Last summer I took a class of young GPO workers to the Stock Exchange. We were shown a film about the delights of Big Business and the world of money. We were smiled at and talked to by pretty girls in smart uniforms. There was nothing in the papers next day about the indoctrination the GPO boys had been subjected to.
A few Thursday's ago I had a class of London Electricity Board apprentices. I teach boys Liberal Studies - which means, amongst other things, current affairs. The topical issue today is student protest. I want the boys to get a first-hand impression of what it's all about, so I ask them if they'd like to go to the University of London Union to see what's going on - and, if possible, talk to some LSE students. They agree enthusiastically.
At ULU we go to the information desk and ask if there are any LSE students about. They find one for us. We all go into the hall, and the LEB boys ask him questions for about half an hour. When the discussion is over, we go back to college and talk about what the LSE student has said. The boys are critical, but glad they've had the chance to see for themselves.
While still at ULU, though, I have met an old friend of mine, Rodney Tyler. He has asked me what I'm doing these days and more particularly what I'm doing at ULU. I tell him. He then tells me he is now a reporter on the Daily Mail.
By midnight the first edition of the Daily Mail is out. Mr Tyler's information about his friend has proved very interesting to his bosses. It seems, in fact, that my Liberal Studies class is the most important event that has taken place in the entire world that Thursday. It occupies over 100 column inches on the front page under the heading "Lesson in Revolution'. There is also a photo - across seven columns.
The minute the first edition appears, the jackals of Fleet • Street are on to me. The Express understands that I might not want to make a statement, but wonders if I have anything to say off the record'. (Is anything you say to the Express ever off the record?) An Express reporter is there in person banging on my front door at 1 am. And the phone keeps ringing till 4 am.
lie awake, convinced that they'll hound me out of my fantasies about the things will say if they give me a fair chance:
At about 8 am the baby wakes up. AsI fetch her from her bedroom, I see two eyes staring at me through the letter-box. It is a reporter: | whom I tell quite reasonably to go away. Although I'm standing twelve feet back from the door, this conversation is described in the Evening Standard as me shouting go away through the letter-box when reporters call at my house.
At 9 am I try to phone my college Principal. But the phone isn't disconnecting when I put it down, and there's an Evening Standard reporter at the other end. So whenever I pick up the phone, there's this voice:
Mr Hoyland?' In the end I'm screaming at him: "Get off the line! Will you get off the line! LEAVE ME ALONE!"
By now I've realised the golden rule: don't have anything to do with them. No statements, no photos, nothing. Because they're incapable of conducting themselves with the minimum standards of integrity, and they'll use anything you do or say against you.
Not only the papers. The BBC tricks County Hall into going on The World at One by telling them l've agreed to go on myself - which I haven't. And during the afternoon a female BBC reporter sees fit to stand in front of my house, peering into the window and describing what she can see into a tape-recorder. This monologue is later broadcast on the South-East News, because it is very important that the British Nation should know how my kitchen is decorated.
My liberal studies class is big news now. All the papers are on to it, so is the television & radio. When I go out, reporters chase me in taxis. There are reporters at college, reporters at County Hall. I feel impotent. The whole thing is weird and scaring and unfair. But the teachers at college are very nice and stick by me, and in the afternoon papers I see that some of my students have said they'll have a sit-in if I'm sacked. They send a note of support to my house. Beautiful. I almost weep. Solidarity isn't just an idea — it's love in action, a human and humanising experience..
The LEB boys are fantastic, too. On the TV they say all right things. Almost certainly, they save me my job. For in the end nothing happens. Because for all the Daily Mail's scare-mongering I've done nothing wrong except that I've failed to permission from the head of department before taking the students out Bút then, I didn't do that when I took the students to the Stock Exchange either. Nobody seemed to mind then. I wonder why.
John Hoyland A scandalous state carried away by the tide of modern capitalism.
We are now on our way to recapture our hopes.
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