Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

My dad has been complaining about the destruction of the grammar schools for as long as I can remember, since well before Blair actually. Even though he didn't go to one (his route out was via a trade union that taught him what it turned out were highly portable skills)

My father too.....he went to a grammar school but had to leave at age 14 to help support his family. A life long trade unionist but who, one one occasion, voted Tory because of the issue of grammar schools.
I attended a grammar school and am very thankful for that. The level of expectation was always high and the role models were all academic, independent women. My experiences in school really shaped me - and gave me great confidence.

I speak, also, as an ex teacher - who has taught in a very wide variety of schools: from 'challenging' inner city to elite Cotswold boarding school.

They still have grammar schools in Lincolnshire

I went to an all girls one in 1986 (only did 3 yrs there then moved to a comp in Scotland)
It was those 3 yrs at the grammar that gave me a good academic grounding, but also gave me aspiration & self belief & opened up my horizons

With hindsight, it was a mix of backgrounds there, but at the time I didn't notice - we were all the same in my mind at the time

There was no hothousing or anything back then, not sure about now though

Hey @rolaren Swoon and yes, I know he's gay!

I saw him in conversation with Lionel Shriver in October and I felt the same way! 😂

Thanks for the tip off about the talk with "Tits" is that also a Spectator event?

I think grammar schools were gone long before that - abolished in 1965 I think. Kent was one of the few places that hung onto them. It was my route out - back then no one I knew had coaching to get in so it was mix of kids of all classes & backgrounds

Well, yes! When I sat the 11-plus nobody really knew quite what they were sitting. It was a just a test we all did together in the classroom in the last year of primary school ( 1976). We knew it was important...but it was nothing like it is today.

There is still a grammar school in Liverpool, where I live, but now the difference is that people pay to have their children coached to pass the exam; and the exam is sat, not in the classroom, but in a high pressure situation, in school itself - at the weekend - with the parents waiting, anxiously, outside.

Over the last 10 years or so , the ethnic mix has become almost 50/50: White/ & Chinese/Arabic/Asian. Some immigrant populations are very ambitious for their children.

I once, as a teenager whose parents were away leaving me with the house to myself, brought a bloke home to stay for the weekend. 2 different sets of neighbors called my mum to let her know.

I know who has been parked outside my house, or anything out the ordinary has happened. I get told. And vice versus.

One of the problems I think is to do with gentrification and new build planning and how it means only certain types of people end up living in an area.

You don't mix with a vary of people.

I've found it interesting watching how some of the snobs here have a real issue with saying their children can't afford large houses but we don't want small houses here.

My former estate was a mix of small houses - some privately owned, some shared ownership and some full housing association surrounded by very large 5 bed executive homes.

Some locals made comments about it being a council estate and there being loads of trouble there. And opposed similar schemes on those grounds. Which was the biggest load of nonsense you can imagine.

The larger homes all made a point of not associating with the rest of the estate as if they were above them.

Off the estate I've since heard they have a certain reputation for being up themselves locally. Which amuses me.

All of a sudden now we've moved we are allowed to join this club socially.

DH and I have been amused.

We now live right next to a council estate which some on the next street who have lived here for nearly a decade don't appear to have noticed. Apparently there are no single mothers here.

I am actually very glad we live where we do. There's a good mix of people and one of the nice things is people looking out for each other in a way that wasn't there in the same way at the old estate.

The whole 'it takes a whole village to raise a child' mentality.

On the subject of somewheres, I think it is often overlooked that even if you are not wealthy, not everything is about economics. You still value your culture, local community social cohesion and the state of your immediate environment, urban and natural. If you see these things negatively affected by a policy that claims or even does make you a bit financially richer, it might still be a policy you'd rather do without.

Have finally reached the end!

I've been reading, watching linked vids & reading linked articles for over 2 & half hours now 😮

What an absolutely amazing thread

The Tony Benn speech, Douglas Murray & Tatiana McGrath creator were very prescient

Loads of thought provoking contributions from so many posters

Thank you 😊

I know lots of people who've moved out of London not just because holy shit the housing costs but because it doesn't feel like home to them in ways they struggle to explain. Which some lurking "FWR is terrible" git is going to read as being about race but it's not - London hasn't been a "white" city for a long time, and that's one of the things people used to like about it.

I could go on a rant about London and overseas investors being allowed to treat housing like buying shares in a company and what it does to a neighborhood to have half the houses or flats sitting empty because they're "investment opportunities" rather than homes now. That's one of the things I actually agreed with Corbyn on.

Prodigal “ second, it betrays exactly the sort of lack of respect for people who work with their hands or in other non office settings that's leading to people who would traditionally have voted Labour feeling like modern Labour doesn't really like them very much. ”

So much this.

Anyone else detest the term “unskilled”?

Socialism in some ways started to lose the plot, in my view, when they started to think the goal was not to represent the interests and ideas of workers, but to give them all middle class office jobs.

