Suffer little children

There’s no end of talk in the North about the St. Andrews deal being a sell-out, although there’s sharp disagreement about who or what’s being sold out.

However, the sell-out of children is scarcely anywhere mentioned.
If the deal goes through and a new Assembly meets in March, the system will be preserved whereby two thirds of the North’s children, including a huge majority of the children of the poor, will be deemed failures and hobbled for life.
At the moment, the 11-plus examination divides children according to “academic ability,” sending about one third to grammar schools, the rest to secondary schools. In the North, as everywhere, selection by “ability” has meant, in practice, selection by social class. The vast majority at grammar schools comes from non-manual working backgrounds. A substantial majority in secondary schools are from manual backgrounds. By far the most reliable indicator of which children will pass the 11-plus is whether they have been receiving free school meals at primary school.
To his great credit, Martin McGuinness’s last act as Education Minister before the power-sharing Executive collapsed in November 2002 was to announce the end of the 11-plus and of academic selection. The battle to “Save Our Grammar Schools” has been raging since, vociferously led by the DUP. At St. Andrews in October, Ian Paisley got his way.
After much prevarication, New Labour, in June last year, legislated to put McGuinness’s initiative into practice. The Education (NI) Order, 2006, was brought before the Commons, and passed. A month later, it went through the Lords. And that, most people in the North assumed, despite the chagrin of the grammar lobby and DUP anger, was that.
It speedily emerged, however, that Dr. Paisley was using “defence of the grammar schools” as a bargaining chip in the ongoing negotiations on a restoration of Stormont. And Tony Blair instantly ditched long-standing Labour principles to do business on this basis.
Thus, Direct Rule ministers found themselves explaining that they felt passionately about equality in education while simultaneously promising to forget the whole idea if only Paisley would sign up to power-sharing.
Hailing the introduction of the Education Order as “a momentous day” for the North, Hain told the Commons that, “I firmly believe that the end of academic selection is vital in creating a world-class education system for Northern Ireland. This Order will not only see an end to the 11-plus exam as a means of deciding a child’s future, but will also end all forms of academic selection.” He then went on to tell the DUP’s Sammy Wilson – who had complained about “blackmail” – that the world-class education system for the North could be forgotten about if an Executive was formed by November 24. The issue would then be thrown into the new Assembly and would require a “cross-community” majority vote. That is, the DUP would have a veto.
Blair intervened personally to have the clause ending academic selection suspended until November 25.
Of course, the November 24 deadline passed without agreement. The cut-off point for re-forming an Assembly was then put back to March 26. And implementation of the clause ending selection put back again, to March 27.
Leading Northern educationalist and long-time campaigner against selection Niall McCafferty wondered in the Irish News whether the intervention of Prime Minister Blair effectively to alter legislation without formal consultation with anyone or parliamentary procedure of any kind might not be a misuse of power and a breach of constitutional law.
Others have wondered why, if the DUP could make retention of selection a deal-breaker, Sinn Fein and/or the SDLP couldn’t similarly have insisted on an end to selection, this being the way the process has worked in other areas.
Instead, as Niall McCafferty noted: “The SDLP says it has been rendered powerless by what it describes as a ‘side-deal’ between Blair and Paisley. Sinn Fein has apparently also been struck dumb.”
For both parties, a return to power-sharing took precedence over the interests of disadvantaged children. Which raises the pertinent question: What do these parties want power for?

I have taken a more focused interest in the global arms trade since last August, when, with eight others, I was charged under “terrorism” laws for having participated in a vigorous occupation of the Derry plant of the US missile company, Raytheon. As I write, the Public Prosecution Service is deciding whether to make the Raytheon 9 into the Raytheon 10 by adding my partner, Goretti, to the list of defendants.
Thus, the controversy over Tony Blair’s decision (and it was his) to call off inquiries into allegations that Britain’s biggest arms company, BAE Systems, had bunged Saudi Arabian officials tens of millions of pounds in order to swing a massive arms deal has been followed with close interest in our house. Likewise, the inquiries into bribery allegations concerning BAE and South Africa, Chile, Romania, the Czech Republic and Tanzania.
Blair says that to seek the truth about British-Saudi corruption would risk Saudi cooperation in the war against Islamic extremism and for democracy and liberal values across the world. This is passing strange given that the majority of the September 11th hijackers came from Saudi Arabia; that the Wahhabi cult of which the feudal rulers of Saudi Arabia are adherents has acted for a generation as, in John Pilger’s phrase, “tutors of the Taliban,” and that anybody shouting the odds for liberal values in Saudi Arabia is liable to have his or her head lopped off.
A more plausible explanation is that Saudi Arabia has the biggest known oil reserves in the world and so has to be placated, no matter what.
Ears prick up in our house with particular alacrity when Raytheon is mentioned. The firm is mostly mentioned around Derry with reference to the 34 hi-tech jobs it has provided in the town and, sometimes, with an addendum to do with the destructive nihilism of agitators who would go in and trash the premises and jeopardise the 34 jobs.
The story (January 16th) which momentarily diverted our attention from skinning-up was an announcement that Pakistan and Raytheon “have signed a Letter of Offer and Acceptance for the procurement of 500 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) – the largest single international AMRAAM purchase to date – and 200 AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles.”
The deal “will provide the bulk of the fire-power of the Pakistan Air Force.”
Having become something of an expert on the company, my mind instantly snapped back to the announcement of an earlier Raytheon success in the sub-continent – the sale of 12 AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder counter-battery artillery radars, worth $146m. The system, Raytheon promises, will pin-point missiles launched at Indian targets “at a range of up to 300 kilometres after tracking a shell for only a few seconds.” India and Pakistan have gone to war four times over Kashmir, and exist in a state of imminent conflict over the issue. Thus, unceasing millions of Indians and Pakistanis will be able to look up from their misery some day soon and observe the thrilling kill contest in the skies between Raytheon missiles and Raytheon anti-missile systems.
Mind you, these deals do help secure those vital jobs at the Derry plant.
So that’s alright, then.