Nick Hillman for Cambridge

Contemporary British History has recently published an article of mine on the history of student loans. It is available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2013.783418#.UY4KZly9LCQ.

It attempts to clear up some of the history, which is often misunderstood.

Among the points in the article are:

–the Treasury read the Robbins report as a proposal for student loans
–a Labour Cabinet of the late 1960s agreed to consider student loans
–the first education minister to consult openly on loans was Shirley Williams
–upfront tuition fees were abolished in 1977 (not as many books claim in 1962)
–the only post-war decade during which there were no upfront tuition fees for full-time, first-time undergraduate students was the Thatcherite 1980s
–the only post-war PM to have presided over a system with no maintenance grants was Tony Blair (1998-2004)

Student loans have proved controversial over the years. But the old system of grants was too expensive to enable a large number of students to attend university.

The piece also looks at the political consequences of student support changes, which are not as many people imagine.

For example, the Conservatives introduced maintenance loans in 1990 and won the subsequent general election and Labour introduced tuition fees in 1998 and, in 2003, announced they would be tripled but won both the subsequent general elections. The last two losing governments, Major’s and Brown’s, had both commissioned independent reports on higher education so lacked clear higher education policies.

I’m not the most sporty of people but I do love a challenge. I once trekked up the highest mountain in Ethiopia and cycled through Zambia. As I discovered on those trips, to be meaningful a challenge really needs social benefits as well as personal ones.

That is why, on 21st April, I will be attempting to complete* the London Marathon for charity. I’m doing it for the MS Trust, which does so much to help people with the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis – for more information, see http://www.mstrust.org.uk.

Every time someone sponsors me, it makes the challenge a bit more real (and a bit more scary). But, most importantly, it helps to guarantee the funding of this medium-sized and very effective charity. Most people will know a person or a family affected by MS.

The MS Trust provides information, educates health professionals about what people with multiple sclerosis need and researches better management of MS. In short, there is support for everyone affected by MS.

I’m not going for a specific time or placing on the day but I’m determined to complete the Marathon. It’s going to be a gruelling way to spend my 41st birthday!

It would be fantastic if you felt able to sponsor me at www.justgiving.com/nickhillman2013.

* NB ‘do’ not ‘run every step’

The Times Higher recently asked me to elaborate on a comment that I chose my university because of the local music scene.

They publish my piece in this week’s magazine, which can be read online here (though I recommend reading in hard copy if you can).

I loved my time at university but, in future, people filling in their UCAS forms will be able to make much more sophisticated decisions – thanks to the new Key Information Set being formally launched today. I wish it had existed when I was a school teacher and ran a pre-university course.

Last Thursday, I opposed the motion ‘This House believes that Britain is still a racist country’ at the Cambridge Union Society. My speech (minus the rhetorical flourishes and debating points that would be out of context here) is below. I am pleased to say that our opposition team, which included David Aaronavitch and David Goodhart, won.

Thank you for inviting me to speak in this important debate and thank you for breaking your busy revision schedules to be here.

There are some shocking statistics about the UK. If you Google ‘racist attacks’, you will find some horrific stories. According to the Institute of Race Relations, there have been around a hundred killings with a racial element since the Stephen Lawrence murder of 1993 – that’s five a year.

But there are lots of positive facts about our country too. For example, young people from black and minority ethnic groups are actually slightly more likely to go to university than young white people, even if they’re less likely to study at some of our oldest institutions. The UK has record proportions of mixed marriages – on some measures, more than in any other European country. Whole areas of life are completely colour-blind, such as pop music. And sport: just look at Lewis Hamilton or the Premier League – sorry none of us is Stan Collymore, who (according to the Union website) was due to be here tonight.

So we on this side of the debate are not claiming that racism does not exist. Rather, we are claiming that Britain has made real progress in tackling prejudice – and that we should not be characterised as a racist country.

As a former History teacher who has taken pupils around a concentration camp, I know the horrors racism causes.

But my own academic research has focused on British fascism in the 1950s. It’s a topic worthy of study because it was fascists like Oswald Mosley who were the first people to try and embed racism at the heart of modern British politics. More than anything my research proved to me that racism in British politics is the province of the fruitcakes and the loonies. Let me tell you about those I studied.

