Nine reasons to like Michael Gove

So farewell then, Michael Gove, reshuffled from the Department of Education to become government Chief Whip. I hope The Spectator’s James Forsyth is wrong in arguing that ‘the move is a big blow to the education reform agenda’, and that his colleague Isabel Hardman is more accurate when she writes:

Left-wing teachers who opposed Gove’s reforming agenda might be celebrating, but it is absurd to suggest that his move to chief whip – itself a big job – is a ‘scalp’ for the unions. Gove’s reforms have already been enacted. He has got everything done that he wanted. He has succeeded, and can move on.

I make no secret of the fact that I’m a fan of Michael Gove. I get irritated at the avalanche of abuse directed at him, and at what Frank Furedi correctly identifies as ‘Govephobia’, the way that expressing hatred of Gove ‘works as a kind of password that grants one entry into the inner circle of polite society’, a ritualised way of ‘establishing one’s moral distance from the modern personification of evil’. As anyone who works in the sector will be aware, this is particularly true of educators, at whatever level:

It’s as if Govephobia now provides many teachers and educators with a kind of corporate identity. The very mention of Gove’s name in a meeting is guaranteed to raise a collective smirk and the knowing shaking of heads. Saying something awful about Gove provides a person with the shining moral status that comes with being on ‘the right side’. Not only do you have permission to despise Gove – you are expected to express your emotions publicly whenever you can.

Of course, implacable hostility towards individuals who symbolise everything you dislike in the opposing party is not unusual in the tribal world of British politics, and it helps to have a single syllable surname that fits easily on a placard and can be spat out with appropriate venom on demos. (Mind you, the Left’s dislike of Tories like Gove is as nothing compared to the hatred they reserve for one of their own who is perceived to have betrayed the true gospel: think of the malice with which they utter that other single-syllable name – ‘Blair’.) 

But it’s when people who should know better join in with the ritual Gove abuse that I get particularly annoyed. I’m talking about those who, like me, are passionate about education and about extending educational opportunity, but for some reason see Michael Gove, who is equally passionate about these things, as an enemy rather than a kindred spirit. I’m not talking here about legitimate criticisms of Gove’s policies, some of which I share, but about sweeping dismissals of his entire reform agenda and often willful and ignorant misunderstandings of his intentions. In this category I would place those who seem to think Gove’s aim is to shore up educational privilege and deny access to learning to the poorest in society – when the opposite is actually true. It’s as if some people, blinded and deafened by a tribal dislike of everything Tory, are unable to see what’s in front of their eyes or to hear what the man is actually saying.

So, rather than getting into further endless and mostly pointless arguments on Facebook and Twitter, I thought I’d share with you nine reasons why I like Michael Gove:

(1) 

He has unashamedly continued the reform agenda set in motion by Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis. Now, when New Labour were in power, I was often critical of aspects of their educational policy. I thought the emphasis on choice was a chimera when what most parents, including me, really wanted was the guarantee of a good, local school. However, I’ve changed my mind and have come to believe, with Michael Gove, that real reform was not going to occur – standards and aspirations for all children were not going to be substantially raised – while local authorities maintained their monopolistic stranglehold on state education, and that freeing schools from LEA control – whether by converting them to academies, or founding new ‘free’ schools – was perhaps the best way forward.

(2) 

More generally, Michael Gove is an admirer of Tony Blair, and has said that he regards Blair’s memoir A Journey as a kind of manual for government. I know this won’t endear him to those on the Left who still regard Blair as a traitor to the good old cause (rather than the most popular Labour prime minister ever, the man who introduced the minimum wage, devolution, increased education and health spending exponentially, brought peace to Northern Ireland, freed Sierra Leone and Kosovo, etc…..), but still…

(3) 

Gove is a passionate opponent of the knowledge-lite leveling-down low-aspiration culture that has gripped the education sector for the past quarter of a century, and that has become entrenched in the teacher training colleges, teaching unions and the Department of Education. Instead, he believes in raising educational standards for all children, not just the privileged, and in extending educational opportunities, as a means of improving social mobility and overcoming inequality.

