CHAIR of the Labour Party Ian Lavery MP has announced his support for the grassroots campaign Labour Against Private Schools. In a video released on Facebook the ex-miner called for schools like Eton to be abolished in order to “curb the excesses of society and balance out opportunities to eradicate injustice.”

Ian Lavery is the most senior figure so far to lend his support to the campaign, following MPs including Ed Miliband, former leader of the party, and Norwich South MP Clive Lewis.

The campaign, commonly known by its Twitter handle @abolishEton, is calling for a motion to be debated at the Labour Party conference in Brighton this September to change Labour Party policy on private education.

If successful it could see a radical shift in thinking within the party regarding the status of private education. Already the 2017 Labour Party manifesto called for the removal of the VAT exemption on private school fees but this motion goes even further, suggesting a number of possible options.

These include the option to seize investments and properties held by private schools and for these to be placed into a national educational endowment. These new resources would then be democratically and fairly distributed across the country’s educational institutions.

In the lead-up to the Labour Party conference in September it is clear to see a growing feeling within the party that this is an issue that needs tackling. Since the launch of the campaign over 300 Labour councillors signed an open letter in support of the motion.

The letter was, in itself, a response to a scaremongering letter from the Independent Schools Council (ISC). The councillors stated that “class segregation of schools is a burning injustice” and roundly rejected claims from the Independent Schools Council that integrating private schools into the state sector would mean an “unbearable burden” on council budgets calling these claims “grossly inflated” and declaring that “unless we break up the old boys’ network that hoards power and privilege, educational inequality will continue.”

Although it is unclear the position party leader Jeremy Corbyn takes, he stated at the National Education Union conference that he believes “education is a public good, not a private commodity.”

The Times reported that sources close to the leader have said that “private schools are clearly central to the stranglehold that the Establishment has over Britain and the perpetuation of the privilege of a lucky few. This is a policy area that we have been looking at very closely and we will continue to look at how we can go further to remove the unfair privileges granted to private schools and their students.”

The full text of Ian Lavery’s speech can be read below:

“Throughout the UK children are born into disadvantage, born with odds of all sorts stacked against them. Even how long you are likely to live is decided by the family, the community and the geographic location to which you are born.

In a country where those in power are consistently from the most privileged of backgrounds, a country where Boris Johnson is the second old-Etonian to be Prime Minister in just four years — we need to stop and think, what sort of message does this send to the millions of children with hopes and dreams whose parents cannot afford the £14,000 per term costs to send their child to Eton?

It is the duty of any fair government to curb the excesses of society and balance out opportunities to eradicate injustice. If we hope to make any meaningful change to a system that prioritises wealth and privilege over support for the most vulnerable in our society, we must deal with the origin of these injustices: private schools.

Labour against Private Schools are running an excellent and vitally important campaign to ensure that a key commitment of the next Labour government is to remove these pillars of elitism from our society and instead invest in a world-class cradle to grave education system that benefits the many, not the few.”

Follow the campaign on Twitter: @AbolishEton