The great irony and paradox is that the admirable people who characterised Britain from the late nineteenth century up until the mid-twentieth century were the ones who made the mistake of creating the welfare state. They did it partly because they were so decent and kind. They wanted better lives not only for themselves but for others less fortunate. Our tragedy is that they made such a dreadful mistake in the means they chose. Perhaps it was their very decency which made them naïve about what would happen.
When I moved on from writing the chapter about the National Health Service to writing about state education, I thought I was moving from one twin to the other. I thought, like most people, that they have a great deal in common: large staff, monopolies, many political supporters and so on. But when I looked at them up close, one key difference soon became apparent: in education, people don’t die.
That is a shorthand way of saying several things. In medicine it is obvious what you are trying to achieve: to alleviate suffering, avoid incapacity and help people survive. People agree on the purpose, so it is quite simple to measure how successful they are. It is agreed, though you can argue over certain cases, that premature death constitutes failure. This important purpose of the NHS is clear and the failure is therefore equally clear.
Education, in contrast, is not clear at all. People do not agree on what it is for. Some think its aim is to create a ‘cultivated’ person. Some think it should create ‘equal opportunity’ or break down class divisions. In the nineteenth century, education was seen as a means of reducing drunkenness and crime, primarily through religious instruction. Recent governments have argued that the prime aim of education is to promote economic success. Some think that learning to read, write and do some basic mathematics is of fundamental importance. Others see these things as desirable but are far keener that no child should be regimented or made to feel a failure.
Since there are so many varied ideas about the purpose of education, it is very difficult to produce measures of success or failure which will convince everybody. In any case, measurement of success or failure in most of these areas is often highly debatable. Many people may feel that the dumbing down of exams which they perceive represents a kind of failure. But there are some people in education – highly intelligent ones too – who argue that it is not. There is no clear measure of success or failure which everyone agrees is significant and important. Nobody dies.
I am convinced that state education has been as disastrous as the NHS but because nobody dies, it is harder to prove.
I had far more contact with professors when writing this book than when I was an undergraduate at Oxford University. I talked to far more hospital consultants, too, than I would in the ordinary course of events. It was a great pleasure – even though it could be bracing – to interact with these extremely clever folk. Having never been highly rated by my tutors at university I was thrilled when one of these professors implied that I was not too far beneath him. He remarked in an e-mail: ‘These are intelligent questions – are you sure you’re a journalist?’
As recently as fourteen years ago I thought having children outside marriage was fine. I positively preferred the idea for myself. I had a little capital and I feared that if I got married and subsequently divorced, I could lose half of it and might have to provide further financial support to my ex-wife while any children were being brought up. As far as I could see, it was far less financially dangerous to make children without getting married. Such thoughts did me no credit but they were logical.
Only after I read research findings about children of unmarried parents, during the early 1990s, did I change my view. Only then did I come to believe that children born outside wedlock have far lower chances of success and happiness in life.
In view of my own history, I must readily concede that many people – probably still tens of millions – remain unaware of this. The evidence has become better known over the past fifteen years but it is still possible for those having children outside marriage not to realise that it is an unkind act. In a sense, therefore, it is not unkind. It is only ‘uninformed’.
If more people became aware of the evidence, many might hold back from having children outside marriage. If such a change was to come over people – as it has in me – it would mark a change towards a new kind of sexual morality. The old one was based on the religious injunction not to commit adultery. The new morality is based on social research.
We are educated to think that our ancestors got it all wrong. They were stuck in pre-democratic, relatively poor times without the benefit of our modern welfare state. Why on earth were they not sensible and democratic with a big welfare state, like us?
They must have been a bit short of intelligence, wisdom, decency or something.
This kind of attitude is never expressed openly. It is implicit. But reading a great deal that was written in the nineteenth century or before for the purposes of this book has made me realise, first, that I have taken part in this patronising attitude and, second, how absurd it is. If anything, I now have more respect for those who lived in the past than those who live now. They have often struck me as more perceptive, honest and clear in their writing.
It was a revelation to me when I first learnt that Martin Luther and Thomas More had discussed the pros and cons of various welfare systems. It was even more of a surprise to see that the writers at that time were so open and explicit about the possible perverse effects of a welfare state. There is a whole gallery of people who have impressed me enormously on welfare state matters including: Edwin Chadwick, Charles Loch, Octavia Hill, Edmund Burke, Thomas Chalmers, Aneurin Bevan, George Orwell and Lord Beveridge himself – who was far more clear thinking than the welfare state which resulted from the wholesale disregarding of his report. If anyone should be judging anyone, such people as these should be judging us. They would all – every one of them – be appalled by what has become of the welfare state and of the British people. In patronising the past, we reveal nothing but our vanity.
491 Lord Salisbury lived from 1830 to 1903. Quoted in Edward Leigh, Right Thinking: A Personal Collection of Quotations Dating from 3000 BC to the Present Day Which Might Be Said to Cast Some Light on the Workings of the Tory Mind (Hutchinson, London, 1979).