One of the most astonishing things to me in London is the plaque outside the Russell School in Richmond, next door to the Deutsche Schule of London, where my son is in kindergarten. The plaque commemorates an incident that occurred during the war:
“The Russell School in Petersham was founded in 1851 by Lord John Russell. The original school was situated in Richmond Park by the Petersham Gate, on a site made available by Royal Warrant. It was destroyed by enemy action in November 1943.”
But even more dismaying is the article I read when I did a simple Google search for the school today: “School life blighted by bullying, parents claim.”
In the article – published in The Richmond and Twickenham Times, and available at http://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/1960048.school_life_blighted_by_bullying_parents_claim/ – one parent was quoted:
“‘They now do not know how to play, they know to fight, kick, and punch,’ she said. ‘the headmaster always says this is the first I’ve heard of it, which is unusual when you have sent him letters.’ …’there is a very strong culture of not wanting to speak out for fear of the children being looked at in a particular way.’”
If you’re scared to stand up to so much as perception, much less power, with a child’s safety at stake, how do you expect to teach that child the kind of courage you need to face down a bully? How do you teach him to think for himself? How do you teach him to trust anyone in authority, like his teachers, or his parents?
Children are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The generation that recalled “enemy action” in 1943, would not have hesitated to raise its voice in protesting that might does not make right. The tragic dimension of this predicament, is that Germany learned all of its lessons from the war; and England forgot them.
This is how societies come to resemble Lord of the Flies, a condition that afflicts us all. Lest anyone imagine that children are the only victims of bullying, there is a litany of cases involving adults that one can cite, having only read the newspapers for a decade or thereabouts.
There was the young Conservative Party activist who committed suicide after being bullied viciously by a campaign director and established party operator, a storyline that recalls the tv drama House of Cards; then there was the Liberal Democrat life peer under party and police investigation for years over accusations of sexual misconduct, from harassment to assault — a peculiarly insidious form of bullying — who was finally suspended by the Lib Dems on 20 January 2014.
According to Wikipedia:
“The week following the suspension, The Times reported …that the Peer knew ‘where the bodies are buried’ and that, were he expelled from the Liberal Democrats, he would reveal two decades of sex scandal in the Party… The seven-month suspension of his party membership was lifted in August 2014, when there was a ‘No Further Action’ decision in relation to his criticisms of party processes and he was restored to full membership of the party.”
Then there was the epidemic of decades-old allegations of child abuse, in almost every national institution on record, a truly stunning series of revelations whose scope defied the criminal justice system to find some overarching strategy to cope. The complicity of those responsible for children’s safety is what is staggering. Again, according to Wikipedia:
“The Metropolitan Police launched a criminal investigation on 19 October 2012… by December 2012, 30 officers were involved with the case. In saying that the operation was ‘dealing with alleged abuse on an unprecedented scale’ and that it ‘empowered a staggering number of victims to come forward to report the sexual exploitation which occurred during their childhood,’ Commander Peter Spindler said that: ‘We are dealing with a major criminal investigation.’”
Coupled to this news was a story about systematic exploitation of young British girls by Pakistani gangs in Rotherham. According to Wikipedia, the most neutral source, aggregating widespread reporting:
“Between 2001 and 2006 multiple reports and complaints, including from the local director of education, alerted Rotherham Council and the police to the allegations… After obtaining confidential police files, The Times reported in 2012 that the abuse was widespread, and that police and council officials had known about it for at least ten years. The perpetrators’ Pakistani heritage was viewed as the reason for the cover-up; Theresa May, then home secretary, blamed ‘institutional political correctness.’… Most of the victims were white girls aged 11–15, many living in care homes. The abuse included abduction, beating, rape and gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, dousing them with petrol and threatening to set them on fire, threatening them with guns, threatening their families, and trafficking them to other towns… one victim became pregnant at age 12. The Jay report prompted the resignation of Roger Stone, leader of Rotherham Council; Martin Kimber, its chief executive; and Joyce Thacker, its director of children’s services. Shaun Wright, the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire Police, who in 2005–2010 had been the local Labour councillor in charge of child safety, stood down in September 2014 after initially refusing to go. Denis MacShane, Rotherham’s MP at the time, admitted that he had done too little… Further allegations of a cover-up, including the disappearance in 2002 of files about the abuse from a Rotherham Council office, were heard by the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2014… the government appointed Louise Casey to carry out an inspection of Rotherham Council. Published in January 2015, the Casey report suggested that the council had a deep-rooted culture of covering up information and silencing whistleblowers, and that it was ‘not fit for purpose.’”
