cost of the Open University was £3m, and the annual operating costs were, in the 1960s, over £1m. With this kind of money, adult educators argued, universities and other well-established adult education bodies felt that they could have transformed their work and given it the centrality and importance in the academy that it warranted. In contrast, they argued, the new-fangled Open University was likely to prove a white elephant, delivering inferior education to as yet unidentified students. Polytechnic advocates, from a very different quarter of the ideological spectrum, were equally critical. Eric Robinson and Tyrrell Burgess, for example, believed, as we have seen in the previous chapter, in polytechnics as local, vocational, relevant to the needs of industry and technology, and open and pluralist in the range of qualifications across the whole postcompulsory sector. They opposed the aspirations of the CATs for university status – academic drift as they saw it. Like many others, they thought that the Open University was ‘a vulgar, unnecessary, expensive and distracting hybrid that crossed the binary line’ (Hollis, 1997, p. 310). John Pratt, both a leading advocate of and practitioner within the polytechnic system, and its historian (Pratt, 1997), concluded in an interesting 1971 article that the Open University failed ‘to make any serious inroad into the educational system’s eternal prejudice in favour of the middle class and particularly of professional people . . . at least a third [of its entrants] have had two or three years’ higher education already’ (Pratt, 1971, pp. 6–25). In Pratt’s view, the insistence of the Open University on awarding only degrees was misconceived. What most working-class students seek, he argued, was at least initially a sub-degree qualification. The Open University, moreover, had made no serious attempt – and certainly no successful attempt – to attract educationally disadvantaged, working-class students. Rather, the target had become those, very largely middle-class, adults who were qualified for entrance to a university but who, for whatever reason, had not attended at the standard age. Few of the technicians and other ‘modern workers’ that Wilson had hoped to attract had in fact enrolled. More fundamentally, Pratt argued, the failure of the Open University was the result of ‘a fundamental contradiction between its objectives and the traditions of university education . . . the university tradition is academic, conservative and exclusive. Universities are concerned with knowledge ’for its own sake’ (Pratt, 1971, p. 20). Courses and programmes were developed more often as a result of individual academics’ particular interests, concerns and specialisms rather than as a result of student need or demand, or because of a perceived social or industrial demand. Following Robinson (see Chapter 6), Pratt argued for the contrasting tradition of higher education as developed and articulated through the technical college tradition, and subsequently the colleges of further education. Thus, he argued, the role of the Open University was inherently contradictory: its

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tasks were essentially those of an institution in the technical college tradition but it was itself quintessentially in the university tradition. This series of misconceptions thus rendered the Open University fundamentally incapable of playing any significant part in redressing the chronic inequalities which pervade British society. Far from being ‘too early [in 1971] to evaluate the Open University’, Pratt concluded, it was on the contrary, ‘already too late’ (Pratt, 1971, p. 23). A series of somewhat similar oppositional voices came from the Left of the Labour Party. The Left could not understand why Jennie Lee, of all people, seemed unwilling to see the Open University as a means of countering educational deprivation amongst working-class men and women. Given the huge social class inequalities in Britain – in terms of economic wealth, political power and the rest, so much of which was related to educational opportunity or the lack of it, surely all socialists should use innovative institutions such as the Open University to help to redeem these grievous wrongs? To those from this political perspective, Lee’s attitude was puzzling, disappointing, and inexplicable.

The foundation and early years of the Open University The opposition to the very idea of the Open University was thus intimidatingly uniform – albeit from differing, often conflicting, perspectives. Lee stuck to her guns: as noted, she relished a battle, and the greater the level of criticism, the more determined she became. Lee was utterly uncompromising on ‘standards’: ‘I have said time and again that the most insulting thing that could happen to any working class man or woman was to have a working class university . . . It is not its function to do the work of an open secondary school as well as an Open University’ (Lee, quoted in Hollis, 1997, p. 311). When in 1965 she founded the Advisory Committee to pursue the project (with her civil servants very unenthusiastic about the whole project), Lee was absolutely explicit as to its remit: and, most unusually, she took the Chair herself. She made it clear that it was not open to the Committee to disagree with the concept of the Open University itself: the Prime Minister and Lee herself had decided that it would go ahead. And, no, the Open University would not offer intermediate qualifications; it was to be strictly degrees only. Moreover, the Open University would have nothing to do with the CNAA, admirable body though this was. Again, ‘there could be no compromise on standards’ (quoted in Hollis, 1997, p. 313). In answer to the reasonable question as to whether there ought to be a market research survey to ascertain student demand and the nature of the potential student body, Lee replied that there was no time for this and ‘somewhat airily referred to casting bread upon the waters’ (ibid.).

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Later, Walter Perry, the University’s first Vice-Chancellor, strongly supported Lee’s uncompromising stance: Had she given way, had she attempted to start with a scheme offering education through the media to adults at school or pre-university level, I think the concept would have disappeared. Its cost would have been no less, its status would have been much less, it would have had no glamour. It was the glamour of the university in name and in actuality that enabled her to win her way. (Perry, 1976, p. 24) The membership of the Advisory Committee first mooted in April 1965 was notable for its inclusion of both enthusiasts for the Open University idea, and of at least some heavyweight university figures. From the first category were Peter Laslett (a substitute effectively for Michael Young, who had, maybe unwisely, declined Lee’s offer of membership), John Scupham, formerly of the BBC, and Eric Briault from the Inner London Education Authority. And from the second category, Lord Annan, Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and Dr Brynmor Jones, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull. The only ‘specialist’ university adult educator was Harold Wiltshire, Professor of Adult Education at the University of Nottingham. Although Lee had to give way on the proposal for a joint BBC/ITV prime-time fourth television channel, she did succeed in the key objective of securing a funding stream. When the UGC chairman, Sir John Wolfenden, indicated that the UGC would not support the Open University, Lee simply switched the funding route directly to the Government Ministry, the DES. Lee’s second masterstroke was to persuade Harold Wilson to appoint Lord Goodman, a political fixer par excellence, to advise her and in particular to calculate the overall costs of the Open University project – again, to the intense irritation of the Civil Service. Goodman responded quickly and, after consultation with Hugh Greene, the BBC’s Director General, estimated that the Open University could be established on BBC2 for £1.15m capital costs and £3.7m running costs. This would, he said, finance ten hours of television programming, rising to thirty hours after three years. This was a remarkable underestimate of the true cost; as Goodman later acknowledged, the actual costs were approximately twenty times those amounts. Goodman noted in his memoirs that ‘but for that happy error . . . the Open University would probably not have existed’ (quoted in Hollis, 1997, p. 319). Following the substantial Labour election victory in 1966, Britain was embroiled in a serious economic crisis in 1967. Nevertheless, with Wilson’s untiring support, Jennie Lee was at last able to persuade the Treasury to allocate funding to ‘that little bastard that I have hugged to my bosom’ (quoted in Hollis, 1997, p. 321). Lee then proceeded to appoint an eminent group of people to the Planning Committee of the Open University, now a

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reality rather than a ‘project’. Sir Peter Venables, Vice-Chancellor of Aston University, was appointed Chairman. Venables, who had a technological background, was an experienced ‘committee man’, having worked with educational broadcasting and as a member of the Crowther Committee. There were five other Vice-Chancellors and several ‘specialists’ from the former Advisory Committee, plus inter alia Roy Shaw, Hilde Himmelweit, Ritchie Calder and Arnold Goodman. The stage was thus set for the launch of the Open University, very much on the lines of Lee’s original plans. Even though Young had been deliberately excluded from the Open University by Lee, he was generous enough – and surely accurate – when he wrote that: ‘the Open University was built by one person – though she had many able lieutenants and one ace card . . . the direct support of the Prime Minister . . . it was a stunning performance’ (quoted in Hollis, 1997, p. 305). The one remaining key figure in the ideological formation of the Open University to be discussed is Walter Perry, the Open University’s first Vice-Chancellor.

Walter Perry, the first Vice-Chancellor Perry was not an obvious choice as Vice-Chancellor. Several names had been mooted by the kingmakers of the day. They included a galaxy of the great and good of the higher and adult education establishments: Richard Hoggart, Michael Young (of course), Harold Wiltshire, Bill Hughes (of Ruskin College), Norman McKenzie, Brian Jackson (now heading the NEC), and Kenneth Berrill (Bursar of King’s College, Cambridge, and later to be made Chair of the UGC). Perry was something of an outsider. Although he was from Lee’s old university, Edinburgh, she had in fact no say in his appointment. As Director of Medical Research and Vice-Principal of Edinburgh University, Perry was one of the more than one hundred applicants for the post. He was short-listed and impressed Venables and the Appointing Committee sufficiently for him to be recommended to Lee for appointment. In many ways, Perry was conservative in his educational philosophy, and certainly neither a progressive nor a theorist. He was instead, a pragmatic, determined Scot, with no liking for politics or politicians, and bearing a self-proclaimed common-sense approach. Under his leadership, and given Lee’s earlier and continuing insistence on the maintenance of ‘university standards’, the Open University became a very different type of institution to that envisaged by the early advocates, like Wiltshire and Young, or indeed by any of the various radical interest groups campaigning for educational and political egalitarianism. Perry had a traditional view of the role of the university per se. The university ‘is a place where, through teaching and research, the scholarship of the past is nurtured and the sum total of human understanding extended’

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(Perry, 1976, p. 53). He was, nevertheless, committed to enabling adults, previously denied opportunities in higher education, the chance to study at the Open University: to this end, he was insistent upon the principle of open entry – ‘a frightening [prospect] for most academics’, as he noted (Perry, 1976, p. 55). He was also an advocate of the credit system, and of the Foundation Year structure. Perry had little in common, though, with the Tawney perspective on higher education. He took the view, as is so often the case with those in higher education with a scientific or technological background who become involved with adult learning, that the strong emphasis in the Open University should be upon vocational provision. He ‘was quite sure that most students would want primarily to obtain a qualification which would fit them for promotion, for a change of job, for a better job, for more money’ (Perry, 1976, p. 67): hardly a clarion call for a social purpose, radical initiative! That said, Perry was a determined and extremely conscientious and effective Vice-Chancellor. (He recalled that throughout 1969 and 1970, he worked ‘eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, with only one break for a round of golf’ (Perry, 1976, p. 50). The not unpredictable result was a coronary heart attack.) He and the Open University’s secretary, Anastasios Christodoulou (formerly, Deputy Registrar at Leeds University), appointed the first tranche of academic and senior academic-related staff. And this new, small team constructed the new curriculum and course structure. Perry created a solid, sensible structure. Originally, the Open University’s embryonic administration was based in Jennie Lee’s ministerial regency house in Belgrave Square. The search for more permanent and appropriate premises was difficult and was resolved in the end through the good offices of Jock Campbell and Geoffrey Crowther. Campbell had been created a life peer by Harold Wilson, and was not only President of Booker McConnell and Chairman of the New Statesman, but also Chair of Milton Keynes Development Corporation. At a meeting with Geoffrey Crowther, Chancellor of the Open University but also Chairman of Trust Houses hotels, called originally to discuss the siting of a hotel in Milton Keynes, it was agreed that the Open University would be sited at Walton Hall. Perry was delighted. Perry also oversaw an effective marketing and PR campaign which resulted in the recruitment of a good initial cohort of students (42,992 applications in 1971, with 25,000 admissions; corresponding figures for 1973 were 32,046 and 17,000 and for 1976, 52,916 and 17,000). With Christodoulou, he also introduced an innovative structure, drawing in part upon the Scottish four-year-degree model. The Foundation Course system was the basis of the Open University’s success and was essential if the open-entry principle were to be preserved. Equally important, the regional structure enabled the Open University from the outset to provide large-scale, but locally sensitive, course programmes. Another innovation was, from the outset, to create a

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research and development function for the Open University to evaluate and develop its own innovative practice. This is one of the first examples of higher education in the United Kingdom researching its own practice, and is a dimension of university research which could be adopted to great benefit by other institutions. The Open University was thus well and truly launched, and secured a distinctive position for itself in the higher education structure. Thus, when the Conservatives returned to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the Open University had become effectively unassailable, though it was inherently ideologically unpalatable to most Conservatives, including the new Prime Minister. Our intention here is not to trace the subsequent history of the University but rather to analyse its role in Labour’s policy development in higher education. The concluding section which follows reflects upon the Open University’s place in Labour’s post-1945 higher education development.

Conclusions: the Open University – a socialist success story? Undoubtedly, the Open University has been a success by most criteria. It has been a remarkable example of innovation, has harnessed modern technology for higher education provision, and has spawned similar bodies in several other countries. Moreover, it has provided the opportunity for degree-level study for very large numbers of adult students over many years, and has developed a high level too of curricular innovation. Although in the later stages of the New Labour Government of 1997 to 2010 the Open University underwent a funding crisis, because of the universally condemned changes to government funding policy for mature students (see Chapter 9), it has, since its foundation, maintained financial and organizational viability. These are all very notable achievements: and it may be that this was the only realpolitik way forward. But can these achievements be in any way construed as significantly conducive to socialist, or even social democratic, advance? As always, the answer is complicated. Certainly, the majority of adult students enrolling, and completing successfully in the Open University, were broadly middle class. However, as Paul Stanistreet has pointed out, many of the ‘middle-class teachers’ who composed a large proportion of the Open University’s students, were in fact women who came from essentially working-class backgrounds. ‘The Open University was reaching many people who had not had enough educational opportunities . . . but they were not what would have been conventionally termed “working-class” let alone “manual workers”’ (Stanistreet, 2009, p. 9). It is true, too, that although Perry saw the Open University’s programmes as primarily vocational in orientation, the institution did break a lot of new ground in the arts and social sciences areas. In particular, its broad-based

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approach through the Foundation Year structure, and its heavy investment in time and academic expertise in these, and other, curriculum areas, produced programmes and structures of often outstanding academic quality and no little innovation. Similarly, its pioneering use of not only the broadcasting media in the 1970s and beyond, but the innovative exploitation of new technology for mass educational purposes in subsequent decades, led the whole of the higher education sector – and arguably the developed world – in these important areas. It also led the field in its staff training, insisting that the mere possession of higher education qualifications was no guarantee of being a good teacher. In the end, however, the point remains that it is not enough from a strictly socialist point of view that the Open University undoubtedly enabled many thousands of students to gain access to a high-quality, innovative higher education experience: and that the large majority of them would not have had such an opportunity had the Open University not existed. Nor is it enough to argue the realpolitik case that anything more radical would have rendered the project non-viable. All such arguments, in our context, reinforce the theoretical, structural arguments already made in Chapter 2 on the ‘Miliband’ perspective. John Pratt was right: the Open University was essentially a university model, and as such had to adhere to the quality standards, as defined by an established (conservative) system, and was thus inadequately equipped to play a major role in an egalitarian educational policy development. Peter Clyne was also surely correct when he argued that, given ‘the link between educational qualifications and earning levels, it was precisely those who had most to gain from the Open University (unqualified, workingclass students) who were least likely to become its students’ (quoted in Stanistreet, 2009, p. 9). The Open University was a huge, and remarkable, achievement – especially given the economic circumstances of the times, and the constellation of political forces ranged against the idea. However, in a way this merely confirms our argument, drawing from Miliband’s theoretical perspective. To achieve successful innovation – as the Open University undoubtedly did, and against the odds – proposals have to be modified, effectively ‘de-radicalized’. Thus, the Open University was probably as successful as it could have been and, given the caveats noted, it contributed significantly to the advance of a socialist education policy for higher education.

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Chapter Eight

The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Lefts, and the Radical Student Voice in the 1960s and 1970s. Although this study centres on the ideologies, politics, and policy-making processes of the Labour Party, the Party did not exist in a vacuum but as part of a broader continuum of the labour movement and the political Left. Not always an easy relationship, the dialogue and contestation within this broader movement was a constant source of innovation and intellectual stimulation for the Labour Party leadership, and on occasion of intense irritation too. This chapter focuses on these ‘noises off’ in the 1960s and 1970s in relation to radical perspectives on policy reform for universities and higher education generally, and also considers the impact of the radical student movement and its main ideological foundations (We should note here that, of course, the extra- parliamentary Left had a presence and an influence throughout the period. However, as we said in the Introduction (Chapter 1), our intention in this book is to select periods and issues of particular importance in Labour’s relationship with higher education. This is one such ‘moment’ in this ongoing relationship.) We begin by looking at the ‘old’ Left, largely in and around the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), which since its foundation in 1920 had been a reference point for many on the ‘fellow travelling’ Left of the Labour Party. It was also a persisting concern for the leadership, convinced that the CPGB’s allegiance to Moscow and its subservience to the Cold War policies of Stalin and his CPSU successors were immensely damaging to the Labour Party. And indeed the conservative (and largely Conservative) press repeatedly, from the 1920s onwards, accused the Labour Party of being soft on communism, and of identifying with the undemocratic, totalitarian Soviet regime. Although the Labour leadership embraced with some enthusiasm the Cold War against the Soviet Union from the late 1940s, many left-wing backbenchers and labour movement intellectuals felt that there was much to be learned from the Soviet Union and that its egalitarianism, its centralized planning structures and many of its social policies had much to commend them. Moreover, they believed that, whatever its faults, the USSR and its allies had to be protected and championed against the capitalist system and its public relations machine. In the realm of education, such labour movement activists valued in particular the Soviet system’s egalitarianism and scientific orientation, and contrasted this with the conservative, hierarchical and grossly unjust system which they saw operating in Britain.

