Frank and Benedict

It was, he said, when he received a delegation of pensioners whose lives were blighted by youths running over the roofs of their bungalows, breaking windows and perpetrating fear, that he changed his mind. He moved form the politics of class to the politics of relationships. Frank Field has been a prominent member of the General Synod of the Church of England, but he noted with rather too much zest, I thought, Attlee's rejection of what the former PM called the "mumbo jumbo" of religious belief while retaining the Christian Ethic. I think the Pope is right: without the "mumbo jumbo," the apparatus of faith and belief, the ethic is simply arbitrary. If the ethic is arbitrary then it is easy to challenge and overthrow its power actually to change behaviour and establish morality.

Frank Field gave the nineteenth Attlee lecture tonight in Big School and congratulations to the Politics society and to Michael Perrins, Head of Politics for all the organization.

Mr Field divided his lecture into two. In the first half he spoke of his current work as an advisor to the Government on poverty. He described how his view has changed over the years, moving from the conclusion that poverty can be cured by money to a conviction that what is needed is a development of society, specifically in education. Children who are read to by an adult with whom they bond before the age of five are likely to do well; those who are not read to almost always fall back. Whether it is the reading itself or whether this is the symptom of a much wider range of things that are supporting the young child he did not say. When you hear the Pope talk about the need to up hold the family he is not speaking of reactionary shackles to individual freedom, but is there with Frank Field at the cutting edge of the response to poverty. Field argued that if you come out of school able to get a job that 'brings a wage to the table' you will be able to rise out of poverty.

He noted that in his constituency of Birkenhead  40 years ago there were thousands of jobs for unskilled workers. Today there are just seven hundred. But the overall number of jobs has grown. So to come out of school with no qualifications condemns you now not to a life in industry but to long term unemployment. Mr. Field linked this with the refusal of young women to "shack up" (his phrase) with the fathers of their children and to the dislocation of society. When the Pope speaks of the sanctity of marriage and the need for sexual continence he is not far from this.

There was more - suggestions for an end to the long summer vac (but when will schools get building work done?) and for finding a way to stagger entry to school so that summer babies (like me!) are not disadvantaged. Then he spoke about Attlee as a leader. More about these things maybe tomorrow -it is late now.

At dinner in Common Room afterwards I had Ostrich for the first time and much enjoyed it. How the other half live.