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.