Then there is the sort of pointless nastiness that represents the fire lit under a pot yet to boil. On July 14, 2016, I wrote a letter to the The Spectator, the first letter I have ever written to any publication. The subject line was: “A Summer Evening with Bruce Anderson,” in reference to an article that the aforementioned Bruce Anderson had written about a summer evening with David Cameron, conjuring the kind of mutual infatuation that powered Brideshead Revisited through successive resurrections despite its having no compelling plot. My letter said:
“Dear Sir or Madame,
…many of your columnists are so woefully sexist as to be undeserving of real indignation. On the road to genuine equality, these are the types of idiotic comments that we ignore as we power onward, safe in the belief that misogynists will be relegated to the dustbins of history.
…But there was one columnist who made an observation in a more serious vein that can only be taken as a call to alarm. In the issue that appeared July 2nd, Bruce Anderson mused, ‘I have never understood why girls’ schools should cost as much as boys’ ones. Although it ought to be cheaper to teach domestic science than inventors’ science, I suppose that feminism allows the girls’ governors to charge up.’
This is so outrageously offensive, wrong, both factually and ethically, and simply dunder-headed as to be pathetic and unworthy of publication. It would be out of place in a much lesser journal than yours, despite the cavalier tone it often takes with respect to women in general.
This hasn’t stopped me reading it, because the rest of it offers such splendid verve and wit. I have often found myself wondering if I am supposed to take these not infrequent misogynist barbs as a joke, and if indeed, this is the bedrock of the British version of political correctness, as opposed to the American one to which I am accustomed: humour, as you spell it.
There is a salient link between humour and intelligence, as anyone who has attempted to explain a joke to a dull-witted person would attest. Indeed, humour is in many respects, more than any Ofsted exam, our truest intelligence test, because one’s response to humour is involuntary and immediate: either you laugh you don’t. And crucially, for those who yoke humour to a political argument, either underhandedly or not, humour is impossible to argue with: it’s a joke, after all.
As André Malraux observed, in his 1939 preface to Les Liaisons Dangeureuses, all problems in art (and I include humour in that pantheon) must be resolved in the domain of art itself, which is to say, it is foolish to ban books or authors and their commentary, under the pretence that they are politically dangerous, and therefore deserving of politically motivated punishment or censorship.
Such was the vain attempt to reason with the rising Nazi regime next door to Malraux’s country at the time, busy burning books like Liaisons, which, like Lolita, remains an allegorical portrait of a country, not a manual about sex. I say this merely to frame my remarks: I don’t think sexism should be banned. I would rather confront it in the open, so I know who my real friends are, and who are merely dunder-headed old fogies whose time is drawing to a close.
Every argument for censorship of impolitic views, from guardians of our public morals, is offensive to the intelligence (and wit) of the individual, a quality not to be underestimated. The best way to fight fire, is fire, in this instance, not to hose us all down in a cold bath of PC stock phrases approved as a new catechism by indoctrinated drones.
We have all experienced the tedium of politically correct discourse. The worst if least-anticipated outcome, is that readers lose interest in any argument that partakes of the politically correct, thus laying the groundwork for people like Donald Trump, whose only real appeal is that he is not serving as a dummy to a ventriloquist intoning the cadences that have been duly approved.
And yet, I would persist in arguing that people who aim to ‘sanitise’ our public rhetoric of insulting and derisive language are not engaged in an act of censorship. Redress is called for in many situations in which the speaker has overstepped the bounds of reason and courtesy, as he has here.
He has also plainly overstepped the bounds of reality. I don’t know your columnist’s age, but the last time ‘girls’ schools’ as he preciously dubs them, taught domestic sciences, was in the 1950s. I don’t imagine that Cheltenham Ladies’ College aims any lower than the ‘boys’ schools’ in the league tables for GCSEs or university admissions for its graduates.
But what rankles with me is the cynicism behind even so innocent a remark.
Girls are not allowed to apply to Eton, Winchester, Harrow, and a host of other excellent schools which remain — inexplicably — off-limits to them. This is depressing enough on its face, but to take this lamentable state of affairs and then deduce from it that girls are not capable of handling the work at ‘boys’ schools’ is insulting and cruel.
It is also a comment made in the purest bad faith, in a kind of logical fallacy that bedevils every attempt to justify segregation, which is illogical and therefore indefensible as such. The fact that girls are not allowed to attend these schools and compete at them, is not proof of the fact that they would not thrive at them. This is to add insult to injury.
I would point your attention to the laws governing segregation in the United States, where I was born, and where I attended a school that had been a ‘boys’ school’ until the Supreme Court ordered it to either admit girls or join forces with a ‘girls’ school’ in such a way as to fully integrate the students, teachers, classes, and curriculum. Thus, Choate School became Choate Rosemary Hall, which I attended from 1990-1994.
A further Supreme Court ruling mandated that all schools in the U.S. allocate equal funding to girls’ and boys’ sports facilities, fields, and equipment, which is why Choate not only foregoes cheerleaders but permits girls in plaid skirts to play field hockey on what was once the prime venue for American football on its campus. No one seems to bemoan this. I suspect even Mr. Liddle might enjoy it.
