[A-List] UK ideological state apparatus: schools

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

When he's not being a director of Hakluyt, the private security firm set up
by retired MI6 spooks and overseen by, among others, "Lady Smith of
Gilmorehill" (widow of former Labour Party leader John Smith), Michael
Maclay is the chairman of something called the Citizenship Foundation.
Established in 1989, the CF describes itself as "working to promote more
effective citizenship through education about the law, democracy and
society". To this end it produces teaching materials for secondary schools
and organises public events for people of all ages. You can find out more
about this organisation at http://www.citfou.org.uk/index.php4

Veteran New Labour-watchers will know that "citizenship" was one of the main
themes of David Blunkett's tenure as Education Secretary, and it is during
that tenure that the CF seems to have taken off as a campaigning
organisation. It produces a range of glossy brochures and booklets for
teenagers promoting the sort of citizen participation eagerly touted by New
Labour publications papering over the transparent lack of internal Labour
Party democracy with appeals to exciting "Policy Forums" and the like. No
doubt full of genuinely useful information (e.g. a description of the Lord
Chancellor's department, a most curious constitutional anomaly combining the
executive, legislature and judiciary in one office), these publications
nevertheless come with an agenda attached, and it's all too easy to see what
that is. It's the sort of New Labourish cosy do-gooding strictly within the
limits of mainstream acceptability touted by other outfits like the New
Politics Network, the former CPers who became born-again New Labourites and
now promote "greater effectiveness" in political campaigning.

Michael Keaney