Corbyn’s Troops Target Eton in Brexit Britain’s Class War
Brexit Stirs the British Class War
(Bloomberg) -- Nothing runs through the veins of British society more than the colors of an old school tie.
With the country deep in conflict with itself over leaving the European Union, the opposition Labour Party may be about to stir up another quintessentially British argument: the class war over private schools.
The party faithful convenes for their conference in Brighton on England’s south coast this weekend and a group of members is pushing for their “Abolish Eton” campaign to be part of the debate. Named after the U.K.’s most iconic school and alma mater of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, it aims to shut down establishments for fee-paying elites or at least tax them out of existence.
The scrapping of private schools has several hurdles to overcome before becoming Labour policy, let alone U.K. law. But the fact that it’s being discussed alongside Brexit and workers’ rights at such a febrile time shows how the party under socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn is eager to make political capital by attacking the rich. It also helps explain why many in Britain are as wary of a Labour government as they are of Brexit.
The vote to leave the EU cleaved the electorate between “leave” and “remain,” yet it was as much about income and opportunity disparities in a country with the wealthiest capital in Europe and yet where a United Nations report last year concluded that a fifth of the population lives in poverty.
“You can talk about it being a zeitgeist issue,” said Robert Verkaik, author of the 2018 book “Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain.” “You can see there are people who are angry about their predicament or their place in society. The referendum has awoken some of these feelings about being left behind in parts of communities where there is a two-tier system not just of education, but also of life chances.”
British society is still very much defined by its class system, with a person’s background often betrayed by accent and education as much as money.
Private schools cut to the heart of that. They command their own fees and operate alongside the taxpayer-funded state system whose access is usually just determined by where a child lives. The privately funded schools benefit from being registered as charities and some other tax breaks.
Prices can vary by region. In Birmingham, the girls-only King Edward VI High School charges 13,300 pounds ($16,600) per year. Eton, where annual fees can top 43,000 pounds a year and uniforms are a tail coat and pinstripe pants, is at the higher end of the market, although it takes some boys for free and provides grants to others. It has educated royal princes and 20 of Britain’s prime ministers.
To its detractors, Eton is a symbol of the division between the nation’s haves and have-nots. A report for Britain’s children’s commissioner this week found there was a “shameful” rise in the number of young people in England leaving school without enough qualifications.
Thelma Walker is one of the Labour members of Parliament backing the “Abolish Eton” campaign. A state-school teacher for 34 years before becoming a lawmaker, she sees how sports fields at a private school near Parliament in London are kept behind iron railings from the rest of the community, she said.
“Games lessons are held there, but for most of the day and out of term time it is empty with local people living close by, many living in poor quality housing, unable to access the one green space,” said Walker. “For me this is symbolic of the massive inequality in our society.”
Fee-paying schools educate only 7% of under-16s in England. Yet a report by education charity The Sutton Trust revealed that 65% of senior judges, 52% of junior ministers, 44% of media columnists and 16% of university vice-chancellors were educated in private schools.
About two thirds of Johnson’s cabinet was privately educated. And it’s getting more exclusive, campaigners say. Last year, fees rose an average 3.7% and pupil numbers dropped to a five-year-low.
Supporters of the system point to inequalities in society based on where people live, who their parents are and pressure on high-performing state schools to demonstrate the demand for quality education. House prices are pushed up around good schools, while other parents opt to attend a place of worship to boost the chances of their kids getting into a religious school.
If Labour sought to abolish private education, children would just transfer to top-performing state schools, according to Patrick Derham, headmaster of London’s fee-paying Westminster School.
Private schools have also offered scholarships to children from less affluent backgrounds and shared facilities with nearby state schools.
“I completely accept that the correlation between socio-economic group and educational attainment is too close in the U.K.” said Derham. “It worries me, but it goes way, way beyond any influence private schools can have. We should stop focusing on the outcome of a few thousand pupils.”
While Corbyn is painting Johnson and the Conservative Party as the elite, Labour isn’t just about state schools.
Former leader Tony Blair, who won three consecutive elections, attended the elite Fettes College in Edinburgh. Among the current crop, Winchester College, founded in 1382 where fees are 41,709 pounds a year, educated two of Corbyn’s key advisers. Corbyn himself attended a fee-paying junior school, known as a preparatory, or “prep” school.
Campaigners are considering a range of options before phasing out private schools altogether.
A report published on Thursday by the pressure group Private School Policy Reform claims adding standard 20% sales tax on to school fees would raise about 1.75 billion pounds even after taking into account a 5% reduction in pupil numbers as some families get priced out. A second proposal suggests axing the status as charities for tax purposes.
Labour has already pledged to impose sales tax on fees and spend the revenue on free school meals for all in the state sector. But how much revenue the reforms would actually deliver is disputed by research commissioned by the Independent Schools Council, which represents private schools. It could end up costing at least 416 million pounds because schools would reclaim the sales tax like other businesses, it said.
“There is a clear contradiction in a policy that aims to raise revenue from independent schools and reduce demand for them at the same time,” said Julie Robinson, who heads the council.
For now, it’s not clear if anything will get off the ground. The private school debate has to be selected in Brighton, then passed by delegates before being fully costed and adopted into the party’s manifesto, even though it was endorsed by the party’s finance spokesman and key strategist John McDonnell.
A total abolition of private schools would require a sizable Labour majority in Parliament, something that looks unlikely given the division over Brexit. The Conservatives lead the polls by as much as 10 percentage points even after more than three years of upheaval and political sclerosis over leaving the EU, in part a reflection of concern over a socialist government under Corbyn.
If it did come down to it, though, moderate Labour politicians could back abolition, said former party lawmaker John Woodcock.
“No Labour MP is going to go down fighting for class privilege if it came to a vote,” Woodcock said. “If it’s a matter of throwing a bit of red meat to the left of the party, then I expect they’d let it go through Parliament.”
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Rodney Jefferson
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