Old Rage, page 9
In this instance, Rees-Mogg was right. Patronising, insensitive, condescending and appallingly derisive of what he would probably call the lower classes, or maybe, like Farage, ‘the little people’, but right. Those people obeyed the advice they had been given by supposed fire experts, and didn’t dream that the council and builders would have saved money by putting flammable cladding on their homes. They trusted and obeyed. Rees-Mogg was doubtless also right to open an investment fund in Dublin, to join others he had in the Cayman Islands and Singapore, whilst pontificating about the glories of Brexit. He will doubtless find it easier to organise his wealth when Britain becomes a tax haven. I am sure in all his business activities he obeys the law – as he interprets it. Just as in his political activities, anti-same-sex marriage, anti-abortion, he has chosen to obey his Roman Catholic Church. Like Boris Johnson, he has cultivated the jokey posh-boy image, lying with his legs up lounging on the bench during parliamentary debates, wearing and dressing his children in old-fashioned suits, and the public seem to love it. The upper and middle classes still have their hunting, their gentlemen’s clubs, their dinner and cocktail parties. Plus, let me not forget, their support of opera, ballet and paying my wages in the theatre.
It is less easy to explain to my grandchildren what working class actually is. The arrival of high-rise flats and decimated industries has changed the working-class culture of my childhood. In the old days, when I was young, there was a vivid lifestyle attached to many workers’ jobs. The unions ran educational events, the pits had the brass bands. The Welsh had their choirs. There were even traditional dances. In Scotland the Highland Fling, in Wales and the Northern mill areas clog-dancing, and in Ireland the intricate energetic step-dancing. There was Wakes Week, and May Day with its beauty queens, and Butlin’s holiday camp, and hop-picking. The church of different denominations was still important, with its Girl Guides and Boys’ Brigades. Most of those things have gone into decline. Morris dancing survives at some events. It may look faintly ludicrous to our modern eyes, but that, and dancing round a maypole, is probably all the tradition we have left in England if, as I fear, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland decide to leave us.
Time off from work used to be spent having one or two pints in the local pub or working men’s club on a Saturday night, playing darts, billiards and dominoes, or at whist drives or bingo. During the week you were too knackered to go out so you listened to the radio at home. Nowadays, abuse of alcohol is regarded as a badge of honour; getting excessively drunk counts as a good night out. Even better, also getting laid by someone you chose on a dating app. (I really am in old-fart country now.)
March 2019
I have spent a lovely two days visiting my youngest daughter’s elegant new house in Exeter, and my grandchildren’s new schools, one alongside the cathedral, the other a beautiful building set in spacious sports fields. I met dedicated teachers and eager, shiny-eyed, bushy-tailed students.
When Ellie Jane was eleven it had not occurred to me to send her to a private school. My mother, who left school at fourteen with only a rudimentary education – although her ability to recite all the kings and queens of England meant she had a much firmer grip on history than I did for all my grammar-school education – had somehow heard tell of St Paul’s, a venerable public school for girls near where we lived in Hammersmith. By that time I was earning a reasonable amount and she was incensed that I did not want to ‘do the best’ for my daughter by sending her there. She pointed out that, despite my scholarship, she and my father had worked their arses off to support me through school, with all its uniforms, clubs, books and hockey sticks. They had the working-class ethos of wanting a child to ‘better herself’. She declared that ‘anyone who was anyone’ in the world had been to a posh school. That I would be stunting a bright child’s growth by sending her to the local comprehensive, which was at that time notoriously badly run. Eventually I succumbed and two of my daughters went to posh schools, Bedales, Westminster and St Paul’s. Abigail, guided by her much more principled biological mother Sally, went to one of the best schools in London at that time, Pimlico Comprehensive.
