Weekly Worker 620 Thursday April 13 2006 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

No to faith schools

The left is in a mess over secularism, says Michelle Euston

Delegates gather for the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers in Torquay over the Easter weekend of April 15-16 with some important debates on the agenda. In particular, the contentious issue of faith schools looks set to divide not simply the main body of conference, but also the different left trends within the NUT left, organised in the Socialist Teachers Alliance.

In an article in April’s Socialist Teachers Alliance journal, Bernard Regan of Westminster NUT - articulating views that have also been forcible expressed by members of the Socialist Workers Party in various discussion forums - argues the case for his branch’s motion (31.2), which takes a stand against the “denial of equal rights for muslims to create voluntary aided or voluntary controlled [by local education authorities] schools” in accordance with the national curriculum. To get an idea of the poverty of the arguments marshalled by this side of the brewing argument, it is worthwhile quoting other sections of Regan’s polemic.

Crass

He notes “that privatised academies opened the door for sponsors and anyone with money to take over the running of schools. This led to evangelising christians coming forward as sponsors - some peddling ideas such as creationism.” He continues that there is a belief that more faith schools in general will mean the creation of muslim schools, but then, he suggests, this is not too much of a problem as there are “differing motivations of those seeking to establish faith schools - they are not uniform. There is a world of difference between a proselytising white multi-millionaire and the oppressed working class communities - be they Pakistani, Bangladeshi, etc - for whom the response to racists assault is to retreat into the ghetto … The real problem about faith schools - to paraphrase Malcolm X - is a white problem.”

Of course, the notion that these ethnic communities are uniformly working class - that somehow, unlike the white community, they are not internally divided by class - is simply crass. However, for Regan, the key is context: “There has been a massive rise in islamophobia and racism … [and thus] the call for faith schools” says Regan “emerging from sections of the muslim community is a response to the racism present in society.”

Beleaguered

There is no doubt that the pressure on these beleaguered communities can produce a siege mentality that will strengthen separatist trends, including around how their children are educated. This is understandable. However, the notion that the left - which should be composed of the most consistent secularists - is duty-bound to adopt a neutral, or even softly supportive attitude to these tendencies, is simply nonsense.

But there’s the problem, of course. Sections of this left have effectively abandoned notions of secularism, spuriously equating it with actions such as the outlawing of religious symbols in France - a chauvinist move clearly directed against muslims - or, more recently, the law lords’ negative ruling on 17-year-old Shabina Begum’s legal battle to wear a jilbab.

This is unprincipled and plainly wrong. Bans on the right of religious groups to display symbols of their faith in schools - or any other public building - is not an example of secularism. Secularism denotes the separation of religion from the state and the equality between faiths and with those of no religion. Thus, it is not a shibboleth of Marxists or atheists - palpably, it would actually be in the interests of muslims in today’s Britain to become secularists.

Separation

The separation of church and state would have weighty implications for the Church of England; less so for the Birmingham mosque. It would remove the notion of a state-sanctioned ‘official’ creed as a component part of a national cultural identity, a construct which by definition creates an ‘other’, faiths that are outside the ‘tent’.

The example of the hijab ban in France is therefore instructive. This plainly contradicts the spirit of the celebrated 1905 law, which not only enacted the separation of church and state, but reiterated the right of religious freedom, including the right of religious expression.

The law, voted in on December 9 1905, was proposed by the socialist deputy, Aristide Briand, a supporter of Jean Jaurès. This legislation was the culmination of a century of sometimes violent struggles between the catholic church hierarchy and republican anti-clericalists, following the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801, which re-established the church.

Those demanding renewed separation of church and state were roughly divided into two broad camps: firstly, those who claimed to stand in the Jacobin-communist tradition and dreamed of eradicating religion or driving it underground; and secondly, those - particularly the Marxists - who took a much more enlightened approach, demanding the neutrality of the state in relation to all religious beliefs or lack of them, while at the same time seeking a legal guarantee of freedom of religion.

Thus in article 1 we read: “The republic will ensure freedom of conscience. It will guarantee the free exercise of religious practice”; while in article 2: “The republic does not promote, finance or subsidise any religion.”

It was astonishing, then, that supporters of the ban could say, “The wearing of the veil is prohibited by the 1905 law, full stop!” (Algerian journalist Mohamed Sifaoui, one of many people from a muslim background who were mobilised to support the 2003 law). “It isn’t the republic that must adapt to religion,” said Sifaoui. “Religion must adapt to the republic” (Parti Libéral Méditerranéen website, May 3 2003). If the wearing of the veil was already prohibited, one might be justified in asking why the new legislation was necessary at all. In fact, while the Briand law did not specifically enshrine the right to wear or display religious regalia, it most certainly did not ban it. The spirit of the 1905 legislation was quite the reverse. (See Weekly Worker 25 November 2004).

Clearly the Chirac attack on the rights of muslims to display this symbol of their faith is more in keeping with the crude methods of Jacobin communists and was actually motivated politically by a chauvinist attempt to cohere a reactionary national consensus. To attempt to use this disgraceful manoeuvre to discredit the whole notion of secularism - as comrades in the SWP have been guilty of, for example - is nothing less than a disgrace and another illustration of the shocking programmatic degeneration of the left.

Thus, Bernard Regan is correct to draw attention to the rise in islamophobia and racism, but this does not mean socialists are neutral on the creation of more muslim or any faith schools. Regan argues this is necessary in order to take a stand against “[the preservation of] the privileged position of the ‘white’ religions”. In fact, what is actually needed is for the left to start to champion a consistently democratic - ie, genuinely secular - programme on an already important question that is growing in significance in today’s society. This must consist of:

l Separation of the Church of England from the state. The ending of all state subsidies for religious institutions. Confiscation of all Church of England property not directly related to acts of worship.

l Freedom for all religious cults, plus freedom for atheistic propaganda. Religious organisations and individuals to have the right to propagate their ideas and seek to win converts. Opponents of religion to have the same right.

l The ending of all state-sponsored religious propaganda and acts of worship. Religion is a private, not a state matter. Religion should be taught as a subject of academic study, not as a means to indoctrinate children.

We would not be in favour of trade unions that split activists along faith lines. Advancing the type of alternative secular platform I outline above is clearly neither a sop to racism nor putting the left into the position of defending the privileged status of the ‘white’ religions. Any suggestions otherwise are either stupid or made in bad faith.

Regan is right to suggest that the whole furore around faith schools cannot be “neatly extracted from questions of ethnicity, nationality, colour and importantly class”. He draws totally the wrong conclusions from this. At various times, all of these categories have been used by groups under attack by wider society as “ghettos” to “retreat” into. The appropriate response of working class politicians is surely militant defence of groups against chauvinist attacks, not national, ethnic, colour or class-base segregation in education.

Comprehensive

Finally, the broader context in which this faith school debate takes place is important. The introduction of the government’s education bill into parliament is nothing short of an all-out attack by Blair on comprehensive education.

            This bill will hand control of state education over to private sponsors and/or religious organisations. Faith-based schools are part of this offensive to smash up state provision. Local people, who have very little democratic control already over their schools, will have dramatically democratic less under the new provisions.

Thus, the fact that sections of the left are being ‘suckered’ into supporting aspects of the reactionary social agenda of the Blairites - just as the SWP was when it gave fulsome support to the censorial religious hatred legislation (even bemoaning its watering down by the Lords) - underlines just what a serious political mess we have got ourselves itself.

Conference offers us a chance to get ourselves out of this mess and positively contribute to building a mass movement against Blair’s attacks on education.

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