• First, I looked at Arnold Leese, one of the leading British fascists, who taught his cat to give the fascist salute before eating.
• Then, I looked at RK Jeffrey, who funded the establishment of the National Front. He survived on walnuts, which he kept in a bathtub in case of a world shortage.
• And, finally, I looked at Colin Jordan, the British founder of the World Union of National Socialists, who in 1975 was arrested for shoplifting women’s underwear from Tesco’s in Leamington Spa.

Those who propose this motion are in effect claiming the views of such weirdos symbolise modern Britain. Well they don’t represent me and I hope they don’t represent you.

In 1968, Enoch Powell famously predicted there would be ‘rivers of blood’ flowing through Britain’s streets as a result of mass immigration. He found enormous support for what he said, and immediately became one of the most well-known and most popular politicians in the country. Thousands of workers flocked to Parliament to support him – and that doesn’t often happen to a Conservative. Powell even found support from the odd Afro-Caribbean migrant to the UK who claimed integration can not happen. But Enoch was wrong.

And everybody now knows he was wrong. No leading politician today would write a speech in which the argument is built around various quotes from racist letters. In a racist country, that would be lauded. Here, it would be career ending.

Yes, the English Defence League exist and, as I have written in the Cambridge News, they are the heirs of the National Front and the British National Party. But they represent nobody other than their tiny number of members. That’s why the recent EDL rally here in Cambridge was such a flop. Surely the proposition do not seriously believe the EDL are representative of Britain in this Olympic year as we get ready to host all the races of the world in London, a wonderfully multicultural city?

Sir Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, doesn’t think so. He has written in a national newspaper: ‘I believe that Britain is by far – and I mean by far – the best place to live in Europe if you are not white. That’s not just my view, it’s an empirical truth.’ And he goes on to show some of that evidence.

Do not think I am downplaying racism by saying it’s not as much a feature of modern Britain today as the proposition think it is. A few years ago, I visited Rwanda. I went to a technical school which had never actually opened as a school. Just before it was due to open thousands of Tutsis fled there during the genocide of 1994. 50,000 were killed. Only a handful of people survived, including the man who showed me round. Today, they leave the place as a monument to the dead and the rooms are piled high with the skeletons of those who died. I defy anyone who has seen that to be relaxed about racism. But it is because such examples of genocide are so horrific that we have to be careful about when and where we apply such terms.

When I stood in Cambridge in the 2010 general election, I was told incorrectly by two people that Conservatives flirt with racism in the European Parliament. The first was the Labour candidate who said it in this very chamber. On election day, our vote rose by 8% and theirs fell by 10%. The other person who came to Cambridge and accused Conservatives of flirting with racism was the columnist Johann Hari, who has since had to resign his job at the Independent for making things up.

They were wrong because I stood on a ticket which was proud of Cambridge’s diversity. This city is most successful where it is most diverse.

Take, Mill Road – the most cosmopolitan and most interesting street in Cambridge, with numerous independent shops, the mosque and a proper community spirit at events like the Winter Fair. I am delighted that Cambridge has recently elected Shapour Meftah, who runs a shop on Mill Road, to be a Conservative councillor.

Yesterday, I was reading a new book celebrating the 50th anniversary of Cambridge becoming the premier high-tech cluster in Europe. I was certain the book would have evidence of the multi-cultural nature of this great city because its success relies on attracting the brightest and best from all over the world. But nowhere in the book could I find a chapter dedicated to celebrating this diversity. It took a while for me to realise why. It’s because diversity is so embedded within Cambridge that it is taken completely for granted that success depends upon it.

A couple of weeks ago, on the same day that Cambridge was electing Councillor Meftah, London re-elected Boris, who celebrates the diversity of our capital, and rejected Ken, whose record is more questionable.

If, in those recent elections, the BNP had won seats, then perhaps I’d have to accept things are going in the wrong direction. But on the same day that Boris won, the BNP lost every single seat they were defending.

Do I think we have some real problems of prejudice? Yes

Do I think we live in a wholly racist country? No

And those who do are the doom mongers. We must not define ourselves by the fruitcakes and the weirdos. When you look in the mirror, do you see Enoch Powell and his rivers of blood or do you see a tolerant, welcoming and unprejudiced nation?

Readers in Cambridge may like to know that the full list of Cambridge City Council election candidates has recently been published.

There’s a strong field, with all three main parties standing in every set. The Greens are in most – surprisingly not all – too, and there’s a smattering of others in different wards. (The popular anti-party blogger Richard Taylor, who has been talking about standing for years, has once again not put his name forward, which is a shame.)

