34 1GM Thursday December 3 2020 | the timesComment
Would your
marriage
withstand a
tandem test?
Janice Turner Notebook
Eton is trampling on the freedom to think
Sacking a teacher over an anti-feminism lecture is another sad surrender in the culture wars
even more, and that “biologically
speaking, the idea that men exert
power over women is nonsense”.
But these arguments need to be
interrogated, not repressed.
Unexamined, they acquire
unwarranted power.
Eton is on the wrong side here, not
of history, which is moving against
tolerance and open debate fast, but
of everything it and our liberal
society is based on: fearless
intellectual exploration, challenging
discussions, and the acceptance that
even well-educated people will and
should arrive at a variety of
conclusions about how society ought
to be ordered. No school or
democracy should be in the business
of indoctrination.
Eton has the rare advantage in
the culture wars of being rich,
powerful and independent. It has
freedom to act because it is not
subject to the whims of a market
that could reject its products and
cancel its presence, nor to a bunch
of funders who could order it to stay
in line. Its status confers concomitant
responsibility.
If is too timid to stand up for the
Enlightenment values that have
sustained it, that will be a grim
signal to every organisation under
siege. They too will be encouraged to
bow before every orthodoxy and
Twitterstorm. Why should they
risk the consequences of doing
anything else?
There is a meeting next week to
consider Knowland’s appeal. The
board of fellows must recognise that
it is the head master who has behaved
dangerously here, rather than the
teacher. It must do the right thing.provost of Eton, Lord Waldegrave,
protests feebly that “Eton will never
cancel debate”, even as it has. A
group of pupils have written a public
letter to Waldegrave supporting
Knowland’s reinstatement. They
argue that he is being dismissed and
bullied for holding a view that varies
from the mainstream, and ask, will
boys who express the same ideas be
similarly dealt with?
They report that the head master
told them how he decides whether
ideas are “illegal”. The avoidance of
any possible offence is paramount.
“Anything that can be deemed
hostile by any... member of... the
school’s designated minority groups
will be censored.”
It is of course an irony that the one
minority group we know is not
represented at Eton is women. The
school is running scared of offending
insiders and outsiders. It fears not
being seen as progressive. Yet, as the
boys’ letter points out, teachers won’t
dare to promote free thought if “the
consequence of overstepping some
poorly-defined line of acceptability is
to lose their livelihood and home”. A
senior teacher has said staff with
“unorthodox views” fear they could
be next.
The right to think must be
defended, regardless of whether one
agrees with a particular view. I
watched Knowland’s lecture
expecting to be impressed by his
cogency and intellect, and was
surprised to find its points obscured
by an incoherent ramble of
nonsequiturs and contradictions.
Among his absurd assertions: that
women aren’t repressed by rape,
because men in prisons get rapedB
ritain’s most famous school
has dismissed a teacher for
uploading a lecture
containing “dangerous
ideas” to the internet. Will
Knowland, who has taught at Eton
for almost a decade, had intended to
deliver his lecture to older students
as part of a series encouraging
critical thinking. Instead, Eton’s head
master, Simon Henderson, forbade
him from giving it, saying the boys
should not be exposed to its content.
When Knowland posted it online, he
was sacked for gross misconduct,
losing both his tied home and job.
What thesis could be so
inflammatory that Eton could not
contemplate its pupils hearing it? A
defence of fascism, or paedophilia, of
public executions? None of the
above. Knowland’s lecture was a
defence of the patriarchy and a
criticism of radical feminist thought.
This is far more than a spat within
a school. It is an ominous indication
of how frightened our society is
becoming of free discussion. Some
ideas are now defined as beyond
questioning. As a journalist and
feminist, I could not be more
dismayed by Eton’s fear of letting
boys hear a counterargument. Their
reluctance implies one of two things:
either that all feminist analyses areso self-evidently true that they can’t
be questioned, or conversely that
feminist arguments are so weak they
will collapse once challenged.
Both are nonsense. Feminism is
studded with contentious ideas.
There is fierce division within
feminism about its ideals. No
feminist accepts every argument
advanced by its thinkers any more
than every Tory or Labour voter
accepts the arguments of every
right-wing or left-wing intellectual.
What unites them is the
understanding that we live in a world
“built for men”, in the writer Helen
Lewis’s phrase, and that women as a
sex have less power and fewer
choices, and face many more barriers
than men. There is a wealth of
evidence behind this, but if there are
weaknesses in the argument they
should be exposed, not protected.
This is what is so concerning aboutEton’s stance. It boasts a
“longstanding commitment” to
independent thought and creative
thinking. But here it is betraying
that fundamental role by sacking a
master attempting to do just that.
The chilling effect goes far beyond a
particular issue. It tells the school,
and the rest of us, that some
controversies are too incendiary
to be discussed.
Many at Eton understand just how
repressive a development this is,
even as the school denies it. TheThis is a grim signal
to every organisation
that feels under siege
Families of disabled
children face a fight
for their own money
James Coney
P
arents of disabled children
are used to a battle. At every
turn there is a fight, whether
it is for the right to an
education and council
support, or against the onerous
benefits system. The stress of these
confrontations can be almost
unbearable because the stakes —
their child’s legal entitlements and
happiness — are so high.
This on top of the already
exhausting and heartbreaking hours
of constant care. And then there are
the little challenges, such as the
stares of people who wonder why
their child is not quite right.