I have always felt hypocritical about it. I try to assuage my guilt by now working in state schools with a scheme to help kids who are falling behind, but people like me, middle class now whether I admit it or not, who take our children out of the state system are doing it harm. Now I see my daughters are facing the same dilemma with their children. Abigail’s two girls went to state schools in North London, because they are excellent. My other two daughters do not pursue that route, not because they want their kids to go to a posh school, but because they judge the state schools in their area to be up against impossible odds of overcrowding and understaffing. The standard of your local school is the luck of the draw, largely dependent on the endurance and dedication of the teachers. I have visited many schools, mainly primaries, all over England, and the best, in every way, were often in deprived areas, but driven to excellence by the head and their staff, as well as some local board members.
Primary education in this country seems better than secondary. All my children and grandchildren went to excellent state primaries; indeed Joanna was chairperson of the governors of their St Ives school. My grandson Jack, to my enormous pride, has started training to be a primary teacher.
It would be foolish to deny that the mere 7 per cent of the population who go to private schools do better than state alumni – if your definition of ‘better’ is in terms of career prospects rather than experiencing diversity. Many more of them go to Russell Group universities, get top jobs in government, journalism, the BBC, the city – you name it, they’ve cracked it. They have a confidence, bordering on arrogance, that opens doors. They do not have the lack of belief in themselves that meant that I, even with a grammar-school education, did not believe that people like me wrote books, until I was eventually persuaded to try when I was seventy. They are led to appreciate and regard as their right the beautiful surroundings of their schools, whereas most state schools are ugly. State-school playing fields were sold off by Margaret Thatcher, and at present I see in the schools I visit a shameful dilapidation. The independent schools put an emphasis on the arts and music, usually having purpose-built theatres and studios, whereas in state schools anything not likely to lead to a job is being cut from the curriculum. No mind is being paid to a future where jobs will be taken over by robots and culture can fill the chasm that will be caused by the inactivity of brain and body that this revolution will provoke. There is a huge divide in our country, which Brexit has exposed, and the education system has contributed to it.
I am involved in Gallions, a state primary in London’s Tower Hamlets that uses music as the basis of its work. It has battled to survive against the authorities’ suspicion of its approach and lack of finance. Every child has an instrument and plays in one of the several orchestras and sings in a choir, and many lessons bring music into the learning process. Attainment and behaviour have improved radically across the board. It is a deprived area and many of the children have difficult home lives, not least the refugees and the other 67 per cent for whom English is not their first language, but the school bursts with energy and invention inspired by its grossly underpaid and overworked staff.
For some reason Eton decided to send a few of its pupils to Gallions, to see how the other half – or, actually, the other 93 per cent – live, and they in turn invited the Gallions children to visit the college. The coach ride to Windsor was exciting enough for the kids, most of whom had never left their neighbourhood, and the ancient splendours of Eton reduced them to silent disbelief. This was Wonderland. I was moved to tears as the children, resplendent in new red jumpers, walked nervously onto the stage of the majestic concert hall, where their pink-haired teacher led them into their performance. Those tears were at the desperate injustice of their lives compared to those of their hosts. The well-meaning wife of one of the Eton staff said to me, ‘Isn’t it wonderful for these children to be shown something to aspire to?’
She got the full blast of my despair.
‘Do you seriously think that any of these kids stand a hope in hell of achieving any of the privileges of your boys?’
‘Well, we have bursaries.’
‘And where would the money come from for the tutors needed to get them up to your entrance standards?’
Eton and my grandchildren’s schools in Exeter are wonderful. I would not want them abolished. I just want everyone to have access to that quality of education. It is a pity that the reforming Labour government of 1945 didn’t take them over when they saw the country was open to radical change; if they had done, the comprehensive system would have worked better – everyone educated together, no matter what their background, with the child learning to be a brilliant plumber valued as much as the one doing classics, all eating in the same canteen and playing the same sports, learning to respect and understand each other. The present proliferation of different types of schools – church, free school, academy, whatever – do nothing to unite us.