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The dominance of the far Left by the CPGB came to an abrupt end, however, in 1956, following the denunciation of Stalin’s crimes by Nikita Kruschev at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, and subsequent brutal suppression of the Hungarian Uprising by Soviet troops (Fryer, 1956). These events caused profound shock waves in world communism, as did the suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’ little more than a decade later, in 1968. In Britain there emerged, in part as a consequence of this crisis, a New Left that was deeply critical of the Soviet Union and of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism generally. This movement, a loose and not always easy coalition, drew its support, activism and ideology from ex-Communist dissidents (including important intellectuals, such as E. P. Thompson and John Saville), peace movement activists, and a variety of Trotskyist and libertarian and cultural radicals – many of the latter students or recent graduates (Taylor, 1988; Young, 1977; Thompson, 1960; Davis, 2011). A consideration of this New Left, in the context of our focus upon Labour’s higher education policy, forms the second part of this chapter.

The ‘old’ left- the Communist Party and comprehensivization The CPGB’s membership was higher in the last few years of the war than at any time in its existence, before or since. Clearly, this was the result in large part of the portrayal, and the actuality, of the Soviet Union following its entry into World War II as being a key ally in the struggle against Nazism. The virtues and heroism of the Soviet Union and its people were given high prominence by Churchill’s coalition government in these years (Addison, 1994). All this changed with the onset of the Cold War in 1948, and this, combined with the deeply held anti-communist views and histories of the 1945 Labour Government’s senior members – in particular Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison – led to a steep decline in the CPGB’s fortunes, though it remained a significant political force, especially in the trade unions. It was at this period too that the CPGB first formulated its fully fledged – and to some on the far Left, notorious – reformist strategy, The British Road to Socialism (1952), which finally and explicitly committed the Party to working through established political institutions and structures, and abandoned the traditional, vanguardist revolutionary strategy (a policy shift which had been personally approved by Stalin himself). The CPGB maintained an active interest in education and was strong in several unions, including the National Union of Teachers (NUT). Alongside dedicated educational policy committees, it supported its own journal, Education Today and Tomorrow, formerly Educational Journal, produced regular pamphlets on educational matters and was even confident enough to submit evidence to the Robbins Committee in 1961. The CPGB remained staunchly pro-Soviet – a former educational correspondent, C. P. Giles, wrote warmly

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in the journal in 1953 of ‘The Humanism of Joseph Stalin’ (Education Today and Tomorrow, vol. 15, no. 5, 5 June 1953) – and was enamoured of the Soviet educational system. Its policy statements were largely meritocratic in tone, arguing for more working-class participation in a technologically led higher education. Unsurprisingly, the CPGB was deeply suspicious of ‘elitist’ liberal education, which it believed in effect only supported a conservative hegemony, but in higher education policy they were also strongly critical of Crosland’s binarism and, and as we shall see, strongly embraced the comprehensivist approach of Robin Pedley, Professor of Education at Exeter University. One of the first post-war CPGB policy documents to lay down its basic thinking on higher education was its Memorandum on Higher Education (1947). In this document the universities were accorded three basic and largely uncontroversial functions: first, to facilitate social understanding; second, to train specialists; and third, to develop personality (CPGB, 1947). However, there was little interest in preserving the traditional autonomy of universities, the focus instead being upon the role universities should play in national policy development. But the CPGB was by no means simply in favour of the ‘Big State’. On the contrary, in line with a strong current of opinion in Labour that had been favoured by Tawney among others, it proposed the decentralization of higher education so that universities would become more responsive to their regions. The memorandum applauded the great advances in adult education and part-time education, which it was believed could also be better served by more local accountability. Through this dual system, national policy could be carried out by Regional Councils of Higher Education which would have responsibility for the expansion of the system as a whole. They would oversee the rapid expansion of the teacher training colleges (TTCs, subsequently to be renamed as colleges of education) and the (then LEA-controlled) technical colleges, while new universities should be founded in regions not currently served. Well aware of American developments in higher education, the memorandum noted that while, as a proportion of its population, Britain had a 1/750 participation rate in higher education, the USA had an equivalent rate of 1/75. Thus, by 1960, the target student population for Britain should be 250,000, and should include mature students already in part-time study. In a frank recognition that traditional working-class adult education, such as that provided through Ruskin College and the WEA, had not significantly widened participation in universities, the memorandum asserted that working-class prejudice and suspicion must be replaced by recognition of the vital role played by higher education in the transformation of society. With a rhetorical flourish appropriate for the vanguard party, the memorandum concluded that the working class must be determined to win higher education for the people and remodel it so that universities were no longer the preserve of the ruling class.

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In the following year, the CPGB published a short book by Christopher Meredith, Higher Education for the People (1948), which theorized its position further. In Chapter V, entitled ‘What is to replace the Ivory Tower?’, the regionalist theme was developed further. Meredith’s impetus came from a quotation from John Macmurray’s article in the Political Quarterly (1944) (see Chapter 5) arguing that universities are really ‘regional foundations’ that should be embedded in the community but are, in fact, alienated culturally and socially (Meredith, 1948). Meredith asserted that as such, they were still instruments of the ruling class, ignorant of the needs of local working-class communities. With a greater degree of regional accountability, universities should respond to these needs by establishing Departments of Social Science to investigate their localities, especially in the field of town planning. Universities must also develop the study of local culture, literature and art, and in this way, could thus become centres for culture and education, acting as foci for educational thought with research programmes and conferences to disseminate information. (In many ways, this was, in effect, a proposed enlargement of the roles and size of the existing Extramural Departments in universities.) Foreshadowing the Robbins Committee’s conclusions over a decade later, Meredith argued that universities should oversee the training of teachers, and stimulate education throughout the region. In terms of technological education, universities should develop closer links with industry, and Meredith agreed with the Percy Report (1946) on the need for more emphasis upon higher technology, to break down barriers between vocational and university work. He cited the importance of adult education in bridging this gap but noted critically that Extramural Departments were ‘unhonoured’ places where staff were denied equivalent status with those in mainstream departments and lacked their financial support. They should work more closely with the ‘working-class movement’, but without the nineteenth-century ‘Extension paternalism’, which characterized the more conservative side of university engagement. Meredith reminded his readers that University Extension had been challenged by the demands of the organized workers’ movement for systematic education, and by the development of the WEA in 1903 and the three-year tutorial class, pioneered by Tawney and Lindsay, among others. Alongside this intensive non-vocational education for workers in politics and economics, Meredith also encouraged Extramural Departments to provide short professional courses and maintain close relations with the BBC, museums and galleries. CPGB support for a unitary approach to higher education was characterized throughout this period by its questioning of university autonomy; its belief that the universities should not be allowed simply to go their own way. In its pamphlet, Higher Education in a Nuclear Age (1959), it argued for a unified policy to cover all levels of ability and break down the rigid separation which starved colleges of funding and resources, while favouring the

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universities. This was probably a response to the Conservative Government’s plan drawn up by the Minister of Education, David (later Viscount) Eccles, which, in the CPGB’s view, had grossly distorted technical education by its creation of CATs, such as those at Surrey, Loughborough, Bradford, and Brunel in 1956. For the CPGB this policy, of singling out a few of the best performing technical colleges and giving them higher education status, left the rest in the doldrums and was the cause of great resentment among technical college staff (and such resentment featured prominently in ATTI policy documents). It also conflicted potentially with the CPGB’s complementary policy of transferring young workers from part-time day release to full-time university and technical college courses, since CATs were no longer very interested in part-time students. There was no adequate control over this problem since the UGC held no brief over the non-university higher education practised in the technical colleges. Hence, the UGC should be replaced by a new National Council for Higher Education. This Council could be formed by fusing the UGC, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the National Council for Technical Education and other similar bodies, especially those concerned with research and planning. The new Council should plan on a ten-year basis, and should include a member of the government on the governing body. Although such a prospect was viewed with alarm and hostility by many at the time, what was being proposed can be seen in hindsight as presaging the formation of the Higher Education Funding Councils (for England, Scotland, and Wales) more than four decades later as regulatory bodies overseeing the funding of a unified higher education system that included the successors to the CATs and the advanced technical colleges, subsequently polytechnics, as well as the universities. Under its rubric of ‘Replacing the Hierarchy’, Higher Education in a Nuclear Age declared that elites were a real barrier to progress. As always, the itch that had first to be scratched was the elitist system that prevailed at Oxford and Cambridge, which should be made to come into line with the university system as a whole. The medieval, closed communities of scholars and their distinction from the mainstream of university academic staff at other universities were, it was argued, no longer tenable in a modern higher education system. Accordingly, college endowments should be placed under public control and allotted to the respective universities or used to cross-subsidize the system as a whole. Alongside the reform of the ancient universities, the new age of technology should be embraced. The policy of creating an elite of technical colleges should be abandoned in favour of an all-round elevation of standards and status in the technical college sector to bring them into closer relationship with universities. Higher education institutions should be democratized, with greater staff involvement and community representation on governing bodies (though there was no mention of student representation).

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The CPGB’s policies were thus, though considered radical at the time, far-sighted and on the whole realistic and sensible, from a Labour perspective. Of course, it has to be noted that the radical reform of Oxford and Cambridge has certainly not occurred and nor is it likely to in the near future. The ancient universities have proved to be more or less impervious to egalitarian change, and, equally, continue to act as the socializing agencies for the top echelons of politics, business, the professions and the civil service.

The CPGB submission to the Robbins Committee By the time of the Robbins Committee, established in 1961 to review higher education, the CPGB was in a position to formulate a remarkably detailed list of reforms. Its submission to Robbins, The Development of Higher Education in Britain (1961), was again in some respects highly prescient. Higher education, it proposed, should be considered as a national system of equal-status institutions into which Oxford and Cambridge should be integrated and its college entry system and closed scholarships schemes abolished. Existing universities should be expanded radically and larger institutions broken down into effective sub-units with residential and social facilities. New universities should be established in industrial areas. Post-graduate and research schools should be established within a national plan and students grant-aided. The CPGB wanted to expand student intake to 400,000 by the mid-1970s, with a uniform entry requirement and a ‘clearing house’ for advice and guidance. Student entry should be facilitated by a fully comprehensive, all-round secondary education with an end to early streaming and selection and with the leaving age raised to 16. Entrance to higher education should be on merit, with equal grants for all and fees abolished. Because of the urgent need for higher standards in teacher training, most TTCs should be integrated as colleges of their regional universities, though some might become independent universities offering their own degrees in education. Institutes of technology and scientific education should be established in all industrial areas, either integrated into the local university or as independent universities. Some technical colleges could be fully integrated as faculties of technology, while others might serve as the basis for a new type of technological university, with the addition of departments of social sciences and humanities. Wherever possible, part-time study should be replaced by full-time study, but part-time facilities should be retained and expanded, and grants for mature students should be made available on a generous scale. On the political front, the CPGB reaffirmed its commitment to creating a new National Council for Higher Education – as had been mooted in the earlier policy document discussed above – to finance and plan the

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whole system of higher education, complemented by Regional Councils of Higher Education to facilitate decentralization. Monopoly capital must be prevented from penetrating and dominating universities by ensuring that there were adequate grants to public authorities, together with greater popular representation on governing bodies and (because it increased the influence of monopoly capitalism in the universities) the ending of the industrial sponsorship of students. On the curriculum, the CPGB was clearly enamoured of the Scottish university system (many of its leaders were Scots) and perhaps also its reflection in the Keele experiment. The submission recommended that higher education courses should be extended by one year to four years, with specialist studies taking over only in the final years and a general, all-round education provided in the early years. Universities should also recognize that they had a responsibility to ensure student completion, and should make greater efforts to develop systems for student support, and advice and guidance. Group tuition and cooperative study should be developed, with the emphasis upon lectures reduced and lecturers properly trained. When the Robbins Committee reported in 1963, Education Today and Tomorrow, not without cause, congratulated itself on how close Robbins had come to the CPGB’s own submission – especially on the issues of expansion and in its attack on the hierarchical and anarchic nature of higher education – in its recommendation to move towards a single system of higher education encompassing a variety of institutions with equality of status (Jones, 1964). E. S. Jones commented: ‘Most of these proposals follow the lines indicated by the evidence submitted by the Communist Party. Why then has the Robbins Committee been so radical?’ His own answer was bluntly, but with some reason, deterministic – that the Committee recognized: ‘the inexorable but objective demands of an advanced and expanding economy, based on the sciences and technology’. Robbins was in fact ‘conservative, modest and realistic’ although still subject to overwhelming class bias. Jones strongly agreed with R. H. S. Crossman’s recent view as articulated in the New Statesman that: ‘At a rough guess I would estimate that 70 per cent of the children who will follow the Robbins road will come from middle-class homes’ (ibid.). The CPGB therefore seemed content to acknowledge that thus far history was on course and it would be unreasonable to push the pace faster. This was not untypical of the CP’s generally pragmatic, ‘reasonable’, and quasi-Fabian position on other domestic policy issues in the 1950s and 1960s. With the election of the Labour Government in 1964, and Crosland’s introduction of the binary policy in higher education, Education Today and Tomorrow renewed the attack on the separation of science and technology from the mainstream university system (Jones, 1966a). Jones was highly critical, claiming that Crosland’s assault on the ‘class monopoly’ of the universities only created an even worse caste system. While Crosland was

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right that higher education should come under public control, why, he asked, should this not extend to the universities themselves? This policy provides ‘higher education on the cheap in a separated local authority sector’, whereas Crosland should have strengthened the traditional system of cooperation between colleges and universities for the construction of an integrated system of higher education (ibid.). A few months later, Jones voiced deep frustration about the inability of the binary higher education system to meet the needs of a modern technological economy, claiming that the Labour Government was scared of opening the gates to the working class (Jones, 1966b). The existing severe problems in admissions, course development, financing and democratic control had only been made worse by the new binary system, which simply packed off working-class students into polytechnics, rather than widening access to universities. Jones also noted that the open-entry system in technical colleges which had proved so valuable for City and Guilds (craft-apprentice qualifications) was not extended to higher education, which moreover, would not accept City and Guilds qualifications and restricted entry to ‘A’ level students. Jones’s critique almost certainly reflected the position of the CPGB leadership and was echoed too by many on the Left over the following decades. However, others on the Left, as we have seen in Chapter 4, championed the binary system precisely as opening the door to the working class. What was clear, however, was that recruitment to the ancient elite universities was to remain unhappily consistent and largely unchanged in class terms.

The cause of comprehensivization The CPGB’s most radical policy in the higher education context was its advocacy of a comprehensive higher education system. It was entirely consistent that the CPGB should embrace the policy of schools’ comprehensivization as an egalitarian objective, but by the late 1970s, it also had adopted the same policy for higher education. Its policy document, Higher Education: a New Perspective (1982) closely reflected Robin Pedley’s Towards the Comprehensive University (1977), which we shall now consider more closely. Pedley’s main argument was for grouping Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) regionally as Comprehensive Collegiate Universities, and diminishing the power of LEAs over the polytechnics. Pedley, Professor of Education at the University of Exeter, was the author of The Comprehensive School (1965), which had been very influential in policy circles. Advancing the same principles to the universities was, however, a different matter. Hayward noted how Pedley’s idea of a comprehensive university was first received by his colleagues at his inaugural lecture at Exeter in the 1950s with ‘disbelief and derision’ (Hayward, 2005). Nevertheless, on the broad left there was a great deal of support and, ultimately, Pedley developed his ideas into a slim book.

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Here, he presented an interesting critique of both Robbins and binarism, noting that although Robbins used the term higher education, he never defined it (Pedley, 1977, pp. 39–57). When Labour took power in 1964, Pedley claimed, its higher education policy merely confirmed existing official thought both in the Department of Education and in the Treasury. First, Michael Stewart vetoed Robbins’s proposals to put TTCs under the aegis of the universities, and then Crosland announced that no new universities would be created for ten years. Instead, Crosland initiated a dual system of higher education – autonomous on the one hand, and public on the other. (This contentious development was discussed in detail in Chapter 6.) The CPGB’s policy role in the higher education context was thus, maybe somewhat surprisingly, relevant, well-argued and prescient. Although it is impossible, by definition, to prove that the CP’s policy formulations had an effect upon Labour’s debates, it seems not unreasonable to assume that this was in fact the case.

