The Social Context Of Eugenic Thought

In its belief that it was "in small the prototype of a new kind of voluntary body … vital to the functioning of the new technical civilisation", Political and Economic Planning (PEP) argued that it was "unwise to draw up any programme for educational reform without having a clear perception of the kind of world for which education is needed" and construed its long-term aim as "to work out such a conception".⁽¹⁾

It had already, just before the war, pinpointed the waste of both ability and administrative effort involved in cults like religious schools or the old school tie; in the expense of 169 Part III authorities, confined only to the provision of elementary education; in the unreal distinction between the "modern" and the secondary schools; in the dependence of educational opportunity on the ratepayers and in the confusion, duplication and waste involved in the existence of both local universities and technical colleges.⁽²⁾

But PEP’s "good stern stuff" took account of the protective perimeter that had been fostered since the war: maternity and child welfare services, school medical and meals services, nursery education, child guidance and the scientific study of child psychology.

"This well-written report will serve our book very well," said Butler to two of his officials on 6 June 1943, "particularly its layout of the secondary world". But Norwood’s report (to which he was referring) was of such little comfort to those who wanted more layettes that five weeks later, on the very day when Butler unveiled his White Paper, an enquiry into the population was announced.⁽⁵⁾

Here, pressure on the government had been exercised by Butler’s predecessor but one at the Board of Education - Earl de la Warr - who not only spoke on 8 June when the enquiry was announced but on 27 July again pressed for the White Paper promised on that occasion. He was back on 1 December again asking for an enquiry - this time forthcoming under the Lord Chancellor. A day later The Times was gloomy, detecting that "the great expansion of the white races which began some three hundred years ago..." was on all present evidence, "drawing to an end".

For though Butler’s proposals in the White Paper provided what Leybourne and White had described as the one educational policy that had "much chance... the achievement of full Hadowism", they lacked its important rider: "offsetting the compression exercised by the expanses of education upon the birth rate".⁽⁶⁾ And as Butler’s Bill was borne through the House of Commons the wave of natalist euphoria was perhaps best expressed by that acute American anemometer - Lewis Mumford. Such were his views on the need to increase the birth rate that he was accused of being a fascist. He also argued that civilisation was "at a point technically" where it was "feasible to give the population as a whole that basis in good breeding and good nurture" which had "hitherto been the exclusive possession of aristocracies".⁽⁷⁾

And this is where the Tory Reform Committee came in. For it was Thelma Cazalet-Kerr who secured the removal of the marriage ban on women teachers, who came within 35 votes of raising the school leaving age to 16 and who actually defeated the government on equal pay for teachers. And this, whilst the second front was imminent.

Churchill’s reply showed how much more important he thought the falling birth rate was than Butler’s Bill when he announced on 9 May 1944 a Royal Commission on the Population. The Lord Chancellor was to preside over an enquiry into the statistical, medical, and economic factors behind the fall.⁽¹⁰⁾

On the very day Lord Simon’s appointment was announced, Churchill emphasised that the "destiny of the country" depended "upon an ever-flowing fountain of healthy children, born into what we trust will be a broader society and a less distracted world. Science, now so largely perverted to destruction, must raise its glittering shield not only over the children but over the mothers, not only over the families, but over the home."⁽¹¹⁾ And he seemed to be getting his wish. The layettes multiplied in early 1944 and the birth rate reached its highest point for any first quarter since 1920, 17.9 per thousand.⁽¹²⁾ And by the time that registered, Butler’s Bill was on the way to the Statute Book. As it was registered there so was the news of the rise in births. So cooled was the war-time enthusiasm of those who wanted to open the public schools to elementary schoolboys that Fleming’s report appeared as an anti-climax. Butler wrote to its author that "the schools were enjoying an almost unprecedented wave of prosperity.". "Most of them," he told G M Young on 14 September, "feel that they could not take 25 percent for very many years to come".⁽¹³⁾

With 366,000 fewer children between the ages of 5 and 14 in January 1944 than there were in March 1938 and 575,000 fewer children in local authority primary and secondary schools, the situation was greatly eased for the implementation of the Butler Act. The more so when his task was compared with Fisher’s at the end of the First World War which had to legislate for the education of two million more children.⁽¹⁴⁾

Yet even Butler had to announce in the first Circular of his new Ministry (which had replaced the old Board of Education) that the date for raising the school leaving age was to be postponed (it was originally to have been 1 April 1945). The Circular also announced that local authorities were not to be asked "at this juncture" for the submission of schemes for further education.