This election matters because it is a real opportunity to change the whole complexion of local politics in Cambridge, which has been a bit one-dimensional in recent years. There is a good chance that wards will change hands this time.

The Conservative candidates come from all sorts of backgrounds and have huge and varied experience between them. Come the election, they will be a formidable force holding the Council to account on behalf of all local residents.

I’ll be helping them when I can:

1. because the City Council needs to be held to account more closely – for example on spending taxpayers’ money;
2. because Cambridge residents deserve better representation than they have had in recent years – the current crop of councillors are quick to blame all problems on anyone but themselves; and
3. because I know the candidates personally so know how dedicated they are to doing an excellent job.

If you want to get involved, contact me via the website links and I’ll put you in touch with the local campaign team.

What’s the right boundary between state and private schools?

I’m pleased to see my 2010 article on the issue has now got free access at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2010.518413.

For background on the piece, see http://nickhillman.co.uk/2010/10/16/harold-wilson-anthony-crosland-and-public-schools/.

My new article on the Fleming report of 1944 has just been published by the History of Education, a peer-reviewed academic journal.

The Fleming report aimed at a closer relationship between independent boarding schools and the state by recommending state-funded boarding bursaries.

My article is, I think, the first to show that the prime mover behind the modest scheme of county scholarships that was set up was the Labour Minister of Education, Ellen Wilkinson – not, as is often supposed, the Conservative RAB Butler.

The experiment limped on for decades after her death but no other politician ever gave it a similar push. So there is an interesting contrast between ‘Red Ellen’, who is generally regarded as having been on the left of the Labour Party, and New Labour, which abolished assisted places in independent day schools.

My article can be accessed (at a cost to those without institutional log ins) here. The abstract is below.

‘This paper assesses the origins, conclusions and consequences of the Fleming Committee, which considered the relationship between Britain’s leading independentD boarding schools and the state. In 1944, the committee recommendded one-quarter of the places at these schools should be assigned to a national bursary scheme for children who might benefit from boarding. The author emphasises the role that Ellen Wilkinson played in implementing a Fleming-style scheme in the early years of the Attlee Government. Despite promises to the contrary, the Conservative Government that was elected in 1951 did not expand the scheme, which lingered on in a desultory form. Failure stemmed from a lack of political will, which was reinforced by a shortage of public finance, inconsistent support from independent boarding schools and local education authorities and problems over the selection of pupils.’

Anyone interested in this general topic might also be interested in another article of mine on the Public Schools Commission, as this new piece is a prequel to it, as well as a recent BBC Radio 4 programme.

Readers interested in higher education might also be interested to know that it was the same Section of the 1944 Education Act that enabled county scholarships at public schools that enabled local education authorities to pay higher education awards for maintenance and tuition fees.

I spent a fantastic day campaigning in Cambridge today for the local elections. Good weather always seems to bring out the best in political campaigners and voters, and it was such a beautiful day – much hotter than during my holiday on the Costa del Sol last week!

I was campaigning for Tim Haire and Edward Turnham, the Conservative candidates in Cherry Hinton. They have been fighting an excellent campaign focussing on the issues people care about, such as public transport, council tax and bringing some balance back to the (Lib Dem-dominated) city council. And, specific to this ward, they have also been campaigning to have the beautiful but worn Cherry Hinton sign repainted. I have a particular fondness for this bit of Cambridge, not least because of the scale of support I got there in the general election last May, and it was lovely to meet so many people who had voted for me then and be able to thank them.

On the doorstep, many important national issues came up, particularly the size of the deficit, but what struck me most was how receptive the voters were to the idea that Cherry Hinton would benefit from more balanced representation rather than being represented only by Labour councillors. One sitting Labour councillor recently admitted Cambridge would benefit from Conservative representation and, if the voters I met today were typical, that could well be achieved on May 5th. I hope it will.

I also caught up with Andrew Bower, our candidate in Coleridge ward, who was also out campaigning. Andy is deeply committed to this bit of Cambridge, as anyone who has seen him in action at Area Committee meetings, grilling the sitting councillors, knows. He is the sort of candidate that deserves to win broad support, including from people who don’t normally vote Conservative, because he is so committed to securing a better deal for local residents and scrutinising what the council is up to. I’ll be back out next weekend trying to help ensure that this year is a winning one for him.

If you have a few hours to spare, do come and join the campaign. The Cambridge Conservatives’ website has contact details and further information on how to get involved, along with information on all the Conservative local election candidates in Cambridge.