I get a little tired of the sneering about the middle class, the metropolitan elite. I am guilty of this too when I bang on about my working-class roots. In every primary school in which I have been involved, it is the middle-class parents who do most of the organising of activities like fetes, sports days, storytelling and nowadays, shamefully, raising money for books and other basics that the schools can’t afford. Sadly, many of these proactive people, if they can afford it, transfer to the private sector when the children are older, if the choice of good schools in their areas is limited.
I want governments of all colours to consult teachers at the coalface as to how our education should operate, rather than teachers having new systems frequently imposed on them by people who do not know the problems. Teachers are too often called upon to be social workers as well. Many believe that schools should have a qualified staff member on the team specifically to deal with the complex family and mental health problems with which the teaching staff are increasingly burdened.
I was once bewailing my lack of educated, intellectual prowess to a high-flying lover, and he replied that I was streetwise, and that was better. At the time I thought that he, with his private-school/Oxbridge credentials, was being condescending, and probably referring to my sexual lack of propriety. But he had a point. Maybe the supreme self-confidence that I see in those who have attended private schools, usually leading also to a Russell Group university education, has its drawbacks. Was it perhaps the hubris that comes from an Eton education that led David Cameron to believe the referendum would go his way? He is, I think, not a bad man. Much as I dislike their views and attitudes, neither, I suppose, are Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson. Even Farage, that poseur as a man of the people, who actually went to the distinguished Dulwich College and worked in the City, must, I suppose, sincerely believe in his mission to restore us to a mythical bygone age of beer-drinking and Little England. They have all been taught in their excellent schools to believe in public service, duty and compassion for lesser mortals. What they disastrously lack is a real, gut, first-hand understanding of what it is like to be poor, ignored and excluded. The teacher’s wife at Eton really believed that, if you want something enough, you can work hard and get it. She had no conception of the desperate isolation of poverty.
On the drive home from Eton, my grandchild, Lola, who came with me on the trip, took me to task about my behaviour with the teacher’s wife. She pointed out that the Eton boys had been kind and solicitous towards the East End youngsters, providing a delicious cream tea and lots of fun. The music scholars had not been snooty when the youngsters started to clap and stomp along with their exquisite rendering of Vivaldi.
‘Yes,’ I snarled, ‘they are probably now all having a nice drink feeling well pleased that they have done something to merit their school’s charity status.’
This painful ambiguity that I feel about the education of my family as opposed to the elimination of privilege in our society troubled me as I travelled back from Exeter. My grandchildren will enjoy the swimming pool, library, sports facilities and, above all, well-paid, enthusiastic teachers, one of whom explained that she had deserted the state sector as she no longer found it possible to teach properly in it. Charlie and Alfie were already experiencing the joy of learning new things, and I am so pleased that they will have this excellent start in life. But what of the rest? The ones who live where the local schools are failing – overcrowded, lacking facilities, with disillusioned staff. Whose parents can’t afford to send them anywhere else and maybe are not well enough educated themselves to help them with their homework.
If the Tories have their way they will bring back more grammar schools for the academically gifted. But all children are gifted in some way and should have their particular skills recognised and valued. I well remember when my headmistress read out the names of the five girls, I think it was, out of a class of fifty, who had obtained scholarships to the grammar school. (This was just before the 1944 Education Act that made it free for everyone.) The rest knew that they were condemned to attend the awful secondary modern, or the inferior technical school. I met a girl from my old school at a book festival recently, who told me that her whole life had been blighted by that eleven-year-old branding of her as a failure. I know from the work I do with young people that one of the most important things they need is respect. For others and, above all, themselves.
I had booked my return ticket to Exeter online but omitted to reserve a seat, so I phoned to do so. I was told that there were no seats.
‘But I have a ticket.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you telling me that I will have to stand?’
‘Well, there may be one or two seats not booked.’
