Faith, hope and chicanery
Martin Samuel
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-2429216,00.html
The capitulation to the Catholic vote is a step further on the
dangerous road to intolerance
"THEY DO NOT teach about Ludwig Kaas in schools these days. A footnote
in history, at best. Born Trier 1881, died Rome 1952, German priest
and politician, canon of the cathedral of St Peter, leader of the
Catholic Centre Party, voted for and was instrumental in the creation
of a Nazi dictatorship led by Adolf Hitler in 1933. Sorry? That last
bit? Well, there is the funny thing. These footnote guys turn out to
be pretty important once you delve into the details.
Hitler did not seize power or take power or any of those verbs we are
taught that imply some unstoppable show of strength. He passed a Bill,
the Enabling Act, supported by 441 of 647 members of the Reichstag,
only 288 of whom were National Socialists. As Hitler needed a two
thirds majority to achieve totalitarian power and all the Social
Democrats that were not in hiding, in prison or dead voted against
him, without the support of the Catholic Centre Party he would barely
have been able to govern, let alone dictate; which is where Kaas came
in. He persuaded his party to vote with Hitler on a law that
effectively dissolved democracy in Germany and paved the road to the
death camps. And guess what he got in return? Faith schools. Kaas
received a guarantee that respected the liberty of the Catholic Church
and its involvement in the fields of education, schooling and culture.
To win Catholic support, Hitler cut a deal. Much as our own Government
did last week.
Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, left school without
qualifications, so is probably not familiar with the machinations of
Kaas and this is no attempt to compare histories. What has not
changed, though, is the power of the Catholic vote, which Johnson
would acknowledge, having been forced to cave in to it swiftly over
his plan to make church schools accept 25 per cent of pupils from
outside the faith.
Johnson’s volte-face when confronted with the two-million-strong
Catholic community in Britain was so great that his new amendment, as
well as abandoning the concept of quotas, will now give faith schools
greater freedom to discriminate on grounds of religion when employing
support staff and teachers, a privilege that explodes the lie such
publicly funded institutions are not rooted in exclusionism. This is
the type of education the Prime Minister chose for his children,
remember.
The Blairs are a typical couple because, as with most aspiring
parents, faith was not the half of it. Tony and Cherie selected an
out-of-catchment Catholic school, the London Oratory, for their
offspring, but it would seem not purely for religious reasons. At the
time they were living in Richmond Crescent, London, N1. The London
Oratory is in Seagrave Road, London SW6. It is hard to assess for
certain how many Catholic schools lie between those points but as the
journey could take in King’s Cross, Euston, Regent’s Park, Marylebone,
the entire West End, Bayswater, Kensington, Victoria, Chelsea,
Pimlico, Westminster, Knightsbridge, Brompton and Battersea, it is
fair to say — a lot. Faith being an unquantifiable factor if it was
simply a Catholic education that was required, Tony and Cherie were
spoiled for choice: there are two Catholic secondary schools in
Islington alone. Yet, remarkably, no Catholic schools between N1 and
SW6 had enough faith for the Blairs, unless it was something else for
which they were searching. So, Prime Minister, what first attracted
you to the academically overachieving faith school, the London
Oratory?
I was talking to a Creationist friend the other night (it’s not a wide
circle, granted, but he’s been a lovely neighbour and we’re sad to see
him go) and he made the valid point that faith, true faith of the type
that would make a person lean towards religious rather than secular
education, must revolve around a belief in the supernatural
involvement of God in our lives. Everything else, he said, was just a
cult. Think about it. Remove the supernatural from religion and what
you have is a set of people that want to be placed apart from others
and don’t want you in their gang because you think differently. Faith
of the type that statistically is on the increase — in the field of
education if not church attendance — has to embrace the illogical
stuff. Healings, the odd bit of planet construction, miracles,
resurrections: the point at which most draw the line and reality takes
a break. If you are not open to that, the logical conclusion is that
you might as well be in a club.
RC always meant Roman Catholic. In our education system it may as well
mean Religious Club. There are many such religious clubs forming in
Britain. The nice, polite kids’ religious club. The knuckle down and
do your homework religious club. The don’t end up in McDonald’s
religious club. Sometimes these clubs have names that would suggest
the members aspire to something more. Spirituality, perhaps the one
the Blairs belong to. A belief in the existence of an incredible being
with the ability to create solar systems and raise the dead; but
pretty much the club just endorses the sort of moral code and
educational standards that will ensure your first-born doesn’t end up
flipping burgers.
And these clubs are on the increase. Now either we’ve got an awful lot
of highly spiritual people in Britain or we have a lot of parents out
to work the system, while hiding behind various religions or, in the
case of the political community, clambering to the high moral ground.
The Blairs, you see, did not pay for education, because that would
make them pariahs in their political party, like Diane Abbott, who
quickly reached for her chequebook when she deemed the education
system she had helped to create unworthy for her son. Far better to
exploit a system based largely on a falsehood and now enthusiastically
endorsed by the Education Secretary, because the thought of two
million Catholic Conservative voters was even more dispiriting than a
nation slowly splintering into a dark age of intolerance. Still, what
would we know of that? We don’t even care who Ludwig Kaas was."
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