News

12 March 2009

Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending Assembly and distributing prizes at Lympne Church of England Primary School.

The school is unique in that, in my time as Member of Parliament, it has been housed in no fewer than four buildings. The original building, where I visited the school many years ago, was in the precincts of Lympne Castle. A sign which is still there directs you to those buildings.

Then the school moved to its present site, to the building which was destroyed by fire. During the two years which it took to build a new school, it was forced to move to Folkestone. And now it has, happily, returned to Lympne and is flourishing in a splendid new building which offers all the facilities a modern school should provide.

Of course, a school’s buildings are only part of the story. Much more important is the quality of teaching for which, of course, the teaching staff are responsible and most important of all is the leadership provided by the headteacher. Lympne scores very highly in both these respects and headteacher Joyce Rhodes deserves special credit for the way in which she has steered the school through its recent vicissitudes.

On a very different topic, much has been said and written recently about the miners’ strike which took place 25 years ago.

It was an epic struggle in which it was impossible not to feel sympathy with individual miners and their families.

But there was a great deal at stake. Arthur Scargill had refused to call a ballot of his members to authorise the strikes. And the strike was, of course, a direct challenge to the authority of the elected government of the country. If it had succeeded, the prospects for our democracy would have been very serious.

So, looking back with hindsight, I remain of the view which I held at the time. It was essential that the Government had the will and determination to confront the challenge to its authority which the strike represented. And it was essential that the Government won.

Although many people still do not see it this way, the fact is that the whole country is better off as a result. And that, I believe, will be the verdict of history.