Industrial education As a postscript to the discussion of the ‘old Left’ in relation to higher education, we should note the labour movement’s engagement with working-class, industrial education. For most of the period, as far as higher education was concerned, this centred on (male) trade union representatives’ day-release programmes of industrial studies courses. Most of these were in fact provided by the non higher education sector – the TUC, the WEA, the further education and technical colleges, and a range of other providers. Outside the formal, state-supported system, the role of the National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC), and of direct, though small-scale, provision by the CPGB itself, was also significant. These bodies organized courses with an explicitly Marxist curriculum and pedagogy (see Millar, 1977; Holford, 1993; Steele and Taylor, 2004). As far as higher education was concerned, industrial education was provided very largely through the extramural or adult education departments of the pre-1992 universities, particularly those in the large civic universities in the Midlands and the North – Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham et al. – for coal miners, engineering workers, steel workers, and so on. Such work, much of it of a high quality and certificated by the universities concerned (‘University Extension Certificates’), with their links to the adult residential colleges, Ruskin, Coleg Harlech, Fircroft, and later Northern College (Ball and Hampton, 2003), provided an important opportunity for a significant minority of working-class people – until the 1980s, very largely male workers – to gain educational insights into not only industrial relations but also economics, labour history and social history and related topics. (Arthur Scargill, the Yorkshire and subsequently

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national, NUM leader was one such student at Leeds and Sheffield.) These provided, for a minority of the students, access to higher education degree programmes in universities, and thus opportunities for subsequent professional, political and industrial careers. (For a detailed discussion of trade union education, see Holford, 1993.) This ‘Industrial Studies’ work remained very largely separate from the university mainstream, confined as it was to the adult education departments. However, the growth of industrial relations as a mainstream academic discipline derived much of its impetus from these longstanding, pioneering examples of working-class industrial education (ibid.). Industrial studies naturally attracted academics of left-wing, often Marxist, persuasion. From the early twentieth century onwards, industrial studies thus became a political battleground: university authorities, including often the heads of Adult Education Departments, were consistently concerned about the dangers, as they were perceived, of socialist bias and indoctrination. Such arguments, as Roger Fieldhouse has convincingly demonstrated in a detailed study, were very largely specious; and were also characterized in the 1950s and 1960s by a marked blindness on the part of the Heads of Department concerned to the subjectivity of their own pronounced Gaitskellite ideological perspectives (Fieldhouse, 1985). Many notable academics devoted much of their careers to such industrial education: among them, from differing political perspectives, Michael Barratt Brown, Royden Harrison, John McIlroy, Roger Dyson, Tony Topham, Ken Coates, and Derek Fatchett (later a Labour Minister). Many of the more left-wing academics in this context were involved in broader socialist organizations linked to their work, notably the Institute for Workers’ Control (IWC), based at Nottingham, and the creation of Ken Coates and Tony Topham. In many ways, then, the subculture of industrial studies education was an influential, largely discrete, area of ‘old Left’ education and politics. Its influence was considerable, both for individual working-class students, and for the labour movement more generally

The New Left As noted at the outset of this chapter, the dramatic events of 1956 saw an exodus of many influential intellectuals – and not a few working-class activists – from the CPGB. The Reasoner, founded by E. P. Thompson and John Saville, at that time still members of the Party, became the initial focus for the new politics. A little later, both resigned from the CPGB, and the journal, now under the title, The New Reasoner, published a range of seminal articles articulating a redefined socialism for the developing New Left. Centring on humanistic Marxism, the journal also had an affinity with the burgeoning peace movement (Taylor, 1988; Davis, 2011). By 1960, The New Reasoner had

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merged with Universities and Left Review (ULR) to form New Left Review (NLR). The ULR brought a new and contrasting perspective to the new formation. Younger – many were students or recent graduates- the ULR activists were focused on cultural theory and had a much more flexible and unaffiliated definition of radical politics. Some of this ethos derived from their having no engagement with the CPGB and all the angst that that entailed for the older generation of ex-CPGB members. At the core of the New Left’s ideology was an emphasis upon socialist humanism, and a passionate (and romantic) reassertion of the power of human agency as the motor of moral as well as political change. In the Labour Party too, many of those unhappy with the right-wing, revisionist leadership of Hugh Gaitskell and the subordination of the Bevanite Left, were searching for socialist alternatives to labourism (Taylor, 1988; Williams, 1968; Foot, 1962; Duff, 1978). All these elements were strengthened considerably when, following Bevan’s dramatic renunciation of unilateral nuclear disarmament at the 1957 Labour Party Conference, the beginnings of the mass movement that was to become, from 1958, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), took shape (Taylor, 1988). Indeed, the New Left was very much like the CND in its early ethos: it had no formal membership, no constitution, no formal administrative structure – and indeed no elected leadership. It was as much a generalized mood of radicalism, an attitude, as it was a set of specific political theories and policies. At its heart lay a belief in three ideological tenets: the moral imperative for socialist change; the centrality, as noted, of human agency, as against the impersonal ‘forces of history’ characteristic of Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism; and a commitment, albeit ambivalent, to radical labourism. In this latter context, as Peter Sedgwick noted, ‘what is particularly staggering is (the New Left’s) failure to imagine that it might be outmanoeuvred . . . all its eggheads have marched into the single basket of left reformism’ (Sedgwick, 1976, p. 151). What influence and relevance did this formation have for our focus here on the Labour Party’s higher education policy? We approach this by considering the ideas and practice, in the higher education context, of three of the key New Left thinkers and activists: Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and Edward Thompson.

Raymond Williams and cultural politics Drawing on his experience as a staff tutor in the Oxford Delegacy (Oxford University’s adult education department), Williams attempted to situate the idea of liberal education in the context of nineteenth-century industrialization in his book, The Long Revolution (1961). One of the most important elements Williams introduced was an argument about the ideological

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purposes of education. While the Left generally wanted greater expansion, and Tawney a more sociologically orientated liberal education, Williams questioned the social function of liberal education itself. This ideological critique, developed and refined subsequently by the later New Left, made a significant impact on the humanities curriculum. Williams traced three strands, or ideological interests, in the nineteenth-century debate about educational reform: the ‘old humanists’, who wanted to maintain an elite education for the ‘Guardians’ of the culture, and who were situated in the ancient universities; the ‘industrial trainers’, who were often drawn from the northern manufacturers, and who had sponsored the growth of the Mechanics’ Institutes, wanting a workforce more highly skilled in science and technology; and thirdly, what he termed ‘public educators’. This latter group, which included John Ruskin and many others active in University Extension and public lecturing, drew on old liberal education traditions to prevent narrow instrumentalist approaches to curriculum and pedagogy, and were critical of how it failed to marry with the new scientific knowledge, thus marginalizing it to technical instruction (Williams, 1961, p. 164). The relative victory of the ‘industrial trainers’ over the ‘old humanists’ in the new curricula, especially of the civic universities, offered limited satisfaction for Williams, as this opened prospects of democratic education but narrowed the curriculum to non-humanistic training, blighted by the shadow of class and the accompanying assumptions of ‘appropriate’ curricular provision for different class constituencies. While technical instruction in the Mechanics’ Institutes could have led to a redefinition of liberal education, it was too specifically class-based and despite their radical origins, once the employers had gained control of them, the controversial subjects of religion and politics were excluded from the curriculum. The newly organized working-class movement of the late nineteenth century, with the rapidly extending franchise offering the prospect of real political power, found it unacceptable that educational access was denied to the majority of the population. Educational reformers argued that there should be curricular reform to enable far wider consideration of the new advances in science and technology, and, more important politically, access too to what we would now term the social sciences – politics, history, economics and social studies. In the latter context, there was also demand from the Left that Marxist and other socialist analyses should be included on the curriculum so that capitalist society could be understood, critiqued and then radically changed (Jepson,1973; Fieldhouse, 1996). Such campaigns for a congenial form of adult workers’ education thus made an essential contribution to modern educational development: advocates argued that students should have a role in determining subject content and topics for special study; that academic disciplines should relate to lived experience; and that there should be a more interactive approach so that academic expert knowledge engaged with student experiences and

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academic expectations. These principles were embodied in the ethos of the WEA from its foundation in 1903, and then found their way, slowly and over many years, into liberal academic practice in the wider academy. The examples of well-known adult educators, especially Tawney and Lindsay (see Chapters 3 and 5 respectively), who were also eminent academics in their own right, were crucial in embedding these ideas in the mainstream of academic life. After 1945, with the relative decline of the old industrial working class and the rise of the Welfare State, there was a corresponding expansion of the professions, and consequent changes in the class structure. This shift was not fully recognized in higher education policy in the 1940s and 1950s. The virtual omission of social studies, for example, in all but specialist institutions, was seriously disabling at a number of levels. Arts and science were also taught with little recognition of the changed contexts and preoccupations of contemporary cultural life and the new developments in scientific thinking. Williams argued that continuing education for all should be a condition of employment contracts to allow all members of society to extend their learning throughout life. The choice for society now lay between allowing market forces to dictate educational opportunity, or the development of an educated democracy and a common culture that only a programme of public education could bring about. Williams did not develop his educational ideas in detail but his work stimulated the growth of that aspect of the New Left particularly concerned with ‘cultural politics’ and analysis. This led to the formation of radical interdisciplinary cultural studies that quickly took root in the polytechnics, the Open University, and more gradually, in the humanities departments of the civic universities, and some of the new, 1960s universities (Steele, 1997). Williams’s analysis was refined and developed by David Adelstein in 1969 in his contribution to Student Power (Adelstein, 1969). Adelstein emphasized the inadequacies of science and technical education. His argument was that in the twentieth century, unlike Germany, France and the USA, Britain had failed to develop high status, specialist technical institutions, largely as a result of the continuing conservative dominance of Oxford and Cambridge. The overall effects of this conservative culture were thus, he argued, a deeprooted resistance to democratization and the ‘brain drain’ to the USA and elsewhere, leading to a serious shortage of technologists and teachers. Like the CPGB, Adelstein was nevertheless fairly well disposed to the Robbins Report, because it was refreshingly student-orientated rather than serving the ends of economic policy, and, as such, the liberal heir to Newman and the aristocratic tradition; but he concluded it was ‘the last liberal document a government commission will produce’ (ibid. p. 65). One of the features of New Left dialectical discourse in the 1960s was to identify what, following Marx, it called ‘contradictions within the system’. For Adelstein the primary contradiction was that between the collective and

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autonomous aspects of education, which had led to demands for student power – a feature missing from all but a few previous historical situations. There was a separation between both academic, disciplinary knowledge and the lived experience of learners; and also, between ‘education’ and ‘training’. Adelstein cited the American sociologist C. Wright Mills, on the need for the ‘training in skills and education of values to produce a liberal education of sensibilities for the self-educating, self-cultivating man and woman’. And so we come almost full circle – and back to Cardinal Newman and his advocacy of the liberal university!

Richard Hoggart Although never a member of the New Left, and highly suspicious, if not hostile, towards Marxism and the associated analyses and terminology being employed, Richard Hoggart’s own work added weight to the rethinking being called for on the Left. Like Williams, Hoggart’s key educational considerations were drawn from reflections on his experiences as an adult education tutor and his desire for a new cultural synthesis. In this sense, he shared in the New Left’s cultural sensibility. Hoggart, somewhat glumly, viewed the 1960s expansion as essentially a servicing operation for the scientific and technological needs of modern society, accompanied by only a small growth in humanities for the human training of management and the professions (Hoggart, 1978). Universities, he argued, failed to think more fundamentally about the kind of expansion more appropriate to the scientific, technological and professional needs of modern society, whilst also importantly retaining and extending a humanistic culture for higher education. Hoggart recalled that Tawney thought of universities as places where people ‘are made aware of the moral substratum of their disciplines’ and could question the terms of life offered by their societies (ibid. p.10). Thus personal and social meanings should become integral with the subject itself, a consequence of which was that all disciplinary learning must forge organic links with values or risk becoming merely conformist. Unfortunately, Hoggart argued, those who had benefited most from the expansion in higher education were the already privileged middle classes, and universities had neglected their responsibilities to the general intellectual life of democratic societies, which now needed to be urgently redefined and redeveloped. A substantial element of this reform, Hoggart believed, should be a reinvigoration of the adult education movement. University Extension in the late nineteenth century had been led by some of the best teachers of the time, confirming that teaching can reinforce original scholarship. Adult education had redefined some subjects and produced its own original

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educational form, the three-year tutorial class. But in the post-1945 period, adult education had become increasingly distanced from the mainstream university, even though, in terms of student numbers, size of departments and financial turnover, such departments expanded considerably in the period of our study – at least until the 1990s and beyond (Jones et al., 2010). However, as universities as a whole expanded and became more bureaucratized, so adult education came to be seen as not only separate but inferior in terms of ‘standards’, student attainment, and, not least, the culture and research achievements of adult education departments’ academic staff. The most acceptable areas of provision by such departments, as far as the university managements were concerned, were professional programmes for business, and niche market professional occupational constituencies. And this was indeed the major feature in the development of the work in this period, most of it provided at ‘full cost plus’, and modelled on the entrepreneurial ethos of American University Extension. This was a culture of provision that had little if anything in common with the traditions of Tawney, Lindsay and the radicals of the socialist Left (Taylor et al., 1985; Taylor et al., 2002; Jones et al., 2010; Thompson, 1980). During these years, Hoggart argued, the general intellectual level of social, personal and political education also declined, in what he termed a kind of ‘aborted literacy’ (Hoggart, 1957). Adult students were the most neglected, yet they had more need to return for refresher courses, (in-service, with paid leave), part-time study, credit transfer and after work timetabling. Adult education departments themselves should be more central to the university’s core business, and ‘student centred not institution centred’, so that people of all ages could participate in and benefit from them. The pioneer generation of working-class students, in WEA joint tutorial classes, was complemented in the post-1945 period with the growth of a more middle-class student body seeking (largely conventional) cultural enlightenment rather than political and social emancipation. It was joined, as noted above, by a series of professional groups with very specific, usually employment-related, needs for updating their managerial skills – or acquiring new ones. As social class structures became more complex, so both the university adult education departments and the WEA also became more sophisticated in their targeting of provision to disadvantaged communities – for example, community education work, work with ethnic minority and unwaged people and so on. (Ward and Taylor, eds, 1986; Lovett, 1975; Martin, 1996) However, this remained both a more minor aspect of the work, and an area with which university managers were far less comfortable. Out of sorts with adult education, Hoggart turned his attention to the university curriculum and the problem of disciplinarity and social relevance. The outcome was his move to the University of Birmingham in 1962 to a Chair in English and the creation, in 1964, of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. The creation of a new academic field,

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cultural studies, was an important event in the redefinition of the humanities in Britain. The historical and sociological analyses of British popular culture and subcultures – race, gender, media, and education – pioneered by the staff and, significantly, students at the Centre, became models for rethinking cultural studies and rapidly gave the Centre an international reputation. When Hoggart moved to UNESCO a few years later and was replaced by Stuart Hall, his deputy, in 1968, the Centre embarked on an intense engagement with Marxist theory that Hoggart would have found, at best, uncongenial. The Birmingham Centre, under Hall, became the object of repeated political attacks from the Thatcher government, almost, but not quite, to the level experienced by the Peace Studies Department at Bradford University in the same period. In all these contexts, then, New Left intellectuals and activists put into practice in their professional work – in this case in the broad field of cultural studies – the core ideological beliefs of the new politics. And this had a practical effect upon the development of higher education: for example, in the development of women’s studies, peace studies, a socio-historical dimension to the study of English literature, and a focus on ‘history from below’ and social history generally in history departments.

Edward Thompson, radical history, and the critique of the ‘business university’ A different strand of the critique of the universities was taken up by arguably the most important of the founders of the first New Left, Edward Thompson. In his innovative teaching in West Yorkshire, especially in Calderdale, Thompson had developed that combination of lived experience and intellectual expertise which expressed the unique quality of adult education at its best. Thompson’s 1968 Albert Mansbridge Memorial Lecture, Education and Experience, describes with passion the moral and educational importance of this form of education. It was precisely this adult education experience which provided the basis for Thompson’s great work, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), which transformed the nature of the study of social history in British universities, and also had an impact internationally (Goodway, 1996; Steele, 1997; Thompson, 1963, 1968). Thompson’s educational practice was an extension of his central belief in the importance of moral human agency, and equally his commitment to the value and potential of the English working class and its labour movement. When Thompson moved to the University of Warwick to take up a post as Reader in Social History in 1965, he found these values in direct conflict with the culture of the institution. Of all the new universities of the 1960s, Warwick was the most directly and explicitly linked to the culture and practice of corporate capitalism. Thompson always relished political

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and polemical conflict – see for example, in other contexts, his eloquent essays, Protest and Survive (1980) and The Poverty of Theory (Thompson, 1978). In his book – celebrated or notorious according to one’s political perspective – Warwick University Limited (Thompson, 1971), he documented his abhorrence of the commercialization of the academy, both locally through Lord Rootes, its Chancellor designate, and internationally, where businessorientated research always came, he argued, with conditions favourable to the interests of the funding organization concerned. Research paid for on such a basis, he insisted, was unlikely to be objective and disinterested. The idea that a university should make itself ‘useful’ to business interests perverted its nature as a centre of independent enquiry. Thompson took particular exception to the rapid development of business studies, management studies and the whole move towards a business ethos in the university system. For Thompson, what was morally wrong was: [t]he whole system of values – the entire ordering of human priorities – of this insistent managerial propaganda. It is sad to see even the scholars themselves hesitate in their work and wonder about the use of what they are doing . . . they capitulate without a struggle before the intellectually specious proposal that a university can train young men and women who have no industrial experience in a ‘managerial science’ in which they master no single academic skill . . . but which will miraculously equip them to ‘manage’ the affairs (of others). (Thompson, 1971, p. 163) Thompson’s stance was thus very much tied to the Newmanesque values of the liberal university in relishing academic autonomy and value-free research. The corollary of course was that it was distanced from that section of Labour policy thinking that believed such autonomy only encouraged elitist tendencies and that universities should be made to embrace national ‘relevance’. Thompson would not have disagreed with ‘relevance’: but not that espoused by the ‘business university’, where relevance was equated with work conducive to the interests of capital. This stance ignored the democratic and egalitarian aspirations of working people and the labour movement, and accepted uncritically the ‘common sense’ of corporate capital. We should also note that the wide-ranging and significant debate between Perry Anderson and Thompson, best articulated in their respective articles, ‘The Origins of the Present Crisis’ (Anderson, 1966) and ‘The Peculiarities of the English’ (Thompson, 1965), have implications for higher education policy – though clearly neither is concerned directly with this specific area. For Anderson, British intellectual life, and hence academic curricula and the ethos of the academy, were intolerably insular, and characterized by unimaginative British empiricism. This ‘deformed’ national culture was

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in part cause and in part effect of the failure of the British bourgeoisie to expunge fully the dominance of the landed aristocracy. This incomplete bourgeois revolution had, he claimed, produced a similarly incomplete, supine and unsophisticated labour movement. (A more detailed analysis of this latter argument by Tom Nairn, maintained that the failed ideology of labourism was dominated by a negative mixture of Fabian neo-utilitarianism, advocating centralized, bureaucratic and elite control of the political and economic system; and the empty and effectively anti-intellectual moralism of the non-conformist ILP tradition (Nairn, 1965)). Anderson thus advocated turning attention, across all arts and humanities disciplines, to European traditions, especially the rich Marxist cultures of France, Germany and Italy. In his brilliant polemical riposte, Thompson’s irritation was as much an historian’s aversion to the lofty abstractions and generalizations of macrosociological theorizing, as it was an angry reassertion of the moral richness and democratic diversity of the English radical, and working-class, tradition. For Thompson, the desirable reform of higher education lay more in opening up ‘history from below’, of the exploration of radical socialism and other progressive political theory and related areas, not the arrogant abstractions of continental theorists. And, as he was later to argue to devastating effect in The Poverty of Theory (1978), many such gurus of the Anderson ‘second New Left’, such as in this case Louis Althusser, were in essence Stalinist, authoritarian determinists (Thompson, 1978). These divergences of ideological perspective had a number of repercussions for higher education. First, as noted, Thompson’s work was the catalyst for a new emphasis upon ‘history from below’, and found expression in such quasi-academic, quasi-social movement organizations as the History Workshop movement. Second, Anderson and his colleagues were instrumental catalysts in bringing into the mainstream of academic culture in Britain, the continental, primarily Marxist, theorization of a range of new and challenging intellectual thinking in the social sciences, and in cultural studies and philosophy. Thirdly, this debate was as much political as it was academic, and it had a profound effect upon the radical culture of a generation of university students and many of the younger academic staff.