(4) 

Unlike some of the philistines and utilitarians who have filled the post of Education Secretary, Gove actually believes in the value of education for its own sake. Remember his brave defence of teaching ‘French lesbian poetry’ in response to the Gradgrindian businessman who scoffed at the uselessness of the humanities? He reads books too – proper books – including the kind of books people on the Left like to read: for example, he’s been known to quote from Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes and Raphael Samuel’s The Lost World of British Communism (see the video at the end of this post). 

(5)

As the above shows, this is a man who understands the Left. I think I read that he supported Labour as an undergraduate. Indeed, some would argue that, in other times, he would have been a natural Labour politician.

(6) 

Moving away from education, Michael Gove has written, in Celsius 7/7, one of the best books you’ll come across on terrorism, the Middle East, and the West’s response. He’s also on the Council of the Henry Jackson Society, and anti-totalitarian leftists and liberals should find in him a natural and sympathetic ally. That’s why some of us think he would make an excellent foreign secretary.

(7) 

He’s genuinely funny. I know some like to mock his pratfalls, his odd facial expressions and, most recently, his love of rap, but they miss the point: he’s sending himself up. This is a politician who most definitely can laugh at himself. The first time I saw him face-to-face was in a hotel corridor, engaged in a balloon fight with one of his young children. Which brings me on to:

(8)

He’s a nice guy. OK, not a reason to like his politics, but I thought I’d include it anyway. The above mentioned encounter took place when we found ourselves two doors along from the Gove family in a Portuguese hotel a few years ago. He wasn’t so well known then, and I hadn’t really been following his career until that point, so I didn't pluck up the courage to speak to him. But I had the opportunity to observe him over a number of days, at the next table in the restaurant, reading by the pool (we were reading the same Lisbon-based thriller,) and he came across as an affable and likeable family man.

(9) 

And following on from the above – he’s also a Lusophile. As he once said, a love of Portugal is the only thing he has in common with George Galloway. Me too.

A number of Gove's qualities are on display in this very civilised discussion with David Aaronovitch, who makes an ideal interlocutor. Pity the same can't be said for the people asking questions at the end, who respond to Gove's thoughtful attempts to reach out to his left-leaning education sector audience with crass political pointscoring. I've no doubt in my mind who has the better arguments.

Moving the goalposts

This was the week that my union, the University and College Union, responded to criticisms that its obsession with Israel was effectively anti-Semitic - by trying to change the definition of anti-Semitism. As Eve Garrard writes in an excellent post over at Norm’s blog:

This Orwellian resolution of political disputes by way of linguistic fiat is particularly contemptible in an academics' union, since academics are supposed to have some knowledge of how argument works, and how intellectually empty it is to support an argument by distorting the meanings of the terms you use.  

Ben Gidley, in a long and thoughtful piece at the Dissent blog, agrees:

As an academic who studies racism, I find it bizarre that my union cannot accept that there is even the faintest possibility that institutional racism might exist in our own ranks, even after a series of clearly documented incidents and a shocking number of resignations by Jewish members who perceive it as such. This motion, if passed, will in fact legitimate racism in the union and stop any allegation of anti-Semitism—in debates or in the workplace—from being taken seriously.  

And Ben provides this pithy summary: ‘By alleging that Jews are merely crying anti-Semitism to stop people talking about Israel, the UCU leadership cries Israel to stop people talking about anti-Semitism.’ Over at LabourList, Rob Marchant adds: ‘the subtext is crystal clear: anti-Semitism is often not genuine and raised merely to win arguments as matter of bad faith.’ Rob sees the UCU motion as worrying evidence of a wider trend:

We spend a lot of time rightly criticising the white racists of the BNP and the EDL. But it’s high time we confronted those who condone those other kinds of racism around us. Before they really start to hurt the credibility, and the ethos, of the whole Labour movement.

