More of the same? New Labour, the Coalition and education: markets, localism and social justice

Abstract

This paper seeks to draw out the continuities and ruptures in current English education policy. In particular it considers the relationship between Coalition policy rhetoric and that of the Labour Party. Although the paper is concerned with the British and more specifically English context, it examines a range of questions that move beyond that particular setting. It explores the way in which we can understand crisis and the manner in which this informs policy discussion and the re-ordering of neo-liberalism. In conclusion, it argues that the presumed radicalism of the Labour Party can only take us so far, and that an examination of policy for its progressive and radical possibilities, whatever their origins, is an important site of struggle.

Keywords:

• New Labour
• Coalition
• education policy

Notes

1. In May 2010 following the British general election and a hung result, a Coalition government was formed between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. David Cameron (Conservative) became the prime minister with Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat) becoming his deputy.

2. The Coalition government now claims the reduction in the number of quangos is rather more about transparency and accountability than cost saving (BBC 2010b).

3. The poverty site provides data that indicates that a quarter of workers earning less than £7 per hour work in the public sector (UK). (see The Poverty Site n.d)

4. In his inaugural speech as leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband (2010a) stated, “There will be cuts, and there would have been if we had been in government. Some of them will be painful, and would have been if we were in government. I won’t oppose every cut the Coalition proposes. There will be some things the Coalition does that we won’t like as a party but we will have to support.”

5. The recent unrest in France over Sarkozy’s welfare and pension reforms could prefigure the development of a counter hegemonic movement (BBC 2010c), as could those in Egypt and Tunisia reflect the development of counter hegemonic popular movements with transformative potential (BBC 2011b).

6. “Responsible trade unions are part of a civilised society, every democratic country recognises that. But all of us in this movement bear a heavy responsibility. We want to win an argument about the danger this Coalition government poses to our economy and our society. To do so we must understand the lessons of our own history too. We need to win the public to our cause and what we must avoid at all costs is alienating them and adding to the book of historic union failures. That is why I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes.” (Miliband 2010a)

7. Johnson and Steinberg provide a description of Gramsci’s (1971) conceptualisation of transformism in the context of Blairism which could be applied to the Cameronite project. They write, “Transformism does not, however, develop or ‘educate’ these currents, does not ‘bring out the best of them’, as it were. It does not base itself within them. Rather it seeks to contain and control popular forces from outside. This may involve making real concessions, but always within the limits of existing social arrangements. At this more ‘structural’ level, involving socio-economic relations and whole ways of life, passive revolution is an attempt to solve structural problems within the terms of existing structures. An example today might be trying to solve environmental problems without curtailing the production of commodities or contesting the power of big corporations.” (2004, 13)

8. Marx and Engels write, “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society… Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguished the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all newly-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air.” [(1848) 1973, 38]