The second New Left and the radical student movement Anderson, who with his associates took over New Left Review in 1963 – another source of tension with Thompson and his colleagues – went on to focus more specifically upon higher education, in his second seminal article ‘Components of the National Culture’ (Anderson, 1968). This introduced a new acerbic tone of militancy and focused squarely on the struggle to be waged in the universities:

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A coherent and militant student movement has not yet emerged in England. But it may now be only a matter of time before it does. Britain is the last major industrialized country which has not produced one. The immediate priorities for any such movement are obvious: the fight against the authoritarianism of universities and colleges, alliances with the working class and the struggle against imperialism. These are the issues which are the natural focus of struggle for a mass student revolt. There is, however, another front which will have eventually to be opened. This is a direct attack on the reactionary and mystifying culture inculcated in universities and colleges, and which it is one of the fundamental purposes of British higher education to instil in students. (Anderson, 1968, p. 214) Building on his earlier socio-historical theorization of the ‘problematic’ of the British Left culture in ‘The Origins of the Present Crisis’ (Anderson, 1966), Anderson argued that contemporary British intellectual culture was organized around an absent centre that disdained a totalizing sociological theory, such as that offered by Marxism, and stifled revolutionary thought and potential. As such, Anderson argued, the challenge for the student movement was to overturn this sterile and stultifying framework and produce a revolutionary consciousness which would be the essential precursor for the creation of a new socialist society. This ‘absent centre’, he argued, had produced a series of structural distortions in the inherited disciplines. So, for example, philosophy was little more than a technical inventory of language (Wittgenstein); political theory (Berlin) was divorced from history, while aesthetics (Gombrich) was reduced to psychology, and the potentially subversive practice of psychoanalysis (Klein) quarantined off. Further, the separation of anthropology (Malinowski) from sociology – Mannheim is somewhat surprisingly absent from Anderson’s list – and economics from political economy (Balogh and Kaldor), completed Anderson’s catalogue of what, in his view, was an intellectually complacent scene. This may have been both melodramatic and overdrawn, but it had a galvanizing effect on the new generation of intellectual radicals. And it provided a bridge to the ferment of unrest in Western Europe in 1968, and was linked too to the anti-Vietnam War movement in the USA, and to the radical, student-orientated perspective of émigré intellectuals like Marcuse. Marcuse, in tune with other exiles from the Frankfurt school, was now convinced that the working class was no longer the revolutionary class, even potentially, of Marx’s theory. It had been too thoroughly assimilated into the ‘happy consciousness’ of post-war American prosperity, based on mass commodification of needs wrapped in a bland, all-embracing popular culture and dominated by the mass media. This stance, whilst undoubtedly radical in tone and substance, thus made Marcuse’s ideas more congruent

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with American progressive thought where any variety of socialist, class-based theorization had been anathema to the American culture, including in large part the American Left, since at least the late 1920s. Marcuse believed that university intellectuals and students offered points of resistance to the dominant culture that could be organized into counter-cultural opposition, centred on education. However, he argued, education was in danger of being reduced to functionality and conformism (Kellner, 2009, p. 12). The German tradition of Bildung which he so admired, perhaps romanticized, as enriching the individual and culture of society by transcending the present condition of immediacy that inhibits and stifles human development, was being reduced to ‘one dimensionality’. Increasingly, students were required not to make a critical understanding of themselves and their society, through which they could produce creative and transformative alternatives, but merely to adapt themselves to its capitalist, market values and practices. This state of affairs, he argued, was intolerable and resistance was necessary. While, for liberals, tolerance was an absolute tenet of faith, for Marcuse intolerance had to be learned again to combat those forms of social injustice and abuse that the schooling system of socialization had inculcated. Marcuse argued for what he called the ‘Great Refusal’ to the aggression and brutality then – and arguably still – exercised systematically by the American state in pursuance of its national and international objectives. Perhaps the most important task, in his view, was to rescue science from the corporate embrace, and redirect its energies for the benefit of human needs. He thought this would lead to a new sensibility among the young that would confront the values of what he described as the ‘Welfare/Warfare State’, where welfare bred a conformist pacifism and warfare sanctioned an uncritical brutality towards the ‘Other’. Charles Reitz has argued that Marcuse’s critique should be seen as a radical response to the reforms of the early 1960s initiated by Clark Kerr in the University of California (which Trow believed influenced Crosland, see Chapter 6) and which effectively abandoned the ideal of institutional independence, for service to the nation (Reitz, 2009). For critics, this simply allowed a logic of corporate and government involvement in higher education to prevail over traditional concerns for autonomy. Moreover, the phenomenal growth of these conglomerate higher education systems was heavily subsidised by grants from the federal government and corporations for research into areas such as aerospace, intelligence, weapons . . . These extra-academic interests characteristically influenced higher educational policy giving priority to many of the needs of the business and military establishments. (Ibid.)

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This tied in closely with Thompson’s critique of Warwick and struck a chord with radical students worldwide, already radicalized by opposition to the Vietnam War. Increasingly students and radical staff were led to question why Marxist and other radical streams of thought (a ‘shadow cabinet of thinkers’) appeared to be systematically excluded from the curriculum, and to demand their inclusion. By 1970 the ‘student movement’ had lost much of its revolutionary impetus but with the expansion of the higher education system, the pressure to radicalize the curriculum gained momentum. Former student radicals began to obtain academic posts; university managers became necessarily more ‘liberal’ in practice (if not always in fundamental outlook), and generally a more relaxed social ambience prevailed, despite an intensified ideological divide in the wider society. In Britain through the1970s, however, the concerns of politicians, especially many in a newly assertive Conservative Party, increased. A number of right-wing think tanks were established, including, for example, the Institute for the Study of Conflict, which produced the Gould Report in 1977. This decried the prevalence of ‘Marxist control ‘in higher education: [The extremists of the Left] constitute a clear and present danger to the liberal mode. They thrive on perversions of theory and distortion of fact. They rely, like any other network, upon mutual support in the making of appointments. They depend for their influence in education upon their skill at exploiting the ambivalence of others – especially of administrators or of colleagues. (Gould, 1977) Such conspiracy theories were, however, wide of the mark. Although a minority of Marxists, and Marxism as a curricular feature, became gradually absorbed into the system, the liberal academic system was, as in the past, more than capable of containing the new radicalism without recourse to witch hunts and Gould’s report was quietly relegated to the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’.

Conclusion Nevertheless, it was clear that both ‘old’ and ‘new’ Lefts had exerted an influence on university policy that had recognisable consequences during the 1970s and 1980s. Universities became noticeably more democratic, with increased academic staff representation at all levels from departments to the Senate and other governing bodies. Consultation on major changes and policy innovation became commonplace. The curriculum, especially in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, became broader, with new subjects of

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study, and more student-centred ways of studying involved. New forms of assessment were introduced, with students being allowed more choice in the presentation of their work. ‘Relevance’ to society (and not just the business community) became an increasingly common component of universities’ mission statements. But the price paid for these concessions to the movements of the Left was high. The higher education system and individual institutions, as we have seen, became far more under the influence, if not control, of both corporate capital and the state. Bureaucratic systems proliferated – in part dictated by the state, which insisted that there should be more explicit accountability, and in part eagerly embraced by the new breed of more ‘technocratic’ university managers. Many of these managers were enamoured of (mainly American) management gurus, virtually all of whom uncritically accepted as a given, and indeed a positive good, the irrationalities of neo-liberal corporate capitalism. Vice-Chancellors eventually became ‘Chief Executives’ and the culture of higher education institutions, at least at the senior management level, became increasingly similar to that of private sector corporations. Increasing account was taken of the opinions of the business community, many of whom swelled the membership of University Councils and other governing bodies. Corporate funding for research and prestigious Chairs became common and, although some new and radically inspired subjects of study and inter-disciplinary approaches were developed, primarily in the newer universities and the Open University, these were far outnumbered by a plethora of vocationally orientated programmes. Many of these programmes involved close cooperative working between the higher education institution and the company concerned, turning them effectively into the ‘instrumental training’ warned of by Williams, rather than liberal, critical education. This is not to say, of course, that all such latter developments were necessarily undesirable: some degree of relevance to eventual employment has long been a feature of higher education. But despite student unrest and a certain radicalizing of the curriculum, the movement towards the modern corporate university prevailed. Our argument is rather to emphasize the new closeness, bordering on integration in some contexts, between higher education and both the business world and the political state. The democratic changes initiated by the new cultural and political movements described here and introduced to the higher education system, were important. They were, though, a relatively secondary feature of a new ‘mass’ system characterized by the business influences noted, by bureaucratization and managerialism. These ideological practices were not only embraced but enhanced by the New Labour governments of 1997 to 2010, which had long since eschewed the youthful radicalism of some of their leaders (Clarke, Straw, Darling etc.), whose higher education policies, high hopes, and dismal record are the central concerns of the following chapter.

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Chapter Nine

A Postscript: New Labour and Higher Education1 The detailed analysis of New Labour’s record, from 1997 to 2010, in higher education as in other policy areas, will be a significant task for subsequent academic study. Here, our intention is to provide in this Postscript a brief discussion of the main areas of higher education policy concern for New Labour in the first few years of Tony Blair’s administration. The transition from ‘old’ to ‘new’ Labour began in the long years of Labour opposition (which lasted from 1979 to 1997), under the leadership of Neil Kinnock. The decisive break from Labour ‘ideology’ came, however, after the sudden death of John Smith when Tony Blair was elected leader of the Party. This is not the place to discuss the tangled relationships between the leading players at the heart of New Labour: what is significant in our context is to note, first, that this was a radically different version of labourism to that which was dominant throughout the rest of the 1945 to 2000 period; and second, and of particular relevance here, that educational development became the key domestic policy priority, especially in the earlier years of Blair’s premiership. Whatever criticisms can be made of New Labour’s ideology in practice in their long period of government from 1997 to 2010 – and as we go on to argue, our own view is deeply critical – there is no doubt that New Labour captured the public mood and that Tony Blair in particular was, in media terms, an extremely successful and electorally popular leader. His achievement of an overall majority in the House of Commons of 179 in 1997, and his two subsequent election victories in 2001 and 2005, were remarkable by any standards. When New Labour took office in 1997, therefore, there was considerable momentum for change, and indeed a large amount of public goodwill towards the new government. Most important of all, in our context, as noted, Tony Blair laid considerable emphasis upon the centrality of education for New Labour. The Prime Minister’s proclaimed priority for ‘education, education, education’ was given a high profile. Traditionally, in this context Labour has given greater emphasis to primary and secondary education than it has to further and higher education. Although this continued to be the case with New Labour, there was a new emphasis on higher education (and lifelong learning, see Watson and Taylor (1998)). There were two principal proclaimed reasons for the new prominence given by the New Labour Government to the whole field of post-compulsory

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education and training. First, there was a belief that globally we now live in a ‘knowledge society’ where high levels of skill and knowledge are a sine qua non for the development of a competitive and efficient economy and education has now become a ‘capital good’ in its own right, and of central importance to the economy. It is true that such human capital arguments have been present in the Labour Party since 1945 (see Bocock and Taylor 2003a, 2003b), but they have never been so prominent and of such perceived importance in the overall policy context as they have for New Labour after 1997 (Scott, 1995; Coffield, 1999a, 1999b; Barnett, 1997, 2000). New Labour has thus given a very high prominence to the development both of vocational skills training and of symbiotic links with the business community – of which more later. The second reason is linked to the first: the imperative need to expand rapidly the numbers of students in higher education (hence, Blair’s commitment to the target of 50 per cent of the standard age cohort having some sort of higher education experience by 2010). The motivation here was social, liberatory and meritocratic, as well as economic. Thus Blair, speaking in 1999, argued that: The old dispute between those who favour growth and personal prosperity, and those who favour social justice and compassion, is over. The liberation of human potential – for all the people, not just the privileged few – is in today’s world the key both to economic and social progress. In economic terms, human capital is a nation’s biggest resource. (quoted in Rentoul, 2002) It was this integration of the economic, human capital orientation, and the liberal social justice imperative that was embraced with such enthusiasm by David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education, in his much quoted Foreword to the Government’s first major policy statement on lifelong learning, The Learning Age (DfEE, 1998): Learning is the key to prosperity . . . Investment in human capital will be the foundation of success in the knowledge-based economy of the twentyfirst century . . . To achieve stable and sustainable growth, we will need a well-educated, well-equipped and adaptable labour force . . . We need the creativity, enterprise and scholarship of all our people. As well as securing our economic future, learning has a wider contribution. It helps make ours a civilized society, develops the spiritual side of our lives and promotes active citizenship. (DfEE, 1998) Of these twin themes – the development of higher level vocational skills (across all sectors, but particularly in further and higher education), and

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an education designed to enhance liberal, human development – there is no doubt that the economic, human capital imperative of the former has been dominant. The centrality afforded by New Labour to the vocational skills and training agenda is rooted in part in revisionist social democratic thinking. New Labour, keen to find an ideological, ‘principled’ basis for its break with what its leaders perceived to be the outdated class politics of ‘old’ Labour, embraced post-Fordist economic and social analysis. This was merged with some aspects of postmodernist thinking in Giddens’s ‘Third Way’ recasting of social democracy, which gave a convenient and accessible – if intellectually crude – rationale for New Labour’s politics. (We have written elsewhere in detail about these issues. See Taylor, Barr and Steele, 2002, chapters 1, 2 and 5. On ‘Third Way’ revisionism, see Giddens, 1998.) All this was ‘glossed’, expertly, by Tony Blair in his presentation of a postindustrial, globalized and classless society. The need for increased ‘equality of opportunity‘– shades of Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism (1956) – was indeed emphasized, hence the stress upon both the expansion of higher education and widening participation. But this was all in the assumed wider context of ‘Third Way’ politics as noted above. The vacuity of this view is, however, obvious. As Ralph Miliband wrote some years earlier: Capitalism is more firmly embedded in the social order than it ever was, notwithstanding all the transformations which it has undergone over the years. Market relations are insistently pronounced as the most desirable form of individual and social interaction; and there never has been a time when commercialization has more thoroughly come to pervade all spheres of life. (Miliband, 1994, p. 10) New Labour’s record on maintaining and developing a modern, capitalist economy was, arguably, successful by its own lights, at least until the financial crash and economic crisis of 2007–08. However, New Labour in reality embraced corporate capitalism with considerable enthusiasm, as a range of policy initiatives from the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to the relaxation of the regulatory and fiscal regime for the finance sector, testified. The relative inequalities of wealth (and power) facilitated by Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s were if anything exacerbated by the New Labour governments from 1997. It remains the case that, approximately, the top 10 per cent of the population own 50 per cent of the wealth and the top 25 per cent own over 70 per cent: political power, in the broader sense, replicates this inequality. These patterns are evident in all Western, developed societies, and especially so of course in the United States of America. However, as a supposedly social democratic, reforming party, New Labour did nothing to reverse these structures of inequality, rather the reverse. Ralph Miliband’s verdict of

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the early 1970s, that Labour was at best a party of modest social and political reform, now appears generous and benign (see Chapter 2, above). Over and above the inadequacy of New Labour’s ideology, and its demonstrable failure to achieve even a modest measure of redistribution of wealth and political power, there has been considerable questioning of the contention underlying the central human capital argument. This perspective holds, as noted, that investment in an expanded programme of vocational skills training in both further and higher education is intimately linked to the development of a successful and competitive economy, and is indeed a precondition of such future success. But this assertion is highly questionable according to many experts in this field. Alison Wolf, for example, in her influential book, Does Education Matter?, has argued that there is no evidence at all for this asserted link. Thus, Wolf, having reviewed the evidence in some detail in Britain and internationally, concluded that: there is no clear indication at all that the UK, or any other developed country, is spending below some critical level, or that pumping more money into education will guarantee even half a per cent a year’s extra growth. (Wolf, 2002, p. 53) The whole basis of the New Labour assumptions on this issue is thus, at best, very dubious. But there are other problems too. David Watson was certainly correct when he wrote in 2000 that the New Labour Government ‘has done much to create the circumstances in which professional higher education should flourish’ (Watson, 2000, p. 8); and there is abundant evidence that in many of the former polytechnic institutions (the ‘post-1992’ universities), innovative and successful programmes of professionally orientated study were developed (for example, see Bourner et al., 2000). However, as Alan Ryan has noted, New Labour had unresolved tensions in this area and was never really clear about its priorities and thus funding allocations. There were essentially three competing priorities in New Labour’s policy thinking in this context about higher education: first, ‘basic HE to produce a competent workforce’, which dovetails with New Labour’s proclaimed commitment to expansion and widening participation, and which has a separate set of problems and is discussed below; second, ‘applied research to improve the technological base of the firms for which this workforce will work’, which leads, other things being equal, to a concentration of funding upon the more elite and technological institutions, and thus exacerbated the already marked hierarchy of higher education institutions; and third, ‘the basic research that provides – eventually – something to apply’, which again leads even more strongly to a concentration of funding upon the elite higher education institutions and also, and equally important, reinforces the almost exclusive concentration upon scientific, technological and medical research

