Teaching Profession (Communist Activities)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 8 November 1950.

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Photo of Mr David Hardman Mr David Hardman , Darlington 12:00, 8 November 1950

We are concerned tonight with the code of honour and the integrity of the teaching profession. We are concerned also with the liberty of that profession, and I am quite certain that if many of the opinions expressed by the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Major Beamish) were put into legislative or administrative action, there would be a grave feeling of distrust throughout the whole profession. As I listened to his speech, although he may not have intended to imply this feeling—I say this with great respect—I could not help feeling a sense of that great fear known at a certain period in the late 'thirties in Nazi Germany regarding the relations of the Nazi Government and the teaching profession.

There is really no telling where this kind of thing would stop if it were ever given credence by a Minister in any Government of any political party. After all, there are many of us who remember occasions when members of the Labour Party were stigmatised. One instance I recall of the moral stigmatising of a member of the Labour Party by an education committee. I am happy to recall that that particular individual is now a staff inspector. He was in those days an exceedingly successful teacher. There was no hint whatever of any propaganda being found in his lessons, and he has been, and still is, an extremely successful inspector. I understand that before the First World War the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Morley), who has spoken in this Debate, took part in a bakers' strike meeting, and was later declared not to be a fit and proper person to be a teacher, because he was a member of the Labour Party. There is no telling where this kind of thing would end, and therefore I suggest that we are concerned with something completely fundamental to members of the teaching profession in discussing this subject tonight.

I now turn to the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes. He introduced a great many topics into what he had to say—atheism, Fascism, Communism, what Stalin said and what the Bishop of Chichester said. I did not in fact know about the Woodland Folk, and my curiosity has certainly been stimulated by what he said about that particular organisation. But when he went on to speak of the Bureau of Current Affairs, I confess I became more alert, because during the war I personally had a great deal to do with the director of that really excellent and patriotic organisation. I say categorically it is my opinion that there has been no political bias in any of the documents which that Bureau has published, either under another name during the war, or since the war when it became the Bureau of Current Affairs.