The Path to Power

part of the problem. Arguments about the precise relations between departments and research councils were irrelevant to the wider and crucially impor tant question of the Government’s strategic role in scientific research. Ted’s view was that pure research was not really work for Government-funded research and development, though he recognized that in any research establishment there was bound to be some proportion of pure or basic research. My view was precisely the opposite. It was only years later, when I was Prime Minister, that I was able to formulate my own answer to the problem, which was that Government should concentrate on funding basic science and leave its application and development to the private sector. But I already felt deeply uneasy about any policy that threatened to starve pure science of funds.

In one particular instance, I was involved directly in supporting a large and expensive project on the frontiers of science. This was the decision to join in European plans for a giant proton accelerator, or ‘atom smasher’, to elucidate the ultimate structure of matter, a project from which the previous Labour Government had withdrawn in 1968. As part of the Government’s early spending curbs we too had drawn back from this project, which some people considered too expensive, given its theoretical nature. But I was haunted by the knowledge that if Britain had not pressed ahead with some nuclear research even in the cash-strapped thirties, Britain and America would not have developed the atomic bomb which first secured victory in the Second World War and later protected Western Europe against Stalin. It was a vital lesson. So in September 1970 I went with Sir Brian Flowers, Chairman of the Science and Engineering Research Council, to the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva to see for myself what was envisaged and learn more about the science and its possibilities. I came back convinced that if we could ensure sound financial control the twelve-nation project was worth backing, and managed to convince my colleagues to this effect.

Generally, though, I did not feel that the Government’s approach to science was radical or imaginative enough. I suspect that many scientists — and not just those with a professional axe to grind — thought so too. On Tuesday 26 June 1973 Ted held a dinner at No. 10 for British Nobel Prize winners in science — among them my old Oxford tutor, Dorothy Hodgkin. Naturally, I attended as well. For several reasons it was an illuminating occasion. Ted set the discussion against the background of Britain’s entry into the European Community, which he thought historians would conclude was the greatest achievement of his administration. He presented science as something to be applied so as to allow British industry to take advantage of access to the European market. There was some support for this view, but there were also some criticisms which represented my own standpoint. Essentially, this was that government should fund pure science, rather than organizing Europe’s scientists together in vast projects to make European economies technologically more competitive. Science was already international; the expansion of the European Community would not make a good deal of difference; and international science depended upon a number of people working separately in different countries. Arguably the less they were officially organized, the better the results would be. A commonsense exception to this rule was when the investment required was so costly that no one nation could afford it — hence my support for CERN.

So I was somewhat sceptical about the science policy that I as minister had to implement. But the policy never amounted to much. Science is less amenable to political direction than politicians like to think. Indeed, the history of science is in many ways more similar to the history of imaginative art than to economic history. The great scientific advances have not come from ‘practical’ plans for research and development but from creative scientific minds — the sort of minds which were around the dinner table that evening with Ted and me — people who by pushing outward at the frontiers of knowledge unlock the secrets of the universe. Politicians are reluctant to accept this; they want a quick technological fix and a quick pay-off into the bargain. Scientists rightly take a longer view. When Gladstone met Michael Faraday, he asked him whether his work on electricity would be of any use. ‘Yes, sir,’ remarked Faraday with prescience. ‘One day you will tax it.’

My second area of frustration was that of teacher training. As I have already mentioned, the manifesto had committed us to set up an inquiry into it. This was one of the points which figured large on the list I handed to Bill Pile on my first day in the department. I already held strong views on the subject. It seemed to me that the large increase in the number of teachers had to some extent been at the expense of quality. Although there were continuing difficulties about finding enough student teachers wanting to go into mathematics and sciences, there was not much substance to the complaints about ‘teacher shortages’. The real shortage was in the number of good teachers. Changing the salary structure of the profession would help by rewarding and encouraging long-serving and senior teachers, though the NUT was very wary of increased differentials. But teacher training was the key.

I wanted a serious investigation into whether trainee teachers were being taught the right subjects in the right way and at the right level. So I appointed Lord James of Rusholme, a former Headmaster of Manchester Grammar School, one of the country’s great schools, as Chairman of an inquiry into teacher training. I insisted that those who served with him should work virtually fulltime and that their report be completed within a year; it was duly published in January 1972. The report was workmanlike and made a number of sensible suggestions. It placed the greater emphasis I wanted on in-service training so that teachers really knew how to cope with a class full of children. Second, it proposed a new, two-year Diploma in Higher Education — for which I had also pressed — in which future teachers would study side by side with others who intended going into industry or the professions. But the fact that it confined itself to the structure rather than the curriculum content of teacher training limited its value. In effect, I got nowhere in my attempts to get the curriculum of the teacher training institutions discussed within the planned inquiry. It was still regarded as taboo for politicians to become involved in such matters. Fifteen years later the situation had not materially improved. As Prime Minister, I would still be puzzling about how to raise the quality of the teaching profession.

Still, although I was very critical of the outlook of many teacher trade unionists (who were in some cases more trade unionists than teachers), my final impression gained from my years at the DES was of the sincerity and commitment of most teachers. Sometimes teachers from the most difficult schools dealing with ‘problem’ children (who could usually be traced back to ‘problem’ parents) would come in to the department to tell me of their experience. On other occasions, I would talk to them in their schools and see something of what they had to cope with in their classrooms.

The teacher can never be a sufficient substitute for the family: yet a good teacher cannot ignore what happens to the child when he or she goes home, perhaps to be ill-treated. On one occasion, someone put the dilemma to me:

At 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon when the other children have gone home, one child clings to you and begs not to leave. You feel sure — but you cannot prove — that something is seriously wrong. Perhaps there is violence or neglect, or just deep unhappiness from one source or another. Do you walk the child home and tell his parents that he seems a bit off-colour; saying, of course, that he has not complained or been a nuisance; but gently enquiring if anything is wrong? You don’t know whether the child may be beaten as soon as you leave. Do you alert the authorities? That may have even more traumatic consequences. Or do you do nothing and hope that it’s just a temporary problem which will sort itself out? Well, Mrs Thatcher, what would you do?

There is no single good answer to this question. And despite our agonizings over such cases, we have still not found a solution that is right for all circumstances. We need teachers, social workers and policemen who are trained to recognize the symptoms of abuse, while remembering the commonsense reality that most parents love their children. Of the three, teachers are by far the most important because they know the child personally and see him or her almost every day. If they are to carry out this delicate and important task they can do so only if their authority is fully restored, not only over the child but also in the eyes of the parent. And when that happens, the bad parent is more likely to be held in check.

MILKING PUBLICITY

In one respect at least, the Department of Education was an excellent preparation for the premiership. I came under savage and unremitting attack that was only distantly related to my crimes.

But it did not begin like that. I have described the arguments about grammar schools and comprehensives.