Labour chairman backs private school abolition
THE Labour Party chairman is urging members and unions to support plans to abolish all private schools.
Ian Lavery, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, has endorsed a campaign declaring that fee-paying schools are “incompatible” with Labour’s pledge to promote “social justice” in the education system.
The MP, who is responsible for organising the party’s general election campaign, describes private schools as the origin of injustices in society and says he is proud to be supporting plans to “remove these pillars of elitism from our society”.
His intervention comes ahead of Labour’s annual conference, in a fortnight, at which delegates will be asked to adopt a motion committing the party to “integrat[ing] all private schools into the state sector”.
The plan includes withdrawing charitable status, and related tax breaks, from private institutions and redistributing “endowments, investments and properties” to schools across the country. The Independent Schools Council has warned that the plans would cost some local authorities tens of millions of pounds per year.
Mr Lavery is the most senior member of the party to back the policy, which is
being pushed by Labour Against Private Schools. It has also been endorsed by Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader. Writing on Facebook, Mr Lavery said: “I’m proud to be supporting Labour Against Private Schools, to ensure that we eradicate inequality in our society, starting with the origin of so many injustices; private schools.”
A motion due to be voted on at Labour’s conference in Brighton highlights figures showing that more than half of senior judges and junior ministers attended independent schools.
Meanwhile, Care England, which represents independent care providers, has warned that plans being considered by Labour to nationalise some homes would threaten “the future of social care”.
In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, Prof Martin Green, the body’s chief executive, claimed that the plans, demonstrate a “total misunderstanding of the health and social care system”.
Labour MP John Mann has said he is standing down to become the Government’s anti-Semitism tsar full time, telling The Sunday Times that Jeremy Corbyn had “given the green light to anti-Semites”.
Ian Lavery, chairman of the Labour Party, has endorsed an increasingly influential internal campaign to end private schools. He wrote that it is the duty of a fair government to “balance out opportunities” in order to “eradicate injustice”. Labour has come a long way since the Blair years, when it believed in expanding opportunity: now it wants to redistribute it. This is just another reason why this radical, neo-Marxist movement must be beaten at the next election.
Parents should have the right to make choices about how their children are educated. Private schools should be available for those who want them, as should the option to home school – and the state shouldn’t breathe down the necks of anyone who wishes to raise their children the way they see fit. Choice should be expanded in the state system to widen the opportunity of going to, say, an academy, a faith school or a grammar.
Private schools are an enormous boon to this country. They save the taxpayer money by taking children out of the state system; they generate billions; they employ thousands; and they promote subjects that are essential to our economic future. Across the world, independent schools are regarded as definitively British and part of our international brand. They are another reason why so many skilled people choose to come here and raise a family.
Labour is once again an extremist party and cannot be trusted in government. Any pro-Remain Tory tempted to vote Lib Dem in protest at the next election must remember that if the Lib Dems rise, they’ll either split the anti-Labour vote or get enough seats themselves to put Labour in power as a coalition. Labour will then return Britain to the class-war socialism of the Seventies.