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and scholarship at the expense of the social sciences and, particularly, the arts and humanities (Ryan, 2006, p. 88). The resulting policy was to fund expansion in undergraduate education, especially in the former polytechnics, but only up to a point: between 1990 and 2002 the sector lost 35 per cent of the unit of resource per student in real terms. The sector became necessarily more reliant upon other sources of income, not least increasing the numbers of international students, and developing closer links with private and public sector employers’ organizations. Staff:student ratios worsened considerably, and academic (and other staff) pay was restricted. (As Alan Ryan has noted: ‘There is one group of persons for whom more has certainly meant worse and that is the academic faculty . . . Not surprisingly, low salaries have brought with them a decline in social status’ (ibid., p. 97).) At the same time, research funding became ever more concentrated on the ‘top five’ institutions: Cambridge, Oxford, University College London (UCL), Imperial, and the London School of Economics (LSE). This sat oddly with New Labour’s policy of widening participation, of opening up opportunities in higher education for larger numbers of students from ‘previously under-represented groups’, as the higher education jargon has it. This latter objective implied, as Ryan has noted, ‘a strategy of cheap and cheerful basic HE up to BA and BSc Level’ (ibid., p. 93), linked with the development of professionally and vocationally orientated programmes of study, as noted. The upshot was that the elite universities retained their lion’s share of research funding, and went largely ‘unreformed’ in terms of New Labour’s widening participation ambitions. Moreover, expansion was largely unfocused, with much of it taking place in arts and social science, and with many of the newer programmes in what were perceived as ‘soft’ social studies. Given the Government’s policy of market-driven expansion, and the relative lack of demand for the ‘hard sciences’, the resulting pattern of higher education provision was a long way from New Labour’s vision. New Labour also developed a variety of initiatives to encourage and facilitate vocational ‘sub-degree’ qualifications, most notably Foundation Degrees, discussed in more detail in our final chapter, Chapter 10 (HEFCE, 2000), and the University for Industry (UfI), which was intended largely as a coordinating and promotional organization for sub-degree-level education and training. There was also a short-lived and ill-fated attempt to transfer purchasing power to students and potential students through the introduction of Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs). The point in this context is that such developments exacerbated the hierarchical structure of the British system, and did little if anything to encourage the widening access which New Labour claimed was one of its main objectives. To what extent were New Labour’s ambitions for widening participation to previously under-represented groups actually achieved? It is certainly the

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case that there was an increase in participation under New Labour. However, the expansion has occurred very largely through increases in the levels of participation from the higher socio-economic groups: ‘more of the same’, to put it crudely. As far as higher education is concerned, this same pattern is discernible, in broad terms, in most late capitalist societies (Scott, 1995; Watson and Taylor, 1998; Schuetze and Slowey, 2000; Slowey and Watson, 2003). The single greatest beneficiary group of the widening participation policy were middle-and upper-middle-class young women (Scott, 1995). Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, of both sexes were predominantly in the ‘lower status’ universities and colleges. Widening participation strategy for the ‘Russell Group’ of top universities was construed in meritocratic terms: that is, that widening participation was focused on ensuring that the ‘best’ students were recruited and that admissions policies were ‘fair’ (Bekhradnia, 2003). Of course, there are strong arguments to support this policy: leading universities should be recruiting the best students, judged on academic criteria. However, such an approach is hardly conducive to the social policy objective of widening participation. A further aspect of New Labour’s higher education record should not be ignored: its predilection, almost obsession, with audit and centralized bureaucratic control. (This tendency applied of course, and with similarly negative consequences, across all areas of New Labour’s social policy.) The most prominent example of this lay in the expanding ‘QA’ industry. The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and its inspection regime became an increasingly arduous burden for institutions and for academic and administrative staff within them. As Ryan has pointed out, measuring the inherent quality of the higher education ‘product’ is extremely difficult. Degree classifications, External Examiners’ reports and the like, go some way towards this but all are internalized procedures, and have a vested interest in demonstrating success. The result is a ‘temptation . . . to inspect the process of production’ (Ryan, 2006, p. 96). The QAA adopted wholesale this ‘process’ function. The alternative – to assess what is taught, how well, and why – would have come very close to infringing academic freedom. However, such a process approach can say little if anything about quality per se. (As Ryan has put it: ‘Whatever one thinks of Beethoven’s Late Quartets, it is unlikely that a meticulous examination of the processes of composition would reveal anything illuminating’ (ibid., p. 96).) The upshot has been an immensely time-consuming ‘paper trail’, which has undermined staff morale and has been seen generally as an irritating and pointless diversion from the proper business of the academy and its staff. At the most generous, it may perhaps have eliminated the very worst provision, but its overall effect has been to promote a bureaucratized ‘dumbing into the middle’ (ibid., p. 97). The result has been to specify in considerable detail week by week syllabus content and learning outcomes (sic),

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and to remove whatever spontaneity and flexibility might otherwise have remained in the system. All in all then, this was a further dismal feature of New Labour’s policy, and was generally seen as such by all involved (except the QAA and similar bureaucracies themselves, of course!) Before turning to the final area of ideological, policy problems for New Labour, the relationship between higher education policy and the creation of an informed, egalitarian and participative democracy – a theme central to our study – we should look briefly at the issue of university funding, and in particular the vexed question of student funding. This was the issue which dominated New Labour’s political agenda in the higher education context, and indeed the Government very nearly lost the crucial vote in the House of Commons which put in place the legislation for the introduction of tuition fees and the overall new student funding system (this did not apply to Scotland and Wales, which under the partial devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, had responsibility for this area of policy). The Dearing Committee had been established to advise on the future funding of universities (Dearing, 1997), though it covered in some depth a variety of other issues in the broad area of post-compulsory education, including, centrally, lifelong learning (see Watson and Taylor, 1998). The Dearing Report advocated the charging of tuition fees to students, and the incoming Labour Government followed this policy: but on a very different basis to that proposed by Dearing. The Government, contrary to Dearing’s advice, removed the last vestiges of public support for students’ living costs and provided all public support through government-financed student loans, repayable after graduation once a fixed income level through employment had been attained. (The interest rate was at a lower than normal level and repayment was possible over a reasonably long period. For details, see the 2003 White Paper on Higher Education.) ‘The Report advocated a uniform tuition fee equal to around 25 per cent of the average cost of a degree course, to be paid by everyone after graduation, so that students at expensive institutions or studying expensive subjects would be accepted on academic merit and not ability to pay’ (Ryan, 2006, p. 89). In contrast, the Government imposed a means-tested fee, which had to be paid at the outset, and this resulted in around a quarter of all students paying nothing. Many students thus incurred considerable debt over their university careers: and there is little doubt that this complicated and unfair system actively discouraged debt-averse working-class students, and thus contributed to the relative failure of New Labour’s widening participation strategy. Needless to say, the Government did not hypothecate the tax raised for higher education, and the Treasury reduced the public support for higher education by almost exactly the same amount. Many people, both within and outside the academy, advocated from the outset a simple graduate tax – on all graduates – which would follow the

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‘progressive taxation’ principle, whereby high earners would pay significantly higher amounts. Ironically, support for such a policy had to await the incoming coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, following the 2010 General Election: although, at the time of writing (summer 2010) it seems as though Downing Street is likely to overrule Vince Cable’s advocacy of this option. New Labour’s funding package for higher education satisfied no one, and met none of the supposed aims of its policy. As noted, widening participation was undermined; students and their representative body, the National Union of Students (NUS), were strongly opposed; the Russell Group universities agitated from the outset for the cap on fees, at £3000 p.a., to be raised or better still lifted altogether so that they could capitalize on their market position; and the former polytechnics, (and by implication ‘lower status’) pre-1992 universities were under considerable financial pressure, being largely excluded from research funding, unable in most cases to attract large numbers of international students, and above all subject to the steady diminution in the unit of resource for teaching. If New Labour’s policies on vocational skills development, widening participation, and university funding were all in their various ways deeply unsatisfactory, what was New Labour’s record on the other key area, for a social democratic party, supposedly committed to the creation of a more informed and participatory social structure – enhancing and facilitating an educated, informed and participative democracy? Under New Labour, how did higher education contribute to ‘civil society’? It has been a fundamental tenet of New Labour ideology that the old politics of class, and Labour’s historic role of representing the interests of the working class and the trade unions, were in the modern post-industrial (sic) era completely outdated and irrelevant. The language and culture of New Labour emphasized diversity, multiculturalism, the importance of protecting and enhancing the freedom of ethnic minorities, more equality for women and the homosexual communities, and the rights of religious groups (especially those from the minority cultures), and so on. But, because of the deliberate ideological rejection of the very concept of social class, and class politics, class inequalities were never mentioned. Thus, bizarrely, the key component in reality of late capitalist society – its gross inequalities of social class resulting from an increasingly powerful international corporate capitalism – was ignored (Callinicos, 2006; Monbiot 2000). Some New Labour ministers, notably Gordon Brown, did make significant provision for some of the most disadvantaged, and were also instrumental in creating effective and sensible initiatives geared to those in most need (for example, the ‘Sure Start’ educational scheme) (Toynbee and Walker, 2005). Nevertheless, such initiatives were seen as at best secondary to the main thrusts of New Labour policy. Moreover, they had little impact upon the overall structure of inequality.

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In summary, the main elements of this policy, domestically, can be summarized as: incentivizing the private sector through a low tax regime, and a ‘responsible’ (that is, a pro-business, pro-capitalist) approach to fiscal and regulatory policy to maintain the confidence of corporate capital; wooing ‘middle England’ through a whole series of restrictive, often reactionary social policy initiatives, for example, in penal and judicial areas (David Blunkett’s role as Home Secretary was one of a veritable Mr Hyde in comparison with his Jekyll-lite role at Education); and public investment, to a large extent through privatized – and in the long term financially reckless – schemes such as the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), to improve in particular health and education services. Where was equality in all this? The belief in an economically and politically more equal society has always been at the heart of labourism, along with a commitment to democratic politics, however weak a vessel this had been in both theory and practice. New Labour, following on from the revisionism of Gaitskell and Crosland (Crosland, 1956), rearticulated this, as we have seen, as equality of opportunity. As Ryan noted in the education context, New Labour’s commitment to access was translated in effect to the aim of ensuring as far as possible ‘equal access to a race that will differentiate (pupils’ and students’) merits’ (Ryan, 2006, p. 87): in other words, it has been a wholly meritocratic (and thus only partial) notion of equality. And the last thing it was intended to do was to pose any challenge or threat to perceptions of the prevailing capitalist common sense. As Ryan goes on to note: ‘it is evident that (for New Labour) what one might call the R. H. Tawney view, that the purpose of education is to allow everyone to share in the richness of a common culture, would be thought to be hopelessly old-fashioned’ (ibid.). In our view, however, there has never been a greater need for an educational approach which prioritizes a rearticulated and contemporary version of Tawney’s vision. There can be no doubt, surely, that modern British society has become for a variety of reasons more materialistic, more atomized, and more privatized (in the sense of the virtual collapse of both collective, community social structures, and the alternative common sense and cultural organizational system of the labour movement). Moreover, though there are of course huge benefits, actual and potential, resulting from the transformation and ‘democratization’ of the new media, there are clearly dangers of social isolation, trivialization and capitalist exploitation (Jameson, 1998). There is abundant evidence of the lack of any shared appreciation of ‘the richness of a common culture’, or of real, social and political engagement: the first exemplified by the overt alienation of large sections of the white working class and the prevalence of the tabloid culture of the Sun and the Daily Mail; and the second by the political cynicism and disengagement of an increasingly large proportion of the electorate, itself in part a result of disillusionment with New Labour.

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A better New Labour education policy could not of course have resolved these large issues, which are essentially political and economic: but such a policy could have significantly ameliorated the position and created a more favourable environment for serious social democratic reformism. Alison Wolf has voiced these concerns eloquently, and merits quoting at some length: Contemporary writers may pay a sentence or two of lip service to the other objectives of education before passing on to their real concern with economic growth. Our recent forebears, living in significantly poorer times, were occupied above all with the cultural, moral and intellectual purposes of education. We impoverish ourselves by our indifference to these . . . The history of public education in any modern democratic state concerns issues of identity and citizenship quite as much as the instilling of more or less utilitarian skills . . . These issues have not gone away because we in the UK have chosen to ignore them – but ignore them we largely have of late. This has been true at both school and university level: the supposed economic rationale for higher education swamps any other considerations. (Wolf, 2002, p. 255) It might be expected, given its ideology and class rationale, that the Conservative Party would facilitate such an approach. But for New Labour to endorse, indeed exacerbate, such a dangerous, reductive and philistine approach to education, over thirteen years of government, is unforgivable. Wolf rightly reminds us of the salience of Cardinal Newman’s thoughts on the ‘idea’ of the university. He argued that ‘knowledge is not merely a means to something beyond it, or the preliminary of certain arts into which it naturally resolves, but an end sufficient to rest in and to pursue for its own sake’(quoted in Wolf, p. 255). This liberal precept, allied to the social purpose, transformative social democratic perspective, should be at the cornerstone of any even mildly reforming Labour Government’s education policy. Instead, we have had ‘the triumph of narrowly utilitarian standards, as though the only criterion of intellectual excellence was to send young people out into the world ready to make money by whatever legal means they could’ (Ryan, 2006, p. 97). New Labour’s almost complete failure in this area of higher education policy, and similarly in post -compulsory education as a whole, is perhaps the most damning indictment of its policy in this context. Overall then, New Labour’s higher education policy and its results have been a bitter, though not entirely unexpected, disappointment to all those on the Left of British politics. On the plus side, there has been significant expansion of higher education over the period, and many more people,

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both ‘standard age’ and mature students, now have some kind of higher education experience. But even this has come at a higher financial and cultural cost, as we have seen. New Labour has fallen well short of success on virtually all other criteria of success for a social democratic, reforming party. The already prevalent structures of hierarchy in the system have been exacerbated. Similarly, and as with the wider society, the carefully ranked institutional structure of status and power has reflected social class hierarchies. There has been persistent financial pressure, especially upon the ‘lower status’ higher education institutions, which the large majority of the more disadvantaged students in the system attended. New Labour’s financial policy on student funding, again by common consent, has been a continuing mess. New Labour has intensified the bureaucratization of the system, a prime example being the QAA, as we have argued. Similarly, the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), though, arguably, a necessary innovation at the outset, has become an unwieldy, time-consuming and unsatisfactory process. Finally, as we have argued above, on the two most critical of all issues for a Labour government, New Labour has very largely failed. Despite New Labour’s proclaimed priority of widening participation, there has been only a marginal increase in the numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds entering universities. Equally important, New Labour has paid scant attention to developing forms of higher education which enable individuals and their communities to engage in a participative and informed democracy. The question of work skills should arise out of this priority rather than being subordinate to it – or, it seems under New Labour, virtually absent altogether. Higher education needs to become, as E. P. Thompson argued many years ago, more of a process of dialogue, of symbiotic relationships between varied communities of learners and the academy (Thompson, 1968). Such perspectives have been absent from New Labour’s conceptual universe as far as higher education is concerned. The 1997 electoral victory, and the subsequent, unprecedented, thirteen years of government, should have marked a new level of achievement for British labourism. Instead, New Labour departed from office after a crushing defeat in 2010, with a widespread feeling of disillusionment and dismal failure, both in the country and in the Party and labour movement. Higher education policy failures were of course only one component of a far longer catalogue of missed opportunities, tragic mistakes (most notably of course, Iraq), and internal feuding (see, for example, Rawnsley, 2010). Thus, rather than the high-water mark in our analysis of Labour’s higher education policy and record in the 1945 to 2000 period, the New Labour Government was an object lesson in all that has been negative and disappointing in the mixed record of Labour over these eventful years. The process of ‘rebuilding’ is, as we write, beginning yet again. We hope that the enduring vision of Tawney, Lindsay, Robinson and the other social

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democratic ‘pioneers’ in Labour’s higher education story in the period, and the inspiration and achievements that underlay Labour’s creation of the polytechnics, the Open University and much else, will be remembered and learned from in the process. New Labour, in this context as in others, is best remembered, if at all, as an aberration not to be repeated.

