Heroes and Villains

Robert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke, is a hero of mine. Never heard of him? I’m not surprised, because as with many heroes, he had a few flaws. Quite a few, actually. His albinism, which would have made him stand out from the crowd, with a pale face under a shock of white hair, affected his eyesight and prevented his pursuit of a career in law. Still not selling him? Undaunted, he moved to Australia, where he became a successful politician and ran a large legal practice. On his return to England, he became Liberal MP for Kidderminster. Oh, dear, this is not sounding very convincing! As a member of Gladstone’s government, his work at the Board of Trade earned him the sobriquet, ‘the father of modern company law’. Still no competition for Mandela? At the Education Office, he introduced ‘payment by results’, which made inspection of pupil attainment in the ‘Three Rs’, the condition for the granting of public funds. Early Ofsted? Is that good? Not really, but it ensured the establishment of a national system of education for those who could, as well as those who could not, pay for it. The 1870 Education Act set out to provide places for every child to attend school up to the age of twelve. (Hero bit coming …) He recognised that, one day, a great deal of power would rest in the hands of the ordinary man and it was, therefore important that a well educated working class should exist. Even the Victorians liked soundbites and reported him as saying, “We must educate our masters”. In fact, he actually said that it was necessary, “to induce our future masters to learn their letters." He shocked some of his university friends by favouring the teaching of the physical sciences, as opposed to classical studies, but he recognised that the great success story of the age was engineering, not the study of antiquity. Gladstone appointed him as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1868, but his insistence that tax should be fair to all classes of society, set him at odds with many of his colleagues. With Gladstone’s support, he was elevated to the peerage in 1880, despite Queen Victoria’s opposition. So on balance? Robert Lowe never stopped trying to move forward, to improve, to learn something new or to ditch something old. It was this resolve which helped him to overcome disability and to rise in a class-bound society from a relatively lowly start as the son of a vicar, to one of the great offices of state. He rattled quite few cages, but stood for fairness; he was an excellent orator and a cut-and-dried economist and he looked to the future rather than the past. It tells us a lot about his sense of humour that, when the following epitaph was suggested for him, he was so pleased with it that he translated it into Latin. Here lies poor old Robert Lowe; Where he's gone to I don't know; If to the realms of peace and love, Farewell to happiness above; If, haply, to some lower level, We can't congratulate the devil.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of spending time with a Kenyan headteacher, who in the course of our conversation, told me about the lengths pupils go to in order to secure a place at a secondary school in his country. Entry is determined by public examination and is so highly prized that, if a child fails the selection process, he is often sent to live with a relative in another village, in order to make another attempt. Thank you for recognising the importance of education, Mr Lowe. Let none of us take it for granted.