Now, because of an ill-thought
through Labour policy, these families
have another battle on their hands:
the right to get hold of money saved
in child trust funds. These are
savings accounts created by Gordon
Brown that handed up to £500
to newborns from 2002. About
six million were given accounts
before they were scrapped in 2011.
Since September the first recipients
of child trust funds have been able
to access their savings as they
turned 18. Teenagers handed sudden
windfalls have been able to buy
cars and video consoles.
But a problem quickly arose when
children who did not have the
mental capacity to manage their
own affairs and needed to buy vital
mobility aids found that they could
not access their money without their
parents going to the Court of
Protection. They were asked to fill
out 47 forms with more than 100
questions, and pay up to £350. This
was because child trust funds are
unique — a financial product run by
mainstream institutions, but set up
by the government.
Families protested; they needed
the money for their children. But
complaints fell on deaf ears inside
the Ministry of Justice, which said it
was just upholding the Mental
Capacity Act. This week the
ministry offered a fudge solution,
agreeing to waive the fees and
promising a working group to find
a simpler solution.
In doing so though, it underlined
what families of disabled children
knew already — that few people in
authority really understand the
onerous paperwork of raising a
disabled child.
Child trust fund providers have
proposed a simple and effective
solution. Worryingly, though, civil
servants and the minister, Alex Chalk,
seem to think that going to court is a
simple process for families who
already have to fight for everything.
This intransigence is causing an extra
burden and unnecessary misery.
Child trust funds are a problem
entirely of the government’s own
creation. They should bear the
burden of sorting them out — not
the families of disabled children.James Coney is money editorA
divorcing couple couldn’t
decide who should get
custody of their yellow
tandem, so instead of it
being divided, judgment
of Solomon-style, into two unicycles,
it ended up in our shed. This
weekend my husband suggested we
take it for a spin and now I wonder
how their marriage lasted so long.
For a start, a couple sharing a bike
is as naff as us wearing matchy-
matchy outfits (I prayed we wouldn’t
see anyone we know). Second, if you
sit at the back, as the weaker partner
must, you have no brake and cannot
steer. In fact you must surrender all
control, which is wholly counter to
my personality.
Worse, behind this larger person,
you cannot see where you’re going,
so every road hump or swerve to
avoid a reversing Volvo comes as a
horrible surprise. Since we live on a
steep hill, our journey began with a
100mph descent, with me screaming“too fast, stop it, slow down, I hate
this.. .” over and over, while passers-
by stared. It was no compensation
that uphill I didn’t have to pedal so
hard. I’d rather be mistress of my
own wheels than get a free ride.
“Phil Spector created the ‘wall of
sound’,” said my husband after an
hour of my backseat driving. “You’ve
invented the wall of whinge.”
We were sitting on a park bench
silently fuming when a couple we
know came by who, having only
been together a short time, are
always sickeningly loved-up.
“Have a go on our tandem,”
we cried. What fun, they
agreed. As the man
wobbled off, the woman
tried to climb aboard.
“I’m just trying to get
used to it,” he snapped.
“You utter f***ing idiot,
don’t get on yet!”
If anyone else fancies a
free relationship reading, I
have a handy two-
wheeled test.The tide turns
I
t took under a minute
for the Mermaids
CEO, Susie Green,
to declare on
Newsnight that the
High Court judgment
on puberty blockers will
cause a wave of childsuicide. When Emily Maitlis replied
that the Tavistock GIDS’ (gender
identity development service) own
website says that, thankfully, suicide
is extremely rare and such talk is
dangerous, Green replied: “I don’t
think so, not when this is anecdotal.”
“Anecdotal” is all that Mermaids
have left, along with fearmongering
and quasi-religious belief.
The judicial review was
headed by the president
of the Queen’s Bench
Division, one of the
country’s top judges, it
considered thousands
of pages of expert
testimony, legal
precedent and scientific
data, before deciding
that children lack
capacity to consent to
treatments which will
remove their fertility
and future sexual
fulfilment.
No matter. Green put
her own child on
puberty blockers at 13,
before genital surgery
in Thailand at 16. To
disavow this treatment
now would be to
admit a grave mistake.
So she ploughs on,
insisting other
people’s children too
need their bodies“correcting” before their minds are
fully formed. Like 1950s lobotomies,
paediatric transition is increasingly
exposed as a grotesque medical fad.
The temple is crumbling, but the
high priestess retains her zeal.No Militant tendencies
T
he latest Private Eye has
“outed” me as a student Trot
who at Sussex University in the
1980s was associated with Labour
Briefing, a left-wing grouping whose
allies included Jeremy Corbyn. How
ironic, it says, that I now believe Sir
Keir Starmer should expel Corbyn
from the party because Tony Blair
could only win an election when the
“Trotskyist faction Militant was
truly routed”.
In fact we in Briefing hated
Militant. Those splitists! We scorned
their reductive class analysis: their
idea of a feminist policy was
advocating communal laundries so
women comrades could “unite and
fight” as they washed the workers’
pants. They thought we were
bourgeois dilettantes, which was fair.
Especially in my case.
Oscar Wilde remarked that
socialism takes up too many
evenings. That’s why the revolution
has so far not happened. Too many
meetings and so very dull.@victoriapeckham@jennirslJenni
Russell