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Chapter Ten

Conclusion We have argued throughout this book that Labour’s policy formulation and practice have been sites of ideological tension and complexity, and that these differences of view have reflected the ideological divisions in labourism in the period. In this concluding chapter we make explicit what we see as the shaping themes of British Labour and higher education from 1945 to 2000. We also outline our view of what should constitute, in realistic terms given what is, at best, Labour’s gradualist perspective, a socialist higher education policy for the short to medium term. The first, most pervasive and fundamental theme of Labour’s higher education in the period has been the tension between two main ideological perspectives. The first of these has been the social purpose, liberal higher education position articulated most prominently and effectively by R. H. Tawney. This was based on a politically radical reorientation of Newman’s classic conception of the autonomous, collegiate university concerned with the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, and centring on the arts, humanities and natural sciences. This was in sharp contrast to the second, and increasingly dominant, perspective in our period: the conception of a national, coherent higher education system, meeting both the needs of the changing labour market in a modern capitalist economy, and the objective of enabling far more working-class students to study a range of more vocational subjects relevant to their needs and interests. In practice, of course, this division was not so clear cut – and both perspectives had good grounds for their critiques of the existing system. Those, for example, who supported Crosland’s binarism could with good reason denounce the elitism of the older universities and their role of elite socialization, and also their seeming reluctance to broaden access to less privileged, stateeducated students, or to adapt their curricula to reflect contemporary social concerns. The proponents of social purpose liberal education, on the other hand, could with equal justification chastise those who demanded more public responsibility on the part of higher education, with accusations of government interference, unnecessary and uncomprehending bureaucracy, and intellectual philistinism. Tawney’s powerful advocacy of curriculum change to include a central element of social science in order to bolster the traditional claims of the humanities, for example, might indeed be seen as statist and derived from a Fabian-influenced approach. He also supported professional development

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courses by universities, especially for teachers and other public servants, by universities as being in the public interest. However, this was always tempered by a Newmanite view of the universities as largely self-governing centres of independent enquiry and tuition in which controversial approaches and subject matter might flourish. He was wholly committed to the view that the universities’ social composition should reflect what he called ‘the neglected pool of working-class talent’ while remaining, in the best sense, ‘elite’ institutions. What is also clear, however, is that the second strand had a genuinely radical intention, as developed by Crosland with Weaver and Robinson, which claimed rightly to have discovered an alternative tradition of broadly vocational education in the further education sector and its historical predecessors. This tradition supported a much wider social class constituency than the universities and was seized on by Crosland as offering a genuine chance for widening opportunities for working-class students. Despite its initial radicalism, opportunities to explore ‘vocational education’ in a liberal context – the inter-disciplinarity and flexibility originally pursued in the heady days of the polytechnics during the 1970s – were to become increasingly restricted. The decision by the Conservatives to end the binary system and allow polytechnics to seek university status in 1992 was widely supported by Labour (and most of the management stratum inside the polytechnics who had originally supported binarism). Many of the more radical elements saw this as ‘selling the pass’: Burgess and Pratt, for example, continued to argue strongly for the socially and educationally connected strengths of the polytechnics and blamed much of what came to pass as ‘academic drift’ (Pratt and Burgess, 1974; Pratt, 1997). A second theme is Labour’s consistent support for the idea that universities should be part of an articulated national system of higher education, rather than discrete and wholly autonomous institutions. Despite his support for university independence and a liberal education, Tawney was, as we have seen, also a strong advocate of such a system in which the government, as the major funder of universities, could expect them to serve the public interest in terms of recruitment, curriculum and social justice. This became more or less openly the UGC’s point of view under Moberly’s chairmanship during the late 1940s, when, supported by the indication of extra funding for universities from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, it called for expansion. Under the same impulse, in 1947 the UGC made it clear to A. D. Lindsay that the proposed new University College of North Staffordshire was to serve national rather than purely local interests. The discourse of ‘national interest’ was already evident in Tawney’s (and Lindsay’s) thoughts on the reform of Oxford in 1919, where Tawney first argued that the university should be drawn into a national system, and this theme was found again in his lectures at Cambridge during 1935 on ‘The Economics and Finance of Public Education’ (see Chapter 3). For Tawney

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this was a logical step from his previous campaign for organizing secondary education into a national system, for which he and Labour had agitated following the World War One. A third theme is that of institutional innovation. Labour introduced at least three major innovations in higher education in our period: the University of Keele (originally the University College of North Staffordshire), the polytechnics and the Open University, each of which has been considered above (Chapters 4, 6 and 7). Keele, under Lindsay’s direction, experimented with a generalist curriculum, influenced by both Scottish practice and the new thinking in Harvard and California. The original proposal to make Keele reflect local social and economic needs and to have a strong emphasis upon adult education, was also closer to Tawney’s proposal for regionally devolved higher education policy bodies – he was also a keen advocate of devolution – under a national umbrella. Although Keele was forced to retrench from its original proposals, the revised curriculum and inter-disciplinary model worked out by Lindsay and Fulton became a source of inspiration for the next generation of ‘new’ universities in the 1960s. The second of the innovations, the polytechnics, was equally radical and of course on a far larger scale. The binary system, introduced by Crosland in 1965, recognized that an alternative vein of higher education already operated within the further education sector. In part it was simply the skilful parting of the veil by the civil servant, Toby Weaver (a former Fabian and protégé of Stafford Cripps), who had responsibility for this sector, to reveal a healthy ‘public’ sector resource. To this was added a political dimension, again dexterously pursued by the technical college tutors union the ATTI and presented to Crosland in 1964 by Eric Robinson. They argued persuasively that this tradition offered both opportunities for workingclass students restricted by the universities, and greater responsiveness to educational and social needs. In addition, it provided a high level of public accountability. Together with the creation of the CNAA and funding from his own ministry, rather than the Treasury through the UGC, Crosland now had his hands directly on the reins of what he called a ‘public sector’ of higher education – though the universities were left untouched. And this structural innovation also gave direct power over this part of the higher education sector to (largely Labour-controlled) local authorities. If the first neglected constituency was the working-class student, Labour’s third innovation, the Open University, recognized a second, that of the mature student. An added advantage was that the two constituencies often overlapped. Tawney, who reflected the views of many Labour activists, had wanted to see adult education as a central feature of the post-war reform of the universities rather than marginalized into Departments of Extramural Studies (as he had pressed for, unsuccessfully, at Keele). Harold Wilson, largely because of his fascination with the cost-effective new technology, championed the cause of adult students by creating a ‘University of the Air’

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to recognize the aspiration for higher education for part-time adult students. Wilson’s determined, almost obsessive pursuit of his ideal in the face of opposition both from his own Minister of Education, Crosland, and the civil service, resulted in a remarkable new institution. The Open University was both innovatory in its methods and curriculum, relatively cheap to run and before long returned the highest annual number of graduates of any UK university. It was a runaway success. However, had Michael Young, in many ways the progenitor of the project, persuaded Jennie Lee to model it more closely on his National Extension College (NEC), it would have looked very different: more low-technology, more regionally diverse and more closely centred on a working-class constituency. As it was, unqualified working-class students were, ironically, less likely to benefit from it than technical workers, the lower professions (especially women teachers) and women with no academic qualifications, who gained hugely from its existence. A connected element of Labour’s policy towards higher education, the fourth theme of the study, has been its efforts to reform the system. As we have seen, the reforming impulse towards the universities frequently began in Labour circles, although it was often an incoming Conservative government that put them into practice. It could of course be objected that a major exception to this was the Robbins Committee, which was appointed by Harold Macmillan but whose proposals were mostly sidelined by the incoming Labour Government in 1964. However, the reliance of the Robbins Committee on papers by Labour-leaning educational sociologists, such as Jean Floud, as well as its Senior Research Officer, Richard Layard (later a Labour peer) indicated a certain indebtedness to broadly Labour thinking. Robbins also paid homage to Tawney, his former colleague at LSE, on more than one occasion. Similarly, the Committee’s advocacy of moves towards democratization, socialization, centralization, accountability, and the stresses on the economic value of higher education, were themes long pursued in Labour, Fabian and other left organizations (including, as we saw in Chapter 8, the Communist Party). Fifth, ‘thinking about the curriculum’ has been a repeated element in Labour’s approach. It has tended to look more closely at the question of curricular relevance, not only to the needs of the economy but to the lives of working people. At the beginning of our period this was closely tied to the experience of the WEA university tutorial classes, not only for their numerous students, many of whom now occupied the backbenches in Attlee’s government, but for those who had been tutors, such as senior Party figures like Tawney and Crossman and influential allies, including Lindsay and Cole. There was general agreement within Labour ranks that the democratic procedures of the WEA – which prioritized the interactive relationship between learners and tutors, the grounding of syllabuses in the lives and experience of the class members, where possible, and above

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all the inter-disciplinary nature of the social studies classes – were practices that should be emulated in the universities. European intellectual émigrés who became involved in adult education, such as Karl Mannheim and Karl Polanyi, were intrigued by this phenomenon. Polanyi noted in 1946, the energizing effect these classes had on the university lecturers, frustrated by the hegemony of the academy, who taught on them: A vast amount of imaginative experimenting was done by tutors, who spared not time or effort to produce new solutions. Without their creative endeavours in the realm of presentation, dramatisation, and dialectical treatment, tutorial classes could never have attained their present success, while maintaining standards. (Polanyi, 1946, p. 10) This outlook clearly motivated those who campaigned for a new university college in North Staffordshire, while Lindsay’s and Fulton’s revised curricular proposals at Keele, (though echoing Lindsay’s Modern Greats PPE reform at Oxford) posed a radical break with the formal disciplinary structures of most universities. Alongside this concern for the curriculum was the professionalization of the study of education which, although not directly an element of Labour policy, was encouraged in wider Labour circles. While the collection of statistics on educational deprivation became increasingly sophisticated, the study of education became more widely theorized. The generation of sociological pioneers at LSE effectively founded a school of educational sociology in Britain (see Chapter 5). But they themselves were soon challenged. Lawton has drawn attention to the ‘new’ sociology of education that emerged in part from the Left’s criticism of Crosland’s 1956 book The Future of Socialism (Lawton, 2005). What Lawton calls the New Left critique of conventional educational ideas arose from young sociologists influenced by the wave of continental Marxism newly in translation. Concerned about the question of ‘bourgeois hegemony’ in education, new studies attempted to go beyond questions of inequality of access to secondary and higher education to reveal deeper issues of ideological socialization. Studies like those from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies demanded a paradigm shift to question the ‘common sense’ of the curriculum, assessment and pedagogy (BCCCS, 1981). Some went further and claimed that traditional modes of education were positively harmful to the working class. Such opinions both alarmed those who took the traditional Labour Party view on the absolute value of education and provoked a right-wing backlash from the Conservative Government and conservative media (Lawton, 2005, p. 75). The penultimate theme in our study, and perhaps the most positive, from a socialist point of view, is that of attempting to widen access to higher

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education. Labour has consistently wished not only to expand the intake into the universities but also to widen the social spectrum from which students are recruited. The concern for the ignored ‘pool of educational talent’ among the working class, first diagnosed by Tawney, became widely adopted by educationists and was embedded in the Robbins Report. Despite the Black Paper writers’ protests of ‘More Means Worse!’, by the mid-1960s there was a bi-party consensus on trying to make universities reflect a much greater social diversity. This was partly on grounds of principle, and partly because it was recognized that there was an unjustifiably ignored pool of untapped potential amongst the working class. New Labour’s widening access policies, however, have not proved a great success, despite many millions spent and, in the wake of the University Tuition Fees debate, the eventual creation of an Office for Fair Access (OFFA). Not surprisingly, given the persisting class hierarchies of British society, the problem has proved, if not intractable, very difficult. The percentage of young people entering university from ‘low participation neighbourhoods’ remained at 10.1 according to HESA statistics for 2008–09, the latest available, while mature students from the same background rose only to 11.2 per cent (HESA, 2010). Though these figures are hard to correlate exactly with previous HESA data (based on social class or Registrar General criteria) it is clear that they represent at best only a modest increase, or, at worst, absolute stasis. Both major political parties, but especially Labour, have tried over the period to develop a range of qualifications, more vocational in nature and at a lower level, which would act as a reputable and recognized alternative to the traditional BA/BSc honours degree system. The most recent and arguably the most successful of these has been the two-year Foundation Degree programme developed by higher education institutions working in partnership with further education colleges. There is some evidence of both innovative programming and of attracting new and different cohorts of learners, as well as somewhat patchy but on the whole positive evidence of subsequent successful employment for Foundation Degree graduates (Besley, 2010). Doubts remain, however, as to the status of such awards, and also of how far if at all they embody the core higher education attribute of critical, analytical thinking. Just as important, Foundation Degrees, like all their predecessors – Higher National Diplomas (HNDs) and the rest – have acted as a reinforcement of the status hierarchy of qualifications and institutions. It is an exaggeration, but only a slight one, to describe Foundation Degrees, and their predecessors, as vocational, lower-grade qualifications, for predominantly working-class and lower-middle-class students, who are destined for subsequent middle- to low-status jobs, with commensurate remuneration. The opposite applies of course to the higher-status qualifications in higher-status institutions. Thus, as with almost all aspects of the higher education system, the structures of privilege and status in the wider

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society were reflected in the sector. Labour, especially New Labour, has done little if anything to counter these structures of inequality. Thus, despite the creative energy and even exuberance of much of the experimentation identified between 1945 and the 1970s, there has subsequently been a consistent downward spiral in Labour’s radical aspirations, especially since the advent of New Labour in the mid-1990s (see Chapter 9). There has been little real thinking about higher education in Labour’s periods in office since the Wilson governments in the 1960s, regardless of incisive commentary from well-informed and otherwise sympathetic critics, from A. H. Halsey and Brian Simon to Peter Scott and David Watson. It is true that there was a brief, almost euphoric, advocacy of a transformative lifelong learning perspective in the first few years of the New Labour Government, when David Blunkett was Secretary of State. (Blunkett, for example, commissioned two reports on lifelong learning; and, in his funding priorities and overall presentation of education policy, gave a new prominence to adult and further education.) But, since his departure, and the passing of the radical phase of New Labour, such as it was, no significant innovations in Labour’s higher education policy have been attempted.

What is to be done? In Chapter 2 we outlined what were, from the Milibandian perspective we advocate, the deficiencies and limits of labourism. For socialists, and indeed for others on the progressive left of politics, higher education could and should be an important agency for aiding the transformation from the current irrationalities of capitalism to a more equitable and socialist system. However, as is apparent both from the generally modest historical record of Labour and from the analyses of Ralph Miliband and others, socialists can expect relatively little in terms of radical innovation from a Labour Party and movement dominated by the ideology of labourism. There are at least two positive and important qualifications to this pessimism, however. The first is that, again, as the historical record shows, there are within Labour’s broad church tendencies that can produce innovative and radical initiatives in higher education, as elsewhere. We have seen in this study, for example, the important and to an extent successful attempts at such innovation at Keele, in the creation of the polytechnics, and perhaps most significantly in the development of the Open University. With the demise, in some ignominy, of New Labour, it may well be that within Labour ranks there are those who might be able to achieve a more radical, if moderate, renewal. The second ground for some optimism is that, as we argued in Chapter 2, there is a high level of radical political interest, over and above and largely

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separate from the Labour Party per se. This can be seen in single-issue campaigns and the activity of social movements: the huge demonstration in London against the Iraq War, the widespread ecological campaigns, and the remarkable mobilization against the resurgent far Right, as manifested in Barking, Dagenham and other constituencies targeted by the British National Party (BNP) in the 2010 General Election. Whether these separate-issue groups and one-off campaigns can come together in the kind of programmatic unity Miliband envisaged is the most urgent matter for Left politics. The eventual emergence of a powerful, counter-cultural socialist and ecological movement is not inevitable, but remains, in our view, the only positive response to an irrational, dangerous and extraordinarily alienating and wasteful society. How we get there, without sacrificing what has been gained, remains the central political question facing the Left. One of the key areas is that upon which this study focuses – higher education. This is, as we have seen, an increasingly pre-eminent arena for the socializing of the most able and influential citizens. Higher education has always had a role as the socializing and reproductory agency for the next generation of the ruling order, certainly from the beginning of early modern history, as has been rigorously theorized by Bourdieu and Passeron (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). By the late twentieth century, however, as Peter Scott amongst others has demonstrated, this issue of the social as well as economic roles of higher education has become even more acute (Scott, 1995). The final section of this chapter is thus devoted to a brief discussion of the priorities, from a socialist perspective, of the short- to medium-term policies for higher education.

A socialist policy for higher education? Some recommendations. What then are the constituent elements of a realistic higher education policy which is also ‘socialist’? We maintain that there are the following ten key dimensions, in the context of developing a socialist social policy for early twenty-first century Britain. While we list the points in no particular order, it is perhaps appropriate to begin with what in today’s terminology is usually referred to as ‘widening participation’ with a particular emphasis upon the educationally disadvantaged sections of society. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Labour Party was in its infancy, only a tiny proportion of the population attended university. By the end of the period, well over 40 per cent of the standard age cohort in Britain were engaged in some sort of higher education provision. For many of the intervening years, Britain seriously lagged behind its comparator societies, in terms of participation rates, and it was only in the last two decades of the twentieth century that significant progress was made (see Chapter 9).

