Situated on the banks of the River Thames; on the Berkshire-Oxfordshire border, Carmel College is a Jewish public school which aims to combine a secular English education with a "traditional" training in "Jewishness", that curious amalgam of Neolithic Judaism and extreme right-wing nationalism.
Arriving there at the age of 10, I was a more or less immediate victim of religious obscurantism. This, coupled with my avid, if involuntary, interest in Hebrew and frequent beatings, soori made me into the ideal, well-behaved, unquestioning little boy required by Carmel convention.
I was soon promoted to senior school status, Workers and passed quite a few unexciting, alienated years, the details of which are too sickening to be recounted here, before waking up with a jolt to the realities of life, both inside and outside Carmel.
A whole series of events have come to pass since, all of which go to show that once an explosive volcano starts to vibrate, there's no telling what'll happen next. Schools Action Union posters were deemed "unsuitable" for the not. ce board, kids suspended and expelled for such demonic activities as smoking, playing guitars on the Sabbath, walking out of a class to watch the historic moon landings, and actually making' not puzzle Marxists, particularly if they are love (it's a pseudo-mixed school-15 girls to 200 boys)-the cardinal sin according to some ancient document or other.
Repression is rampant-there are no outlets for dissent, save the Union Society, the struc tural function of which is aptly described by IS's pamphlet "Education, Capitalism, and the Student Revolt" as follows: "The central fact here is that student unions always operate on the basis of the 'apathy' of the majority of the students (which itself is a product of the lack of power of the unions). Even where there are regular general meetings, these rarely discuss issues considered important by the majority.
Tony Topham was ill; IS and the CP were thinner on the ground and "Militant" were thicker. They tend to become the preserve of a minority obsessed with these matters... " Moreover, the Headmaster is the President, and the Senior English Master the Vice-President!
As for Carmel's place in the wider political world, it is, of course, financed by West End businessmen, who, naturally, do nothing for nothing (one of the top knobs from Marks and Spencer recently visited the school to give a talk to an "Economics" class), the head boy is a fierce partisan of the Greek junta (and, from my own experience, he has assimilated these gentlemen's methods admirably) which should armed with the knowledge that his father is Greece's leading steel monopolist, and Saturday's prayers contain a short piece for the wel fare of Harold, Elizabeth & Co. (I, too, pray that they will soon need the Almighty's help!) The editor of the Dwarf, a well-known "trouble maker", was refused permission to visit the school on several occasions (there are left-wing anti-Semites too, you know).
The Middle East situation is not neglected either. At the time of the Six-Day War, the school authorities staged a massive fund-raising campaign, to which everyone, including the author of this article, contributed (just try and complaints about branch secretaries. The only conclusions reached were that a) democracy in gauge the amount of ideological indoctrina tion!), and work virtually came to a halt for about a week, so hysteria-gripped was the whole atmosphere. Since then, Uzi Narkiss one of the blue-eyed boys of Zionist expan sionism, who was personally responsible for the annexation of Jerusalem, has spoken at the school, thus offsetting accusations made by ex tremist elements to the effect that the school was not sufficiently appreciative of Israel's attempts to obtain precious "Lebensraum". De. spite repeated promises that senior boys would be able to hear a spokesman for the Arab point of view, no one was invited down for that purpose, and a proposal to hear Musa Mazzawi, a distinguished Palestinian lawyer, was rejected as in breach of Union constitution.
Yes, it's a sorry mess and the tragedy is that due to the strong centralisation of power, there is Little prospect of changing a situation in which boys have their hair inspected for length (according to the extraordinarily liberal Senior Housemaster, who is bald, it needn't, however, be as short as his) and have to rise at 7 in the morning to attend primitive, pagan-like prayer sessions.
Any transformation will have to come from the outside. LIBERATE CARMEL!
in was more money. This philistine speech brought the conference to life for the first time