Or before decent leftists, and union members, give up on the UCU completely, as some have already done - like Goldsmiths historian Ariel Hessayon who announced his resignation from the union today:

For my own part, I am an historian whose research interests and writings include studies of attitudes towards Jews and secret Jews in early modern England.  I have also looked at the ways in which modern histories of Jews and antisemitism reflect the present day concerns of their authors.  Based on my professional expertise, I have no doubt that the politically motivated rejection of the EUMC working definition has antisemitic implications.  

Accordingly, I cannot in good conscience remain a member of a union that countenances the antics of such extremists; fanatics who seem at best oblivious and at worst disdainful of the consequences of their single-minded obsession: Israel.

Meanwhile, from north of the border comes news that West Dunbartonshire Council has decided to ban books by Israeli authors from its libraries. Like the campaign against Ahava, this boycott has some pretty nasty historical overtones: after all, who were the last people to close down Jewish shops and ban books by Jewish authors?

And finally, on a similar note, I was angered and saddened by this report on the peddling of virulent anti-Israel propaganda by ‘progressive’ Christian groups such as Pax Christi (of which I was once, in a half-remembered life, a member). The one-sidedness of ‘liberal’ Christians in their response to the Israel-Palestine conflict is something I’ve written about before and plan to analyse more fully in a forthcoming post.

A sad day for union democracy and academic freedom

Back in February I urged UCU members to vote for candidates for election to the union's National Executive Committee who would stand up to the pro-boycott far left. Last week, Jon Pike, chair of Engage and elected NEC member, described attempts by the SWP/UCU Left to block calls for a ballot of members before any boycott is introduced. Now, sadly, Jon has resigned from the committee, in response to its resolution in support of an academic boycott of Israel, in defiance of the majority of the union's members. In his letter of resignation, Jon writes:

Whether or not such resolutions can be implemented, or have been declared void, their adoption is a violation of the democratic principle that the union ought to represent its membership.

It will be said that the UCU, on behalf of its membership, and on behalf of the academic community in Britain, would wish to push for an academic boycott of Israel, but is prevented from doing so by legal means.

This claim is entirely false. The members have not supported such a proposal, and they have not been asked their views.

In their reaction to Jon's resignation, Norman Geras and Eve Gerrard speak for many:

Jon's presence on the executive council meant that there was a courageous voice trying to bring the union to an understanding of what it was doing, and how ruinous for union values, and for the membership, its trajectory was and is. That voice is now gone from the NEC, which is even more than before given over to the pernicious ideology of the SWP and its sympathizers, who are utterly unrepresentative of the Union membership and of academics more broadly.

Honour to Jon, who has fought with great resilience and intelligence for the preservation of democracy, academic freedom and anti-racism in the union; dismay and a sense of chill for academics - Jewish and others - who share those values; yet deeper discredit for the union itself, whose overwhelming and febrile obsessions about Israel and 'Zionists' may now be irremediable.

Last chance to vote for change at UCU

If you're a member of the University and College Union, you've only got a few days left in which to register your vote in the election for members of the National Executive Committee. Once again, if you want to end the dominance of the pro-boycott far left, and see genuine representation of the membership in the formation of policy, then please give your support to the candidates recommended here.

If you're in the South, you might want to consider voting for Dennis Hayes, founder of Academics for Academic Freedom, campaigner for free expression and outspoken opponent of the proposed boycott of Israeli universities. Dennis has also written about the 'therapeutic turn' in education, which I discussed here.

Any doubts about the need for a change in direction at UCU can be laid to rest by visiting its campaigns page. Naturally, there are some worthy and uncontentious names among the organisations supported by the union. But supporters of academic freedom might wonder how a higher education union, which ought to be fighting for freedom and pluralism in education, can endorse the pro-Castro Cuba Solidarity Campaign, or Hands Off Venezuela, which gives 'full support' to the Bolivarian revolution of demagogue Hugo Chavez. The UCU is also affiliated to the mis-named Stop the War Coalition, which recently sent a delegate to a pro-Hezbollah 'anti-imperialist' conference in Beirut.

To borrow a phrase: not in my name.

UCU elections

If you're a member of the UCU, and you're fed up with the pro-boycott SWP 'left' dominating the union, then follow this link and consider voting for the candidates on the list in the NEC election. We want change...