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However, two caveats have undermined what might otherwise be seen as one of Labour’s major achievements – and it should also be borne in mind that the rapid expansion of higher education was initially undertaken by a Conservative government in the 1980s (although largely at the expense of the unit of resource per student). First, university entrance throughout the century was heavily weighted toward those from the wealthier sections of society; and, when the major expansion took place in the latter decades of the twentieth century, it was effectively ‘more of the same’: late adolescents from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. (The single most significant beneficiary group was middle-class and upper-class young women.) Secondly, there developed an increasingly pronounced hierarchy of higher education institutions, which Labour, when in power, did nothing to counter. The result has been that, despite the growth of participation, the pattern of recruitment, and the subsequent graduate employment destinations, have mirrored faithfully the inequitable privileges of broader social class structures rather than eroding them. It has long been argued that some sort of quota system would make university admissions both more egalitarian and socially just. As we saw in Chapter 5, as far back as 1962, Noel Annan recommended, to the Taylor Committee, allotting all university places proportionately according to school type, that is: LEA-maintained, grant-aided and independent, as the most effective way of influencing Oxford and Cambridge’s admissions policies. The Taylor Committee conspicuously failed to take this forward. Following an earlier lead from Peter Wilby, in the New Statesman, George Monbiot has recently argued (for example, Monbiot, 2010), that there should be some type of quota system whereby, for example, the top two students from each secondary school across the country should be given the opportunity to attend Oxford or Cambridge. This, it is argued, would remove once and for all the unwarranted dominance in this context of the private (‘public school’) sector. Whereas only approximately 7–8 per cent of school pupils attend schools in the private sector, such schools continue to provide between 45 per cent and 50 per cent of the intake into Oxford and Cambridge, and indeed similar proportions apply in other leading ‘Russell Group’ higher education institutions. However, such problems are not easy to resolve. Whilst it is clear that there are, at the margins, examples of cultural, or class, bias in the admissions process of some of the leading universities, the reality is that the public schools do achieve in general a far higher performance at the ‘A’ level examinations than the public sector, comprehensive, secondary schools. Nor is this surprising: the private sector, ‘public schools’ have excellent teaching and support resources (laboratories, libraries, etc.), a wide array of extra-curricular activities from music and drama through to ‘outward bound’ and high-level sport performance and coaching. Above all, there are much smaller class sizes, individual tutoring for university entrance, peer group pressure, and the inculcation of confidence, and expectation of

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success and achievement. Beyond that the would-be students of such schools, as Bourdieu and Passeron, Wolf and others have shown, are so securely buttressed by the richly accumulated cultural and social capital deployed by their parents that they begin their educational careers with overwhelming advantages (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990; Wolf, 2002). This is therefore a prime example of why higher education, increasingly important for its potential as a radicalizing agency, has to be embedded in a thorough-going programme of structural socialist reform by a determined government. To transform an unequal, exploitative capitalist system is essentially a political task, which tackles the problem of class hegemony on all fronts. This leads on to the second element in our list – the need to ensure an appropriate equality of funding and status between higher education institutions (HEIs) with different but valued functional specialisms. In particular, funding HEIs with a strong concentration upon widening participation policies and the recruitment of cohorts from such constituencies should be a priority for Labour. Clearly, such students require both greater pedagogic skill and sensitivity from the university and its curricular planners and teachers and a higher unit of resource per student. As we have seen, in the historical context this has rarely if ever been the case. Indeed, the pattern has been inverse: Oxford and Cambridge, which claim to recruit the ‘brightest and the best’ – and the most privileged – actually receive a higher unit of resource per student because of the college system. The third element for a socialist higher education policy is flexibility of structure and provision in order to accommodate learners with differing external responsibilities and of different ages and so on. In other words, a socialist policy should be wholeheartedly committed to a lifelong learning structure and provision. Credit transfer arrangements, assessment regimes and the like should be constructed accordingly, not to lower standards, but to adapt practice to meet the needs of heterogeneous and multi-faceted learner constituencies. As Tawney, Lindsay and, intermittently, other Labour educationists have insisted, part-time study in universities should be considered on an equal footing with full-time study, with flexible arrangements of lectures, tutorials and library hours. Moreover, catering and childcare resources must reflect the needs of those who are in paid work or are otherwise constrained from conventional day-time attendance. Funding for part-time students should not allow them to be disadvantaged, in comparison with full-time students, as they are at present by up-front fees and restricted access to student loans. A concentration upon the skills and training needs of the economy in relation to higher education provision is the one area where, throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the Labour Party can be seen to have been wholeheartedly supportive. However, as always, there are qualifications that should be noted: principally that, first, the hierarchy of status in training

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has bedevilled development. Thus, while the training needs of the older professions have been deeply embedded for many years in the older, elite universities (for example, law, medicine, theology), the newer professions – with some notable exceptions, such as engineering and to an extent school teaching – have been largely ‘relegated’ to the newer, less prestigious HEIs. Secondly, and even more important, ‘training and skills’ have been seen as almost wholly instrumental, and ‘competence’ orientated, with little if any thought given to instilling reflective and critical thinking into the pedagogy and culture for the teaching of such subjects. This leads naturally to our fifth element – the high priority that should be given in a higher education system reflecting socialist values to the cultivation of critical thinking and questioning. All questions should be seen as open questions, and all arguments and positions – especially those that are dominant, or part of the accepted ‘common sense’, should be open to scrutiny and vigorous counter argument and examination. It may be objected that this is already in place; that it is indeed the ‘liberal bedrock’ of the system. However, practice on the ground has increasingly threatened this culture in the latter half of the twentieth century; this is partly as a result of the growth in importance of technology and the applied sciences, partly because of the bureaucratization and ‘credentialism’ of the academy, and even more because of the ever-growing intrusion of capitalist business culture and its ideology into the heart of the higher education system (Monbiot, 2000, pp. 281–301). Far from opposing such developments, Labour governments have been repeatedly at the forefront of creating and facilitating such educationally dangerous changes – especially in the New Labour governments from 1997 onwards. The remaining key elements to which we draw attention, all follow on from this argument, and are connected. First of all and sixth in our overall list, is the paramount need for HEIs to be independent. Formally, of course, in Britain, unlike many comparator societies, this is already the case: all HEIs are legally independent, with their own charters, governing bodies, degree-awarding powers, and so on. However, steadily throughout the twentieth century, and especially its last few decades, governments have exercised increasing policy control. This is perhaps not surprising, given the huge expansion of the system, the consequent increase in state funding, and, as noted, the generally acknowledged economic and social importance of higher education. This policy control has been articulated through funding regimes; through research and ‘R and D’ financing; through the detailed policy instructions given annually (and on occasion far more frequently) by the government Minister and his officials to the HEI funding bodies; through changes in governance structures to ensure more ‘outside’ (code for ‘business’) representation and, in effect, control; and through preferential treatment for subject disciplines deemed to be especially important for ‘national competitiveness’ and the like. Allied to

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this, business too has its direct influence upon HEI priorities and provision, through funded research, and through sponsorships and numerous other organizational and personal partnership arrangements. (It is not incidental that the language of university managers has adopted business terminology: Vice-Chancellors as ‘Chief Executives’, students as ‘customers’, and so on (Coffield and Williamson, 1997.)) The seventh element a socialist policy would foster is the importance of HEIs facilitating and developing civil society – the whole community in all its myriad and often oppositional complexity. Again, elements of this are already implicit in the system but it is striking how often in the twentieth century ‘universities and their communities’ are equated with universities and their business communities, both nationally and internationally, rather than their regional, civic, and especially ‘deprived’, communities. This may be hardly surprising given the increasing hegemony in late capitalism of the business culture, but it is nevertheless a tendency which a socialist higher education policy should strenuously moderate. Again, far from fulfilling this role, certainly from the time of Harold Wilson onwards, Labour has actively aided and abetted the process (see Chapter 9). Our eighth element again follows closely from the last. Engagement with outside communities – local, regional, national, and international – is crucially important. And of course this occurs, in restricted senses, across a wide range of activities (see for example, Watson, 2007; Cunningham et al., 2009). But since such engagement is heavily orientated towards the business community, as noted, university engagement for other communities, tends to be very ‘one-way’: that is, the university makes its provision on its own terms, according to its self-generated presuppositions, set standards and so on. The notion of what E. P. Thompson once termed the symbiosis of ‘Education and Experience’, the dialectical interplay of academic knowledge and the lived experience of the people and the communities of the world is, regrettably, a rare occurrence. Almost half a century ago Thompson articulated this view: For a century and more, most middle-class educationalists could not distinguish the work of education from that of social control: and this entailed too often, a repression or denial of the validity of the life experience of their pupils as expressed in uncouth dialect or in traditional cultural forms. Hence education and received experience were at odds with each other. And those working men who by their own efforts broke into the educated culture found themselves at once in the same place of tension, in which education brought with it the danger of rejection of their fellows and self-distrust. The tension of course continues still. (Thompson, 1968, p. 16) The penultimate element is to extend further this notion of engagement, and thus to embrace the notion of ‘praxis’. The view that there can be no

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informed and sensible, meaningful practice without theoretical reflection is too often forgotten by the ‘practical men’ (and women) of the ‘real world’, and indeed by university managers. But its obverse, the ‘retreat into theory’, in too many parts of the academy – and in much of the New Left – because the real world is too messy, complex, disappointing, and perhaps vulgar, has been an all too frequent occurrence. Many humanities and social sciences disciplines are now scarred by disablingly self-referential, jargonized discourses with little purchase on social and political reality (Barr, 2008; Steele, 1997). Our last point is that a socialist higher education policy needs to address the distorting bias of government policy towards the scientific and applied science disciplines in the contemporary academy. While, of course, we necessarily live in a scientific and technological age, late capitalism is characterized by increasing complexity and social and political irrationality. Policy is weighted overwhelmingly towards the former, and inadequately to the compelling problems of the latter, so that the vital spaces for a free, independent and radical higher education, so critical for the development of a socialist culture, are woefully under resourced. We would add, as a postscript, that as adult educators for most of our working lives, we believe strongly that Labour, although at times paying lip service to the centrality of adult education and adult learners, has consistently failed to give sufficient priority to this area. NIACE’s recently published Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning has revealed in detailed analysis how this key area has been starved of resources (Schuller and Watson, 2009). However, over and above this issue, it is important for the labour movement to work with adult educators and adult learners to engage people across society in creating the opportunities for discussion and analysis of social, economic and political issues and theories. If the development of ‘an educated democracy’ is an essential part of creating a healthy civil society and a vibrant socialist movement, as we believe it is, then the role of adult education, across all sectors, but perhaps especially in higher education, must be recognized. There is an important role for universities and other HEIs in securing the intellectual spaces for the analysis, discussion, and, as noted above, ‘praxis formulation’, of alternative ways of looking at the world. To reformulate Marx’s famous adage, the point is both to analyse the world and to change it. Labour has struggled to convince on both counts. Whatever irrational and dangerous changes late capitalism and globalization have brought about, we continue to live in a society of intense and growing class divisions that discriminate against and disempower the majority of people (Dorling, 2010). And, globally, patterns of inequality not only persist but in many ways have deepened and grown. A reformed higher education has an important role to play in the creation of an ‘educated democracy’, the essential precondition for the development of a socialist society and the dream of socialism’s nineteenth-century founders and twentieth-century thinkers and activists.

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Notes Notes to Chapter 3: R. H. Tawney and the Reform of the Universities 1) Note: ‘ideology’ is used here in the sense of a connected series of social ideas which constitute a social and political perspective, not in the orthodox Marxist sense as implying necessarily false consciousness. 2) Glasgow University Calendar, 1907–8, p. 23 lists Tawney as a University Assistant in Political Economy. He was the junior assistant (Thomas Jones was Senior) to Professor William Smart, who had held the Adam Smith Chair of Political Economy since 1896, four years after Political Economy was detached from the Chair of Moral Philosophy in 1892. 3) However, for all its class egalitarianism, Tawney’s paper did not stretch to gender: the minutes note that the position of women in the university, although tabled for discussion, was not discussed ‘through lack of time’.

Notes to Chapter 9: A Postscript: New Labour and Higher Education 1) This chapter draws on Richard Taylor, ‘Lifelong Learning and the Labour Governments 1997–2004’, in Walford, G., (ed.), 2006, Education and the Labour Government: An Evaluation of Two Terms, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 99–116.

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Bibliography Abbreviations IoE TY: Tawney Papers in the Institute of Education Library, University of London. LSE Tawney Papers: Tawney Papers in LSE Library, University of London. NMLH: National Museum of Labour History, University of Manchester:

Unpublished sources Attlee, Clement R. (1945), letter to Ernest Bevin, 29 January 1945, Public Records Office (PRO), Kew, University Grants Committee (UGC) 46/295. Boyle Papers, Leeds Special Collections MS 660. Edward Boyle (Lord Boyle of Hansworth) Archive Papers, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Crossman, R. H. S. (1957), ‘Some notes on elite education with special reference to the Problem of Universities’, Re 211/Oct 1957, LP Study Group on Education Minutes (1957), NMLH. Labour Party (1957), Study of Education Group Minutes, Re 237/Nov 1957, NMLH. Labour Party (1962a), Plan for Higher Education summary of main proposals NEC Sub Committee on Education, Study Group on Higher Education minutes 29 March–19 Dec 1962, NMLH . Labour Party (1962b), NEC Sub Committee on Education, Study Group on Higher Education, notes from Chairman RD275, June 1962: 6.2. NMLH. Lindsay, A. D. (1922), Inaugural Lecture: incomplete (Lindsay papers L127), University of Keele: Special Collections and Archives. [Published later as Lindsay, A. D. ‘The Idealism of Caird and Jones’, Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (Apr., 1926), 171–86]. Passes, E. M. (1994), The Christian Socialism of R. H. Tawney, unpublished PhD thesis. Library Collections, LSE, University of London. Price, Christopher (2006), interviewed by authors, Dulwich, 28 November 2006. Robinson, Eric (2006), interviewed by authors, Burnley, 6 Feb 2006. – (2007), ‘1966 and all that’, draft of talk given at UCLAN 19/1/2007. Sadler, Rev J. H. (1983), The Contribution of William Temple to the Development of English Education, 1905–1924, unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Birmingham. Toomey, Ralph (2001), ‘The History of the Open University’, unpublished paper.

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Glossary AEC ATTI AUT BCCCS BNP CATs CHE CNAA CND CPGB CPSU CVCP DES DfEE FRD HE HEFCE HEI HESA HND ILP IoE IWC LCC LEA LSE NAB NCIHE NCLC NEC NHS NIACE NLR

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Adult Education Commission Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions Association of University Teachers (now, Universities and Colleges Union) Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies British National Party Colleges of Advanced Technology Colleges of Higher Education Council for National Academic Awards Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Communist Party of Great Britain Communist Party of the Soviet Union Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (now Universities UK) Department for Education and Science Department for Education and Employment Fabian Research Department Higher Education Higher Education Funding Council for England Higher Education Institution Higher Education Statistical Agency Higher National Diploma Independent Labour Party Institute of Education, University of London Institute for Workers’ Control London County Council Local Education Authority London School of Economics, University of London National Advisory Board National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education National Council of Labour Colleges National Extension College National Health Service National Institute for Adult Continuing Education New Left Review

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Glossary NSCAE NUS OFFA OU PCFC PEP PFI PPE QAA R and D RAE RB TCC TTCs TUC UGC ULR WEA

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North Staffs. Committee for Adult Education National Union of Students Office for Fair Access Open University Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council Political and Economic Planning Private Finance Initiative Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Quality Assurance Agency Research and Development Research Assessment Exercise Responsible Body Tutorial Classes Committee Teacher Training Colleges (now Colleges of Education) Trades Union Congress University Grants Committee Universities and Left Review Workers’ Educational Association

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Index Abel Smith, Brian 73 access to higher education 7, 28, 30, 34–5, 77, 79, 83, 96–7, 105, 112, 120, 122, 124, 139, 143, 147, 151–2 activism 16, 21, 114 Adelstein, David 125–6 adult education 3–5, 27–8, 30, 35, 44–5, 47–51, 54, 56, 60, 63, 67, 77, 100, 103, 105–6, 109, 115–16, 121–3, 126–8, 149, 151, 159 Adult Education Committee 48–9 Althusser, Louis 130 Anderson, Perry 13, 129–31 Annan, Noel 68, 73, 84, 108, 155 Arnold, Matthew 25–6, 63 Aron, Raymond 66, 69 Ashby, Eric 60, 71, 80 Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions (ATTI) 73, 75, 87, 90, 117, 149 Association of University Teachers (AUT) 37, 58, 73 Attlee, Clement 2, 15, 43, 65, 79, 150 autonomy of universities 5, 18, 38, 69, 72, 77, 89, 92–3, 105, 115–16, 129, 132, 147 Banks, J. A. 66 Banks, Olive 66 Banton, Michael 66 Barlow Report 37–8, 49, 53, 60, 79 Barratt Brown, Michael 122 Benn, Tony 20 Benton, William 111 Bernstein, Basil 66 Berrill, Kenneth 102, 109

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Bevan, Aneurin 27, 103–4, 123 Beveridge, William 26, 41 Beveridge Report 64 bias 33, 119, 122, 155, 159 Blair, Tony 1–2, 5, 135–7 Blunkett, David 4, 136, 143, 153 Board of Education 29–31, 35 Bowden, Rachel 82, 91–3 Bowden, Vivian 71 Boyden, H. J. 73 Boyle, Edward 57, 83, 85, 100 Bradley, A. C. 56 Bradley, Tom 74 Briault, Eric 108 Briggs, Asa 58, 65, 73, 102 British Academics, The 67, 69 British National Party (BNP) 154 Britton, Edward 87, 90 Brown, Gordon 142 Brown, Ron 75 bureaucracy 103, 130, 147, 157 Labour Party attitude towards 19–20 neutrality of 11–12 and polytechnics 92–3 and quality assurance 140–1 in universities 127, 134, 145 Burgess, Tyrrell 71, 75, 95, 106, 148 Cable, Vince 142 Caird, Edward 44, 46–7 Calder, Ritchie 109 Callaghan, James 1, 17 Cameron, David 47 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 123