Oh yes. First, that's not possible and is never going to be, and second, it betrays exactly the sort of lack of respect for people who work with their hands or in other non office settings that's leading to people who would traditionally have voted Labour feeling like modern Labour doesn't really like them very much. It's so hard to put into words but once you've noticed it you can't miss it. Politics isn't just about a list of policies and tick boxes, people want to feel respected.

This “somewhere, anywhere, nowhere” is new to me.

But hey, I’m an Essex girl 🤷🏻‍♀️😂

In spite of living in London, I kind of want to reclaim my Essex roots because right now, London looks bonkers to me.

Does anyone on this thread remember the thread about London in the 90s? Happy days. I wonder if we can return to them.

I sort of dug deep wherever I lived, learning the language and having local friends rather than rely on a readily available expat community. I also acquired a couple of 'adoptive mums', one Jewish in New York, and one Muslim in Asia

Same, but my adoptive mums were Hispanic, Arab, and Indian. I feel like I'm constantly code switching. I'm not complaining and there are a lot of good things about how I grew up, but I think never fully having what the somewheres have makes me value it more in my family, in an odd sort of way. Kind of like having it part time/intermittently - you see just enough of it to understand why it's important to people. Took me a while to make the connection to Brexit, since most of Scotland voted to Remain.

BarbaraStrozzi, I've been all too aware of New Zealand's situation: I have farming family over there who really suffered when the UK joined the EU. They still talk about the struggle of those years. If they couldn't grow it, they didn't eat it. They think we've gone mad. I agree.

How funny ! And that computing came via the military again.

Binterested

That's funny, my grandfathers both came from working class backgrounds. Both eventually joined the middle classes, one going into the early computer work via the navy, while the other went from the navy into journalism.

Here's a New Statesman article by Maurice Glasman, founder of the Blue Labour tendency, in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum. It's incredibly prescient if you read it after participating on this thread. It's both a love letter to and a eulogy of the Labour Party, reading it today.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2016/11/things-dont-only-get-better-why-working-class-fell-out-love-labour

One argument I’ve read about social mobility in the 50s and 60s is that it owed less to grammar schools than to the emergence of new industries without a preexisting career structure. This is certainly true of my dad who is from very poor rural stock in an area with no work other than sheep farming. He got a job straight from school in the 50s with the only other local employer (the army - Salisbury Plain) and because he had maths o level they put him to work on The Computer . There followed a career in computing and a fast track to a life in London and NY. He had no qualifications or soft skills at 17 but he got in on day one and the industry carried him up and out of his tiny impoverished village.

I think the same was true of the media and creative industries which exploded at about the same time which is why so many of his contemporaries in the media appear to have the same story - John Humphries for example. Yes working class grammar school boy but actually it was the burgeoning industry that lifted him up.

Some times ‘knowing’ you lot feels like doing a sociology module (in a good way)

FE funding and policy is such a mess. Wave after wave of junior ministers (whichever party) with an incentive to make a name for themselves by shaking it up, but with almost total isolation from the effects of that shakeup, because neither they nor their wider social circle nor their Cabinet nor a majority of those who should be providing oversight, from media or from Parliament, have any direct connection with the people who use it.

Picked this post out of a sea of posts about FE because it mentions ministers specifically.

I agree with all that's been said re FE btw

I follow Robert Halfon (Tory MP) on Twitter & he's been championing FE, technical degrees & apprenticeships ferociously for a while now - he's so on the money with his ideas

I'm hoping there's a place for him in the February reshuffle because he's impressed me no end with his ideas & enthusiasm for the subject

Just been directed to this thread from another one so trying to catch up on it (haven't RTFT in entirety yet, soz 😳)

As far as I've got I've been agreeing emphatically with just about all of it, but these bits are the highlights for me so far:

"It has become the party of students and London. Its traditional base was always more Conservative than Labour realised. This election was the tipping point"

"last several years people remembered how they have been mocked, ignored, be shouted to shut up."

"The ft stated the biggest driver of a swing to the Conservatives in this election was the number of blue collar workers in the area."

I'm blue collar working class, family background on both sides is also blue collar

I'm not loyal to any party but def feel more of an affinity with Tories at the mo and absolutely wanted nothing to do with Corbyn's Labour - not just because of Corbyn, or because of Brexit, but because the Tory values of aspiration, equality of opportunity & a ' hand-up' where needed speak more to me than the politics of division & envy & levelling down that Corbyn espoused

And being told how I should think, Vote & act by 'people who know better than me what's best for me' (shouty left-wing right-side-of-history people) has really grated.

I think there used to be real barriers to a lot of social mobility that weren't just about inequality. In many places and times children were largely trained in their occupation starting in childhood, usually by their parents. Sometimes parents arranged another sort of training for children who seemed suited, or they entered the military, but mainly you carried on doing the things your family did.

Opening up all possibilities to all kids depends on some capacity to teach them the things they need to start down that path, so a lot of social infrastructure that has not been possible always.