Such however was the impact of the ‘layette lobby’ in educational circles that the Journal of Education carried an article in October 1944 in which a medical psychologist argued that those who were anxious about the falling birth rate were "perhaps looking to the educationist more than anyone for a solution to the problem" in that they could teach that "marriage by 25 is to be expected". He argued that "we must aim at four-child marriages, the children of more gifted parents being more numerous and the less gifted fewer...schools might... include the number of children in their register of the achievements of old boys ... because recent work shows that the number of children follows the wishes of the father rather than the mother".⁽¹⁵⁾

His theme was massively reinforced in the same month when the Tory Reform Committee issued its manifesto: Tomorrow’s Children. This was to be an epilogue to the war. For it declared that "the desire to do the best by one’s children" was "not wholly to be met by a state education service based on a hard-and-fast division of districts into ‘pupil catchment areas’ administered arbitrarily, or in a machine-minded manner which makes no allowances for the social needs and idiosyncrasies of very different types and classes of people."⁽¹⁶⁾ Despite the Minister of Health’s attempt to pacify the Tory Reformers by warning them that a revival of nineteenth century reproduction rates would lead to a population of 110 million by the year 2000⁽¹⁷⁾ they were convinced that the country was on a "downward spiral". They foresaw "a dying nation, with always fewer people and more of them older, living in overgrown towns and suburbs, whose streets are half empty, working in factories they cannot fill, and amidst a countryside they are not numerous enough to keep in good cultivation".⁽¹⁸⁾

This mood prompted the economist D H Robertson to confess wryly that, "Like all conscientious Englishmen", he kept "permanently inscribed" on the ‘Agenda’ page of his pocket diary two entries: "(1) Mem: must raise net reproduction rate to at least one; (2) Mem: must increase volume of exports by at least 50% above 1938 level."⁽¹⁹⁾ As The Economic Journal declared "Pride in large families must somehow be restored.⁽²⁰⁾

REFERENCES

(1) Planning, No 141, 21 February 1949, p 11.

(2) ibid, 21 February 1939, pp 3-14.

(3) "What is vital is to transform the structure of society and the spirit of education together. Is R A Butler up to that?" Archbishop Temple to Julian Huxley, 10 August 1941 in J Huxley (b.1887) Memories, G Allen & Unwin, l970, p 256.

(4) Winston Churchill to R A Butler (b 1902), The Art of the Possible, Hamish Hamilton, 1971, p 109.

(5) Royal Commission on the Population, Cmnd. 7695, pp xix, 635, 1949.

(6) Leybourne and White, op. cit., p 365.

(7) N R Hughes (ed), The Letters of Lewis Mumford and Frederick J Osborne Bath, Adams and Dart, l971, p 36. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities Secker and Warburg, 1944, p 464. For the Bill had its critics. The Chairman of the Headmasters Conference opposed making secondary education free. The Society of Individualists published the criticisms of the White Paper made by the Principal of the University College of the South-West. The Roman Catholics declared their intention not to abate their demands. But the TUC welcomed it (subject to eight liberalising amendments) as providing "the legislative foundations on which a comprehensive and coherent system of educational provision can be built."

(8) The Economist, 22 January 1944.

(9) Butler, op cit., p 117.

(10) He was succeeded by H D Henderson who signed the report.

(11) R R James (ed.), op. cit. Greeting the publication of the "effective reproduction rates" for Britain during the years 1933 to 1943, The Times noted that for the first time in perhaps twenty years the nation’s "reproductive effort" had amounted to as much as nine times what was needed for the replacement of the contemporary generation. But it went on to warn that "it would be rash to jump to the conclusion that Britain’s population problem is well on the way to solving itself and that no Royal Commission on the birth rate is required." The Times, 29 April 1944, 5c.

(12) The Economist, 19 August 1944, p 244.

(13) Gosden, op.cit., pp 501 and 356.

(14) R M Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy, HMSO and Kraus Reprint, l976, pp 406-7. Lord Dawson of Penn (Hansard, Lords, 21 June 1939, col. 620) put it even more graphically: "There were 12 million children under the age of 15 in the year 1921 and if this movement goes on there will be only 6,000,000 of these young people under 15 in 1951."

(15) A Spencer Paterson, "The Falling Birth Rate and Educational Policy", Journal of Education, October 1944, p.474.

(16) Tory Reform Committee, Tomorrow’s Children, Europa Publications 1944, p 26.

(17) The Times, 17 July l943.

(18) Tory Reform Committee, Tomorrow’s Children, p 32.

(19) D H Robertson, "The Problem of Exports", Economic Journal, December l944 LV, p 321.

(20) Economic Journal, June 1946, p 286.