Take Jez to Durham and he's right back to East Germany

On my bookshelf, I have a copy of an East German publication from 1984, entitled Young People in the GDR Today. Flicking through its pages, I am reassured that that there was no drug addiction or ‘drug scene’ in the former Soviet satellite state and that Nazism was ‘wiped out’ as a philosophy at the end of the Second World War.

All good to know.

I was reminded of the book when Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the Durham Miners’ Gala this weekend. The Labour Leader, who notoriously toured East Germany on a motorbike in the 1970s withDiane Abbott, announced that under his premiership children in English schools would be taught ‘about the trade union principles of solidarity and collective action, so they are equipped to uphold their rights as workers’.

Now, I’m all in favour of people knowing their rights. But the language here suggests a much weirder and more sinister agenda, which speaks volumes about Corbyn’s outmoded politics. He believes that teachers should be involved in imbuing a socialist philosophy in the classroom, in order to reverse the long-term decline in trade union membership in the UK.

Let’s be clear. This idea is profoundly un-British and every bit as wrong as Margaret Thatcher’s attempt in the 1980s – through the notorious Section 28 – to indoctrinate children with the idea that only heterosexual relationships were an acceptable norm.

Our education system should be free of political bias and kids should be able to make up their own minds about both their sexuality and the value of trade unions and collective action.

Now, of course, Jez’s scheme would never actually be implemented. Teachers don’t like being pawns in ideological agendas promoted by politicians. So even if we saw the Islington North MP elevated from his allotment to a tenure in 10 Downing Street, the socialist civics classes would, I’m sure, not see the light of day.

But the intent is there. And it’s very revealing.

When Corbyn is among friends, at a jamboree which attracts trade union activists and left-wingers from around the UK, he tells them what he really believes. Perhaps his long-term plans for the school curriculum were part of the dispute he supposedly had with his Trade Union Studies lecturers at North London Poly in the early seventies. He left after just a year.

By coincidence, the GDR actually taught a subject called ‘Polytechnics’. According to my book (produced in collaboration with the Central Council of the Free German Youth), the classes offered ‘fundamental insights into…. the world of production, economics, and the social relationships between people in the world of work…’

Until the UK state is geared up to deliver this kind of political guidance, there’s always Momentum Kids’Club.