Not wishing to probe the mysteries of the running of our railways, I decided to change to a later train on which I could still book a seat. As instructed, I picked up a ticket for the seat reservation and was assured that this was all I needed. Oh no. Travelling by train is not that simple. When I arrived at Paddington, my ticket would not open the barrier, so I asked a crumpled official to help me and he said it wasn’t a ticket, just a seat reservation, and he couldn’t let me through. I tried to explain the saga of my booking experience but he was convinced that I was cheating the railways: how could he be sure I hadn’t travelled back the day before too, as my original booking said? He would not accept that this would have been quite a lot of travelling for an old girl, or that it was unlikely that they would have issued me a seat reservation if I had no ticket. By now a crowd was watching my efforts to persuade this obstinate jobsworth. That was when I heard myself turn into a supercilious grande dame, despite my lack of public-school education.
‘Oh, come on, darling. Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not your darling. And I’m not silly,’ he quite rightly snarled, detecting my lack of respect.
My exasperation was at his bloody obstinacy, his mindless sticking to the rules rather than listening to reason, his power to impose his misguided judgement on me. I nearly said (but thank goodness didn’t), ‘I bet you voted Leave.’
By this time the crowd was hoping that I would be arrested. After a long altercation he summoned two colleagues and another official in a less crumpled uniform came along, as it happened a woman of colour, heard my tale and opened the barrier.
My rude awakening from the joys of academe I had enjoyed in Exeter was not over. My taxi driver turned out to be a black-cab cartoon character.
‘We want our country back.’
‘Er . . .’
‘We are a great country.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘Why don’t they get on with it?’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘They should get that Trump over here. He’d sort out the bloody Germans. And get rid of all these bloody foreigners. Send them back where they come from.’
I tried to reason with him but he was in his own world of fury and disillusion.
When we arrived at my house, I offered him an over-large tip. Was I asserting some kind of superiority, some condescension?
For a minute he hesitated. Then he took it. A Brechtian moment.
We were both diminished.
May 2019
The delightful musical by Tim Firth I am appearing in in Chichester has been a huge success and everyone was convinced it would ‘go in’, as we say, meaning transfer to the West End of London. It won’t and the young cast – well, younger than me, everyone is – are desolate. Particularly because, when you are away from home, the company becomes even closer. The show is called This Is My Family and we really have been for a time, together at night, and on day trips, eating and drinking, mainly drinking, ensemble. They have been hugely supportive of this old bird, especially after I had what could have been a disastrous accident.
I woke up in my digs one night and, probably confused by the unfamiliar layout of the new flat I was staying in, fell in the bathroom and hit my head on the edge of the shower. Stunned, I found myself sitting on the floor, blood pouring from my head. I tried to stem the flow with towels but eventually rang 999. I can’t remember much about what followed, except that the paramedics were super-efficient and in no time I was in the local hospital having ten stitches put into my scalp. I insisted on leaving as I had a matinee that day, and we had no understudies.
When I got back to the flat my bathroom looked like a crime scene, with blood everywhere, handprints up the wall and bloody towels soaking in the bath. Our director, Daniel Evans, came round, took one look, gulped and said, ‘We’ve got to cancel the performance.’
I knew the season was sold out so if we cancelled the audience would not be able to rebook. In the past I have performed with broken bones and broken heart, and so, to the alarm of my fellow actors, on I went, blood still dripping down my forehead from under my wig. Their faces were ashen, and I am sure they would have much preferred an afternoon off. Absurd behaviour on my part, when nowadays you can get a matinee off to attend a friend’s wedding. Once I remember a John Lewis salesperson thinking I was being obstructive when I told him I could not receive a delivery on a matinee day. ‘Take an afternoon off, that’s what people do,’ he said. I asked what he would think if he went to the theatre and the tannoy announced, ‘Ms Hancock will not be appearing today as she is awaiting the delivery of a new oven.’ His shrug showed that he would not give a damn. Fair enough. But old habits die hard.
