§ 3.37 p.m.
§ Debate resumed.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER)My Lords, the Government are extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for introducing this subject this afternoon, which they believe to be one of importance; and no one, if may say so, could have introduced it more happily than the noble Lord did. I do not propose to make a lengthy speech first, because this is not the Government's responsibility; secondly, because so many who are to sneak in the debate have so much more knowledge of this subject than I have, and, thirdly, bemuse my noble friend Lady Phillips will be replying at the end.
As I say, the Government are not responsible for the universities. The one thing on which I hope we shall all agree is the importance of the universities' remaining autonomous, free to decide their own curricula, free to maintain discipline as they think right. And although the Government must through the University Grants Committee, of course, decide what is the ultimate 707 amount of money available, and to a very small extent exercise some rights in relation to a few student grants, the governance of the universities must be a matter entirely for them. What I should like to do, but find it very difficult to do—and therefore I can only appeal to those who know a great deal more about this than I do—is to put these recent activities of the students in proportion. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said that what had been put before us by the mass media was a picture which was really totally unrepresentative. That was indeed the very first finding of the Latey Committee: that the public had got an entirely wrong idea about our young people.
Then we have to consider numbers. There are, I think, 5 million young men and women between school-leaving age and 21, and something less than 10 per cent. of them are in any form of further education—about 5 per cent. in the universities; about 200,000 in the universities; and about 200,000 in other forms of further education.
The main lesson, I think, which ran through a great deal of the Latey Committee's Report was this: that you have to have an age at which you become responsible for your actions, when you are free to live where you like and how you like within the law. Whatever age is fixed will be too high for some and too low for others; but on the whole the Committee thought, and the judges who deal with young people thought. that the right age to-day is 18; and their Report further accentuated the real harm which is done if you treat people who are responsible as if they were irresponsible.
The noble Lord, Lord Byers, mentioned various student disturbances, mainly in foreign countries. I have asked the Ministry of Education for a similar list so far as this country is concerned, starting in October last. There was only one last year; the others have all occurred in the last five months. There were 21 incidents in 17 different universities. If one inquires what they were all about, they appear to me to divide into two almost definite halves. The first half, which forms the majority, comprise: students morals; dismissal after examination failures; student grants; student representation: student grants; cost of 708 meals; noise; student representation; student representation; university organisation, and student participation. So that in the main this seems to be a movement for greater consultation and representation.
Although it is a long time ago now, my recollection of my understanding at the time I was at university is that the dons considered that they were the university, and the undergraduates were an unfortunate sort of excrescence for whom in their spare time, the dons gave some lectures and even prepared examinations. That obviously, I think, will not do now. If the Latey Committee were right in saying that 18 ought to be the age of majority then, when young people have been working for 12 years to acquire the right to a place at university, and the whole of their future earnings is going to depend on an academic qualification, for them to be sent down in their first year is obviously something which cannot to-day be justified, I should have thought, unless they had done something which might have resulted in a long term of imprisonment, and certainly not without some right of appeal and some right of representation.
The Charters of the 10 universities which were formerly colleges of advanced technology do, I understand, include provision, first, that the Council and the Senate are expressly empowered to establish joint committees of themselves and representatives of the student body. Secondly, provision is made whereby a procedure is laid down for a right on the part of a student suspended or expelled to be formally heard by the Senate, or a body appointed by the Senate, before a decision becomes final. The Charters include provision for associations—for example, student unions representing the student body.
Obviously, the degree to which there should be representation must be a matter for the Vice-Chancellors. Some claims that one has seen made seem to be quite absurd. But it is a question of degree, and, I should imagine, largely of the particular relations in the particular university. The Lord Chancellor is always the Visitor at Newcastle University and at some of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges. When recently I was at Newcastle to open new buildings I had a long talk, both with the Vice-Chancellor and with 709 the president of the Student Union. There they had had no trouble of any kind at all. The students own their own building, which they run entirely themselves with bars and cafés, and places to dance and talk. I think that the president, while he holds office, virtually has a year off—a sabbatical year. He told me that there is no difficulty about his seeing the Vice-Chancellor at any time that he wants to, and that there has been no sort of difficulty or dispute between the students and the university.
I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, is right in saying that the speed of the expansion rate has not made things any easier for Vice-Chancellors; also, perhaps, that the need for increasing the number of teachers may (I do not know) have resulted in teachers of a rather lower quality than before. One reads in the newspapers accounts of extremists; that there is a Communist conspiracy and so forth. That does not seem to me probable. One of the features of student opinion seems to be a withdrawal from organised politics. Students do not appear to draw any distinction between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party: they are all "the Establishment." The Communist Party they seem to view as part of the Establishment also. I did not see it myself, but I have been told that there was a particularly virulent leading article in the Morning Star, about Mr. Cohn-Bendit. But that, of course, is only in accord with the attitude of the Communist Party in France towards the students.
There do seem to be a certain number of anarchists. I should like to pay tribute, as the noble Lord. Lord Sandford, did to what seems to be the quite responsible attitude of the National Union of Students. What one does about the anarchists, I am not sure. But what I should like to know from those who know so much more about this subject than I do is, is this a "flash in the pan"? Is this a thing which is going to die down as suddenly as it arose? Is it going to continue? And, if so, is it going to increase?
I said that the incidents in England appeared to me to divide pretty well 710 into two, that the first and larger half seemed to be mainly concerned with claims for increased representation. The subject matter of the incidents in the second group (and these were the only ones where, so far as I can see, there was either violence or a threat of violence) was: Vietnam; Vietnam Vietnam; race relations; war racialism: chemical warfare; Vietnam, and Vietnam. I suppose it would be true to say that nearly all young people throughout the world are really revolted by this terrible war ——which is, after all, in the main, a war between white people and coloured people—and that they feel equally strongly about racialism, which they see as a moral issue.
It is a funny thing, but when I was young the Conservative Party were always the Party which stood up for the Commonwealth and the Established Church. To-day, apart from the old Dominions, they are always talking "mud" about the Commonwealth; and when they get a moral issue, when the most reverend Primate gets up to speak, they openly jeer at him, and the Methodist Conference and the Bench of Bishops. I must not go back to yesterday, but I would say how much I have enjoyed the last few days, because if anybody previously thought, as think many young people have done, that there is no real difference between the two Parties, here at last is the moral issue on which there is a clear one.
My Lords, I promised to speak quite shortly. I am not here to teach; I am here to learn. I should suspect that if one really knew about all the university students there are, one would find that 95 per cent. of them were hard at work at their studies and probably engaged in their spare time on Task Force or other welfare work. I do not think I disagreed with anything said by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. If I may respectfully say so, I thought that everything he said was most sensible, and I particularly agree with him that there is a great weight of responsibility on the Vice-Chancellors. I am sure that they will act responsibly, and that we should support them in everything they do.