For what it’s worth, the admissions director who served at Choate when I attended the school once remarked, to a group of students to whom she taught ethics, that, were gender not a factor in the application process, 80% of the incoming students would be female, as would 90% of the graduates.
She had not been eligible to attend Choate, but did go on to earn a Ph.D. in education from Harvard. The first dilemma she posed in our ethics class was, ‘Do eighty-one wrongs make a right?’
The answer is clearly, no. Such is the prevalence of a dismissive, disingenuously light-hearted sexism in your journal, that it is impossible not to call it what it is: prejudice.
That is a posture unworthy of a publication that is otherwise so delightful, compelling, and original. I can’t believe that your editors have not noticed this. So I must conclude that it forms some kind of premeditated appeal to the audience, if you will, a dog whistle. From that observation, I must go on to conclude that you have already ruled out wide appeal to women (not girls) who read your journal — or don’t.
Please allow me to assure you that, despite having children of our own, many of us thrill to the arrival of The Spectator each week as we did on receiving packages at school, yet experience a small tremor of anguish when we read remarks like these, a feeling not unlike the minor despair that many of us feel when we witness the men to whom we look for inspiration, stooping so low as to become, even momentarily, second-rate.
Girls are compelled to internalise this abject form of cynicism far too young, and it represents a real injustice, because it targets the blameless and even noble spirit of the individual.”
In this vein, it is fascinating to note the description of Theresa May in the April 22-28th issue of The Economist, which features her on the cover: “Her purge of the Cameron gang was a vicious bit of class politics: a grammar-school girl who had been patronised by a bunch of public-school toffs plunging in the knife with skill and relish.” (“Bagehot — Theresa May, Tory of Tories”)
I would submit that May’s treatment by the Cameroon brigade had all to do with the latent sexism of the toffs’ Bullingdon crew, an attitude of astonishing imperiousness that Cameron manifested with one remark, to a female MP grilling him from the opposite side of the Commons: “Calm down, dear.” This is pathetic.
As the same article goes on to describe, “Mrs May was a more ambitious politician than the political class realised. The Tory modernisers who surrounded David Cameron had eyes only for each other… Mrs May was too dull to be bothered with. But she always had ideas above her station.”
The sad thing about this situation, is that the sexism evident in the Conservatives’ underestimation of May, which she exploited as brilliantly as Margaret Thatcher did in her day, was not limited to the complacent, self-satisfied, mutually infatuated, glib and callow crew that surrounded Cameron. Their attitude — tone-deaf, obtuse, and chauvinist — finds an echo in the mainstream, beyond the privileged realm of the Eton alumni society.
When May met with Nicola Sturgeon, an historic occasion not merely because the future of the United Kingdom hinges on their negotiations, but because it is the first time two women have represented England and Scotland since Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, The Daily Mail commemorated the occasion with the type of gravity that has become its watchword: “Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!” (March 26, 2017).
The caption accompanied a cover photo of the two women sitting side-by-side, with their legs – scandalously – visible to all and sundry. If we had parachuted a Taliban chieftain into The Daily Mail’s headquarters, complete with keffiyeh and Kalashnikov, then drugged him with mescaline, this is about the sort of nonsense he might spew, while giggling.
As Elle U.K. put it, “Breaking news: Donald Trump has penned a headline for a British tabloid newspaper.” (“The Daily Mail has P*ssed Off the World (Again) with a Sexist Headline about Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon”). You can rest assured that when a fashion glossy has called out your tone for misogyny, you’ve finally overstepped the mark.
In the meantime, I’m attempting – and failing – to imagine a German publication referring this way to Angela Merkel. This tells you a great deal about the relative tone of public debate in both countries. When you read the tabloids here, especially the ones that touted Brexit, it is impossible not to recall what de Gaulle remarked about Brazil: “le Brésil n’est pas un pays sérieux.”
Nick Clegg commented on this state of affairs:
“the former Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister said that Britain was being run by a ‘curious cabal of old men,’ namely the power brokers on Britain’s pro-Brexit newspapers – the Telegraph’s Barclay brothers, the Sun’s Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre.
…’What lurks behind Brexit is an ideological coup, in many ways a domestic one. Brexit is a means by which a low-state, low-protection, low-welfare, libertarian approach to governance is seeking to take over the commanding heights of British politics,’ he said.
‘…look at the commentariat in large parts of the Brexit press, look at Tea Party think tanks in America that are the intellectual inspiration for Brexiteers, look at what they said about Brussels being the fount of all problems because of regulation.’
Describing the media owners as puppet masters, he said they wanted to turn Britain into an offshore economy, calling them a ‘bunch of old men – not elected by anybody – [with] Theresa May as their hostage.’” (The Guardian, April 3, 2017: “Theresa May being held hostage by ‘cabal of old men’, says Nick Clegg”, by Anushka Asthana, Political editor).
It is hard to argue with these observations. It’s as if someone had returned from another dimension on the time-space continuum to tell you, “you’re not imagining it.” This is how I felt when Trump was elected.