A Canterbury Tale
By DAVID WATT '
lT being New Year, a time of high morality and high TAM ratings, we proudly present a cautionary television tale from the cradle of English Christianity. On the morning of Monday, December 16, Councillor E. C. F. Brown, Con- servative organiser for the Canterbury Parlia- mentary Division and, incidentally, one of the most powerful members of the Canterbury Council, is sitting in his pleasant eighteenth- century headquarters thinking no evil. The telephone rings. It is the head of the radio and television department at the Conservative Central Office in London demanding that he should organise facilities for a film unit to visit a repre- sentative group of Canterbury schools tomorrow with the object of making part of a political TV film on Life in Britain Today. Mr. Brown being a man of forceful and picturesque expression has a word to describe the shortness of the notice, but being also highly efficient says he will see what he can do for Wednesday or possibly Thursday (the last day of school term).
Now it happens that the chairman of the Can- terbury Education Committee, Alderman S. H. Jennings, is not only a colleague of Mr. Brown's on the Council and a member of his Conservative Association but also has the office of his print- ing works two doors down the street. Nothing was easier, therefore, than for Mr. Brown to slip down the road forthwith and make his request. Alderman Jennings complied on the spot and the official in charge of the city's education department was instructed to ring up the heads of four schools, one primary, one secondary modern, one technical (girls) and one grammar school (boys), and 'inform' them of the decision. None of these worthies raised any objections or voiced any scruples and it was agreed accordingly that Mr. Jeremy Murray-Brown, the free-lance TV director (ex-Panorama) chosen by the Central Office for the job, was to appear on Wednesday with a scratch team of technicians and set to work.
Next morning the trouble began. Miss Blackith, the headmistress of the girls' technical school found to her astonishment that many of her staff had no wish to star in a party political broadcast and, even .worse, one staff member whose child is actually at the school confidently predicted that other parents would be equally outraged. Miss Blackith hastily rang the Educa- tion Department with demands for an assurance that the girls would not be photographed in their school blazers or their faces shown.
Meanwhile Mr. Tyler, the headmaster of the secondary modern school, was having his own troubles. A meeting of senior staff had to be called and further doubts were expressed about the propriety of mixing teaching with politics. Mr. Tyler was finally persuaded to make an application to Mr. Murray-Brown and returned with the news that at his school only outside shots would be taken.
By this time Mr. Murray-Brown's programme might have been looking like the schedule for a , documentary on Borstals but for the glowing prospect of full co-operation at the Simon Lang- ton Grammar School, a splendid glass and steel advertisement for Conservative planning, finished only in 1959. Mr. Christopher Rieu, the head- master, had long since been marked down by the ever-watchful local Conservatives as a 'Socialist' on the ground that he had actually dared to sign a letter of protest at the time of Suez, and they were all the more surprised and delighted to find him so helpful. To be sure, he had rung up Alderman Jennings on Tuesday morning and told him that his staff were worried but Mr. Jennings, who is also by strange coincidence Chairman of the Simon Langton Governors, had given him no encouragement at all and when Mr. Rieu had discussed the project on the 'phone with Mr. Murray-Brown he had made none of the frivolous difficulties of the other establish- ments.
Alas, the local establishment reckoned without the peculiar characteristics of Mr. Ricu's regime which is deliberately, 'if somewhat waywardly permissive. They might have guessed, perhaps, that the responsibility in this case would be placed by the headmaster where, in his opinion, it belonged—on the boys themselves. Mr. Rieu told the school at assembly on Wednesday, amid melodramatic boos and hisses from his audience, that the Conservatives would be arriving during the course of the morning and that no one need be photographed if her or his parents objected. Notwithstanding Mr. Rieu's personal refusal to be filmed and the embar- rassing presence of the Daily Herald which had been tipped off by a member of the technical school's staff, Mr. Murray-Brown and his merry men didn't do badly at first. They took some en- trancing pictures of boys going up and down stairs and after some argument were given the grudging permission of the science staff to film some boys doing experiments (minus masters). But after this things got out of hand. Slogans such as 'Vote Labour' and `Fascism is the only way' appeared magically on the windows. The school orchestra, summoned in the absence of the usual conductor to perform under the baton of Mr. Murray-Brown himself, simply downed instruments.
By lunchtime it was clear that the event which was to crown the proceedings could not take place. The athletic Mr. Christopher Chataway, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Education, was due during the afternoon to be filmed watching with telegenic enthusiasm a soc- cer match between masters and boys. It was too late to put him off for he had punctually caught the 12.35 from Victoria, so Mr. Murray-Brown was forced to make a hurried foray to Canter- bury station. Mr. Chataway was seen by admiring locals descending from the train and, after earnest consultation with a harried-looking individual, ascending again into a'first-class com- partment of the next up-train. Mr. Murray- Brown returned to the school with the sad news that Mr. Chataway had been detained by de- partmental duties. Half an hour later he and his crew had beaten their final retreat and were no more seen.
There all
. were compensations, no doubt, for a concerned. The boys of the Simon Langton had had a memorable treat. Mrs. Rieu's principles were vindicated, after a fashion, by the highly sensible public reactions of his senior pupils. Mr. Jennings had the satisfaction of having his actions endorsed retrospectively by the Educa- tion Committee. The Central Office secured a hundred feet or so of anodyne rubbish. Coun- cillor Brown, a philosopher, no doubt derived some satisfaction from having been by-passed by the Central Office.as soon as he had done his bit. The citizens of Canterbury had seen Mr. Chataway briefly in the flesh and had an absorb- ing topic of conversation over Christmas.
Motives should play a large part in every good cautionary tale and I any happy to say that they are as simple as one could wish. The Central Office are in a hurry to build up their' armoury for the election campaign. No doubt they picked Canterbury partly because its Council is Con- servative to a man but they went, however hastily, through the correct procedures and had permission from the correct authorities. Mr. Jennings, besides being Conservative, is a fanatical local patriot justly proud of his Com- mittee's achievements and the fact that all Can- terbury children at secondary schools are housed in new buildings. All the city fathers are obsessed by the knowledge that Canterbury's autonomous status as a county borough (the smallest in Eng- land) is in danger and Mr. Jennings is not the only one to think that in advance of next year's review by the Boundary Commission any pub- licity for Canterbury is good publicity. The school heads were anxious to remain on friendly terms with the local authority and were unwilling to test out the dangerous ground that lies be- tween a headmaster and his employers.
It will be observed, however, that none of those who took or had the power to take the de- cisions appear to have given the slightest thought to the fundamental question about politics and teaching until it was too late, and if the teachers and children hadn't raised it themselves no doubt the incident would have passed off as quietly as when the Labour Party did much the same in Bristol some while ago. Now, of course, the cat is out of the bag and similar happenings in future will be liable to raise a howl of contro- versy. The politicians will maintain, as they have in Canterbury, that any political party is entitled to turn its achievements into electoral assets by propaganda and it is no more improper for Con- servative cameras to peep into the schools built under the present Government than it would be for Labour cameras to show hospitals function- ing under the Health Service which that party created.
There may even be other points of view. Mr. Rieu wanted, and to judge from his letter in The Times on Wednesday, still wants, to have it both ways. Propaganda film-makers arc to be admitted to schools as of right; the pupils are to be allowed, as of right, to evade them. Ex- perience has now shown which side, under these circumstances, is likely to win.
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