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Index Campbell, Jock 110 capitalism 1, 5, 9, 12, 14–16, 19, 81, 119, 137, 153 corporate 11, 20–1, 128, 134, 137, 142 late 95, 158–9 Carr, J. F. 50 Carr-Saunders, A. M. 39 Carswell, John 36–7, 84 Cartwright, Ernest 40, 44, 48–50 Catlin, George 100 Christian Social Union 24 Christian socialism 15, 23, 26, 64 Christianity 14, 23–5, 41 Christodoulou, Anastasios 110 Clapham Report 39 Clarke, Fred 65 class boundaries 18 Clause IV 2, 15 Clyne, Peter 112 Coates, David 4 Coates, Ken 122 Cohen, Percy 66 Cole, G. D. H. 28, 30, 39, 47, 50, 52, 63–4, 69, 150 Cole, Margaret 64 collective ownership 64, 83 collectivism 15, 24, 64, 83 colleges of advanced technology (CATs) 73–4, 77, 84–5, 106, 117 Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals (CVCP) 52–3, 105 Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 7, 64, 72, 75, 113–23, 125 community education 103, 127 comprehensivization 120–1 Conant, James 45–6 conflict, class 18–20 Conservative Enemy, The 85 Conservative Party 3, 16, 76, 100, 133, 144 Corfield, Tony 75 Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) 77, 91–3, 107, 149 Cripps, Stafford 27, 82, 149 Crisis in the University, The 36

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175

Crosland, Anthony 2, 7, 65–6, 68, 70–1, 73, 75, 83, 85–9, 93, 96–7, 99–100, 103– 4, 115, 119–21, 132, 137, 143, 147–51 and Woolwich speech 82, 86–8 Crosland, Susan 85 Crossman, R. H. S. 44, 70–3, 119, 150 Crouch, Colin 76 Crowther, Geoffrey 109–10 Culyer, A. J. 76 curriculum 51–2, 101, 110, 112, 127, 148–51 liberal 40 orientation of 7, 77, 89, 91, 121, 124, 133–4, 147 reform of 35, 39–40, 43, 80, 124, 53–8, 60–1, 63–4, 119 Dahrendorf, Ralph 66 Dalton, Hugh 34, 50, 52–4, 148 Dearing Report 141 degree, university 50–2, 54–9, 73, 76–7, 87, 94, 104, 110, 118, 122, 141, 152 degree-granting powers 53, 58–9, 73, 105, 157 democracy 4, 10, 13, 18, 25, 46, 71, 85, 137, 141–2, 145 ‘educated’ 1, 3–4, 125, 159 Dennis, Norman 23, 27, 66 Department of Education and Science (DES) 82, 84–6, 105, 108 see also Ministry of Education departmentalism 51, 55–6, 73 devolution 75, 141, 149 Douglas-Home, Alec (Earl Home) 16, 100 Drake, Barbara 40 Dyson, Roger 122 Eccles, David 57–8, 69, 72–3, 117 Education Act 1944 51, 53 Education of the Adolescent, The 29 Education Reform Act 1988 93 Eliot, T. S. 47 elitism 4, 32, 85, 147 Elvin, Lionel 70

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176

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equality 1, 3, 9, 18–19, 22, 24–5, 28, 86, 96, 143 educational 9, 29, 70 of opportunity 3, 18–19, 34, 96, 137, 143 ethics 26, 64 expansion of higher education 28, 33–4, 36, 41, 75, 77, 84, 87–8, 101, 115, 119, 124, 133, 137–8, 144, 155 of number of universities 10, 28, 35–7, 49–50, 52–4, 57, 59, 74, 82–3, 148, 155 of schools 28, 53 of scientific and technological education 71, 79–80, 126 of student numbers 90, 139 Fabian influence 2, 13, 15, 17, 26, 29, 47, 63, 65, 69, 71–4, 76–7, 79–80, 82, 85, 88, 93, 100, 119, 130, 147, 149–50 Fabian Research Department (FRD) 63 Fatchett, Derek 122 Fieldhouse, Roger 122 First World War (1914–18) 15, 23–4, 28, 30, 149 Flexner, Abraham 45 Floud, Bernard 66 Floud, Jean 65–6, 73, 150 Foot, Michael 27 Foote, Geoffrey 1 Foundation Degrees 139, 152 Freeman, John 103 Fulton, John 52–3, 55–6, 58, 149, 151 Further and Higher Education Act 1992 77, 86 further education (FE) 5, 72, 75, 77, 80, 82, 87, 106, 121, 135–6, 138, 148–9, 152–3 Future of Socialism, The 2, 68, 70, 85–6, 96, 100, 137, 151 Gaitskell, Hugh 2, 63, 70, 73, 89, 123, 143 General Education in a Free Society 45, 68 General Strike (1926) 13 Giles, C. P. 114

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Ginsburg, Maurice 66 Glass, David 66 Glennerster, Howard 66, 73 God that Failed, The 70 Goodman, Arnold 104, 108–9 Gore, Charles 25, 32 Gould Report 133 governance 11, 76, 92, 94–5, 157 Green, T. H. 26 Greenall, Stella 75 Greene, Hugh 108 Greenwood, Arthur 70 Gunter, Ray 70 Hall, Peter 73 Hall, Stuart 7, 128 Halsey, A. H. 6, 23, 65–9, 86, 153 Harrison, Royden 122 Herbison, Margaret 73 Hetherington, Hector 39, 52 higher education binary system of 7, 37, 75–6, 80–2, 85–6, 93, 106, 119–20, 148–9 expansion of see expansion, of higher education national system of 3, 33, 39, 72, 118, 148–9 unitary system of 75–6, 86, 116 Higher Education for the People 116 Higher National Diplomas 90, 152 Himmelweit, Hilde 109 Hodgkin, Thomas 52 Hogg, Quintin 57–8, 85 Hoggart, Richard 109, 123, 126–8 Horwood, Thomas 50 Hughes, Bill 109 humanities 35, 38–9, 87, 118, 124–6, 128, 130, 133, 139, 147, 159 Ideology and Utopia 47 Independent Labour Party (ILP) 2, 13–14, 44, 104, 130 Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs) 139 indoctrination 122 industrial education 121–2 Inglis, W. B. 70

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Index Jackson, Brian 102, 109 Jameson, Frederic 20 Jones, Brynmor 108 Jones, E. S. 119–20 Jones, Henry 46–7 Jowett, Benjamin 43–4, 47, 60, 63 Kahn, Richard 102 Keele University 6, 40, 43–61, 77, 102, 105, 119, 149, 151, 153 Kerr, Clark 6, 67–8, 132 Kinnock, Neil 135 Kneller, George F. 68 ‘knowledge society’ 136 Kruschev, Nikita 114 Labour and the New Social Order 15 Labour Left 12, 14–17, 20, 27, 103 Labour Party Advisory Committees (LPACs) 28 Lancaster, Sue 75 Laski, Harold 64, 66 Laslett, Peter 102, 108 Lawton, Denis 1, 86, 151 Layard, Richard 71, 150 Lee, Jennie 7, 99, 101, 103–5, 107–11, 150 Lessing, Doris 104 liberal education 30, 48, 60, 69, 80–1, 88, 91, 115, 123–4, 126, 147–8 lifelong learning 7, 31, 41, 135–6, 141, 153, 156 Lindsay, A. D. 6, 32–3, 40–1, 43–50, 52–8, 60–1, 63–4, 68, 73, 80, 97, 116, 125, 127, 145, 148–51, 156 Lockwood, David 66, 102 London School of Economics (LSE) 39, 64–7, 139, 150–1 Long Revolution, The 123 Lovett, William 25 Löwe, Adolph 46–8, 65 Lowe, Roy 36–7, 40, 48–9, 53, 55–6, 63 MacArthur, Brian 100, 104 McIlroy, John 122 Macintosh, Marjorie 70

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McKenzie, Norman 109 Maclean, John 44 Macmillan, Harold 57, 69, 72–4, 100, 150 Macmurray, John 63–4, 67, 82–3, 116 McNair Report 36 Making of the English Working Class, The 128 Malbon, Gladys 50, 52, 56 Mannheim, Karl 47, 50, 65, 131, 151 Marcuse, Herbert 131–2 Marriott, Stuart 103 Marx, Karl 18, 44, 66, 83, 125, 131, 159 Marxism 4, 24, 26, 60, 64, 66, 68–9, 114, 122–3, 126, 131, 133, 151 materialism 25, 64 Mechanics’ Institutes 4, 87, 124 media see news media Mennell, Stephen 76 Meredith, Christopher 116 meritocratic system 3, 5, 18, 93, 96, 140 middle class 18, 26, 30, 106, 111, 126 Miliband, Ralph 2, 9, 11–12, 14–18, 66, 97, 137, 153–4 Mills, C. Wright 67, 126 Miners’ Strike (1984–85) 13 Ministry of Education 52, 71, 74, 82 see also Department of Education and Science Mission of the University 37, 47 Moberly, Walter 26, 36–7, 39, 41, 50–3, 56, 65–6, 72, 148 Modern Democratic State, The 47 modernity 51, 80 Monbiot, George 155 Moodie, Graham 72 Morris, Charles 52 Morris, William 25, 65 Morrison, Herbert 15, 114 Morrison, Hugh 102 Moser, Claus 70 Mulley, Fred 75 Murray, Gilbert 56 Murray, Keith 72

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178

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Nairn, Tom 13, 130 National Council for Higher Education 117–18 National Council for Technical Education 117 National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC) 121 National Extension College (NEC) 64, 102, 150 National Health Service (NHS) 15 National Union of Students (NUS) 73, 75, 142 National Union of Teachers (NUT) 114 nationalization 15–16 Nazism 23, 114 networks 16, 26, 41, 50–1, 67, 77, 92 neutrality of the state 11–12 New Labour 1–2, 4, 7–8, 11, 15, 17, 29, 76, 78, 95, 111, 135–46, 152–3, 157 New Left 7, 114, 122–33, 151, 159 New Polytechnics, The 88 Newman, John Henry 68, 125–6, 144, 147 news media 12, 18, 100, 112, 131, 135, 151 see also television North Staffordshire Committee for Adult Education (NSCAE) 50 Nunn, T. P. 29

working-class 115 Peacock, A. T. 76 Pedley, Robin 75, 115, 120–1 Percy Report 36, 79, 116 Perry, Walter 99, 101, 105, 108–11 Philosophy of Communism, The 64 Plowden Committee 102 Polanyi, Karl 151 political parties 21, 152 as agents for change 10 polytechnics 4, 7, 12, 75–7, 79–97, 105–6, 117, 120, 125, 138–9, 142, 146, 148–9, 153 funding of 76–7, 92 Popper, Karl 24, 66 post-compulsory education 4, 75, 135, 141 poverty 16, 44 pragmatism 20, 27, 32, 41, 82–3 Pratt, John 87–9, 93, 106–7, 112, 148 Prentice, Reg 75, 90 Price, Chris 75 private education (public schools) 29, 46, 65, 71, 86, 96, 155 public ownership 19 public schools see private education

Obama, Barack 21 Office for Fair Access (OFFA) 152 Open Society and Its Enemies, The 66 Open University (OU) 7, 77, 90, 97, 99–112, 125, 134, 146, 149–50, 153 Owen, Robert 25 Oxford and Working Class Education 27, 44

radicalism 1, 7, 24–5, 30, 75–6, 97, 123, 133–4, 148 regional factors 38, 49, 51–2, 55, 58, 73–6, 85, 88, 115–16, 118–20, 149–50, 158 Reitz, Charles 132 religion 14, 24, 64, 67, 124 research funding for 40, 129, 132, 134, 138–9, 142, 157–8 market 107 policy 63–4 university 33–4, 47, 58, 67, 78, 89, 92, 109–11, 116–18 Research Assessment Exercise 61, 94, 145

Panitch, Leo 9, 16 parliamentarism 12–13, 21 Parliamentary Socialism 2, 12 Parsons, Talcott 66 participation 41, 154–5 in American universities 68, 115 widening 95, 137–42, 145, 154, 156

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Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) 140–1, 145

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Index revisionism 2, 96, 100, 137, 143 Rhodes, Geoffrey 75 Rise of the Meritocracy, The 64 Robbins, Lionel 39, 46, 65–6, 68, 70, 72–6, 82–8, 119, 121, 150 Robbins Committee 57, 65, 70, 73, 82, 88, 91, 93, 114, 116, 118–19, 150 Robbins Report 58, 74, 84–5, 125, 152, 163 Robinson, Eric 4, 7, 71, 75, 81–2, 86–9, 91, 93–5, 106, 145, 148–9 Rootes, William 129 Ruskin, John 25, 124 Ryan, Alan 1, 138–40,143 Saville, John 18, 122 Scargill, Arthur 121 scholarships 34–5, 66, 81, 109, 118, 126, 136, 139 Scott, Peter 76–7, 153–4 Scupham, John 108 Second World War 20, 28, 35–6 secondary education 28–9, 34–5, 53, 86, 118, 135, 149 Secondary Education for All 28, 69 Sedgwick, Peter 123 Self as Agent, The 83 Shaw, Roy 105, 109 Shearman, Harold 40, 70 Shils, Edward 66–7 Shore, Peter 73 Silver, Harold 36, 57, 68–9, 72, 93 Simon, Brian 29, 65, 72, 153 Simon, Ernest (Lord Simon) 72 Skeffington, Arthur 73 Smith, Ellis 50 Smith, John 135 social capital 26, 156 class 19, 24, 29, 69, 87, 90, 102, 107, 127, 142, 145, 148, 152, 155 justice 1, 24–5, 28, 45, 53, 64, 83, 136, 148 policy 5–6, 17, 95, 140, 143, 154 psychology 65 reform 5, 17, 22

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Social Class and Educational Opportunity 65 socialism 5, 12–15, 17–19, 23, 25–7, 65, 122, 130, 159 Christian 15, 23, 26, 64 democratic 1, 24, 26 ethical 23–4, 67 Socialism for a Sceptical Age 17 sociology 35, 47, 50, 64–7, 69, 102, 131, 151 ‘new’ 6, 63–78, 151 Soviet Union 21, 24, 45, 60, 100, 113–14 specialization, academic 46–7, 55, 60, 63, 71, 80 sponsorship of courses 48 of new universities 52, 55–7, 59 of research 158 of students 119 standards, academic 31, 34–5, 38, 40, 45, 54, 71–2, 76, 82, 86, 91, 103–5, 107, 109, 112, 117–18, 127, 151, 156, 158 Stanistreet, Paul 111 Stobart, J. C. 100 Stockwood, Mervyn 103 Stone, Richard 102 Stone, W. G. 58 Stross, Barnet 50 ‘Sure Start’ 142 Tawney, R. H. 1, 3–4, 6, 9, 23–41, 43–5, 47–50, 52–3, 57, 63–4, 66–70, 74–5, 77, 80, 83, 96–7, 110, 115–16, 124–7, 143, 145, 147–50, 152, 156 and Social Sciences 39–40 and university education 30–5 and University Grants Committee 36–9 taxation, redistributive 25, 142 teacher training 36, 51, 85, 87, 115, 118 Technology and the Academics 80 television 100, 101, 108 see also news media Temple, William 25–7, 29, 32–3, 36, 41

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Thatcher, Margaret 1, 97, 111 Thatcherism 1–2, 4, 77 Third Way 2, 137 Thompson, E. P. 7, 13, 65, 122–3, 128–30, 133, 145, 158 Titmuss, Richard 70, 73 Topham, Tony 122 totalitarianism 23, 113 trade unions 13, 21, 25, 47, 80–1, 114, 121–2, 142 Trow, Martin 6, 67–9, 132 tuition costs 141, 152 United States of America 2, 5, 21, 54, 56, 60, 69, 77, 79, 86, 115, 125, 131, 137 universities funding of 36–7, 39–40, 48, 50, 54, 76, 80, 94–5, 105, 108, 111, 116, 129, 134, 138–9, 141–2, 148, 157 see also University Grants Committee ‘plate-glass’ 43, 77 provincial 4 ‘redbrick’ 33–4, 44, 48–9, 54, 60, 71 University Grants Committee (UGC) 26, 28, 32, 36–40, 43, 49–59, 65–6, 69, 72, 74–5, 77, 79, 84, 108–9, 117, 148–9 Uses of a University, The 68 utilitarian view of education 1–4, 77, 144 Vaizey, John 73, 86 Vaughan, Janet 52 Venables, Peter 109 vocational education 4, 45, 51, 73, 75–7, 79–84, 88–9, 91, 94–6, 106, 110–11, 116, 134, 136–9, 142, 147–8, 152

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Wagner, Leslie 101 Wallace, Ron 75 Watson, David 82, 91–3, 138, 153 Weaver, Toby 7, 12, 68, 79, 82–6, 89, 93, 148–9 Webb, Beatrice 28 Webb, Sidney 28 Weddell, George 100 Welfare State 15–16, 18–19, 51, 125 Wesker, Arnold 104 Westergaard, John 66 White, Enid 73 Whitehead, A. N. 82 Wilby, Peter 155 Willey, Fred 73 Williams, R. C. G. 100 Williams, Raymond 123 Williams, Shirley 75–6 Wilson, Harold 1, 7, 16, 63, 66, 70–1, 80, 89, 97, 99–101, 103–6, 108, 110, 149–50, 153, 158 Wiltshire, Harold 102, 105, 108–9 Wolf, Alison 96, 138, 144, 156 Wolfenden, John 108 Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) 4, 27–8, 30–1, 33, 35, 39–40, 43–5, 47–50, 53, 60, 64, 67, 69–70, 80–1, 115–16, 121, 125, 127, 150 working class 4, 13, 16, 28–33, 87, 105, 107, 115, 120, 125, 128, 131, 142–3, 151–2 World Social Forum 21 Years of Crisis, The 74 Young, Michael 40, 43, 61, 64–5, 70, 74–5, 99–105, 108–9, 150 and Open University 101–3 Zimmern, Alfred 32, 35

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