Socialism the challenge to schools

by Peter Stanford
ANTI-clericalism proved a potent rallying cry for the newly enfranchised bourgeoisie in late nineteenth century France as they strove to break the classbased shackles which they perceived a Catholic education as seeking to maintain. Nearly a century later that same middle class took to the streets of Paris on a sunny Sunday in June in numbers unheard of since the protests of 1968. But this time they were turning out in defence of Catholic private schools, under threat from a socialist Government.
The same pattern was repeated in Madrid, save for the fact that this time it was a rainy day in November — middle class parents marched to protect the schools that their ancestors had fought to tear down.
In Malta too there were street protests, involving a good third of the population of the island, noted along with Ireland as a bastion of fervent Catholicism, and again in defence of church schools.
Dom Mintoff, the Maltese Prime Minister, was forced to compromise and allow Catholic schools to reopen without a licence from the Government; the Spanish Government found itself before the Constitutional Court accused of denying freedom of education; in France the result was even more spectacular. The Government fell — Premier Pierre Mauroy resigned along with his Education Minister, Alain Savary, In each case a democraticallyelected Socialist Government (although there are doubts as to the electoral legitimacy of Mr Mintoff, of which more later) was forced to bow to pressure from the Catholic Church. The Church's success lay in the support it gained from middle class parents.
But why did those parents back the Church so vigorously? Why the unprecedented rallying to the Catholic cause?
In France it was those very middle class parents who took to the streets of Paris in June who had three years earlier elected Francois Mitterrand on a manifesto which included a promise to institute a "single, lay service of national education".
And even when Alain Savary finally presented his proposals to the National Assembly in May, the most contentious point was his plan to allow teachers in French schools (which are 93 per cent Catholic and form 15 per cent of the education sector) to become civil servants six years after the so-called Loi Savary was approved.
Well it never got to that stage. President Mitterrand took fright after the June demonstration, dropped M Mauroy unceremoniously, losing his Communist allies in the process, and embarked on a new centrist course, forgetting the question of schools. The parents had won.
The reason for the President's unseemly haste in capitulating was the very same one that motivated the estimated 1.5 million demonstrators to rally to the cause in the first place — namely the Socialist
Government's unpopularity. After a brief experiment with reflation at the dawn of his presidency, Mitterrand finally gave way, in the face of world recession, to the austerity preached by M Mauroy. This brought in its wake high inflation, rising unemployment, cuts in public spending. Add to this a costly and unsuccessful engagement in Chad, and you cart see the reasons why the protesters in the June demonstrations included prominent figures from the opposition parties.
In short the schools issue became a focus of discontent with a Government elected on a definite promise to curtail the liberty of private schools. The
general climate of disillusionment in France overtook the specific issue, but in so doing magnified that issue out of all proportion.
Much the same could be said of Spain. The Socialist Government of Oxford educated agnostic Felipe Gonzalez did not even set out with loud promises about curtailing Catholic private schools. Rather it stressed all along its intention to protect those private schools, highly prized by the Ministry of Education for filling a gap in a schools system where illiteracy still remains unacceptably high.
Once again, in the face of world recession and economic austerity, the schools issue became emotive — a rod to beat the back of a Government trying hard to cope with an unmanageable economy, and a symbol of the discontent of many middle-class Spaniards at falling living standards. It was the right-wing opposition party which animated much of the campaign against the Maravall Law, named after the education minister and seeking merely to give parents and local authorities a strictly limited say in the running of those private schools receiving large Government subsidies. It was
the right wing Alianza Popular which took the question to the constitutional court.
In Spain though, the whole issue became embroiled with a tide of anti-modernism. At the head of the Parents Association was Senora Carmen Alzear, a mother of eleven, and conservative in her views. In the hasty progress towards democracy in Spain since the death of Franco many have voiced fears that things were going too quickly. The election of a Socialist Government seemed to confirm these fears, and the attempt to tamper with education by a premier who rejects religion became a torch to the disaffected.
The traditional position of the Church as a defender of the values of society became dearer to Sra Alzear and her supporters than it was to many of the Spanish bishops who accepted the Maravall Law as providing adequate guarantees of educational liberty. Even the more conservative forces in the bishops conference rejected the thoroughly political nature the dispute assumed.
In Malta, the Socialist Government of Dom Mintoff was altogether more radical than those in France and Spain. Its proposed reforms were more radical, and the opposition they prompted was if anything more determined.
Having waved the British Navy out of Valetta's Grand Harbour, Dom Mintoff set about shaking up Maltese society. State control was imposed on the medical services, nuns lost their hospitals, severe press censorship was enforced, the Catholic Church was assailed from all sides by a Government determined to impose its norms on a profoundly Catholic society.
After disputed elections in which the opposition Nationalist Party received the majority of the votes cast but found themselves in a minority in the parliament, Dom Mintoff, and the man tipped to be his successor, Carmelo MifsudBonni ci, the Education Minister, temporarily thwarted by the courts (which retained a vestige of independence) in an attempt to take over all church land and buildings not deemed essential for spiritual purposes, launched their crusade against Catholic schools.
The Government wanted to provide free education in all schools on the island and demanded that the Church followed suit. The Church pleaded that it could not afford such a course. Nonsense said the Prime Minister, recounting the legend of the riches of the Maltese Church. Eventually a deadline was set for church schools to be granted a licence to continue in operation — providing free education of course. The deadline passed, the Church steeled itself, and the people of Malta rallied to the Church. In one protest in favour of the Church's stance on schools, over one third of the population of the island turned out. The Catholic Church became a pole around which opponents who had failed to thwart Mintoff in his other schemes gathered. Sensing the power still wielded by the Church they were determined not to let him win this one.
After protracted discussions involving the Vatican, a compromise was finally effected, at least in the short term. A final agreement has yet to be sorted out.
Underlying the protests in all three countries was the same anger and frustration at the respective governments. The schools issue excited passions in 1984 as no simple schools dispute could, because in all three countries it became a focus for something larger, something more deep rooted.
The age-old clash between socialism and religion was not repeated in 1984 over religious education. To the differing extents with which the church joined its defenders, it became a focus for the disillusioned, the discontented and the dispossessed.