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20 Jan 2025 | |
Written by John Sadden | |
OP updates |
The history of mock elections at PGS shows that pupils, when given the opportunity to take sides, have been overwhelmingly supportive of the Conservatives.
Over a hundred years ago a Debating Society motion that “this house would welcome a return to Conservative government” was carried. The following year, in 1923, pupils voted for the Conservative candidate in what is believed to have been the school’s first mock election. This result was repeated in mock elections in 1933, 1935 and 1937. Some indication of pupil opinion at the time was suggested when, a quarter of a century after the suffragette movement, a motion that “the power of women has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished” was carried. It was, of course, an all-boy school at the time.
After six years of war and sacrifice, returning servicemen helped give Labour a landslide victory in 1945. Bitter memories of Conservative failure to make Britain “a land fit for heroes” after the First World War, and the enrichment of some individuals and companies, convinced many that Labour’s promises of a National Health Service, social care, public ownership of energy and other essential industries and public services was well worth voting for. However, a school debate in 1946, which suggested that “the result of the last General Election was a national disaster”, was carried.
During that year a new teacher of History was appointed. He was Oxford educated (St John’s), where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. As a young man in the 1930s he was a member of the South Manchester Peace Council which took part in a successful nationwide campaign to prevent the Nazi, Goering, from attending as Germany’s representative at the King’s coronation.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, just two years later, Mr J A Purton joined the army to fight the fascist threat. In 1942, while serving with the Somerset Light Infantry, he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in action and rose to the rank of Lt Col. Following demobilisation in 1945, he joined Portsmouth Grammar School as a teacher of History. Lt Col J A Purton soon got a mention in the Portmuthian for improving the performance of the school training corps’ shooting team. He took musketry practice every Wednesday at the open range at Tipnor.
But he did not stay long. He left in 1948 and is reported to be standing as a Communist Party candidate in the Ealing local elections and, later, in Southall, in the General Election of 1950. He doggedly stood in more local elections but appears to have given up attempts in 1954 after polling 144 votes against Labour’s 3,672 and the Tories’ 1,664.
In the school’s mock election of 1949, the Conservatives were beaten by one vote and Labour came third. The winner was the Communist Party candidate, a pupil who had shrewdly distanced his communist vision from the actuality in Stalinist Russia. It is not known whether Lt Col Purton’s influence played any part, but he made no secret of his political beliefs while at the school. How he got on with the likes of Colonel Willis in the Common Room is not known.
But there was no enduring legacy. Pupils went Liberal in 1950 and subsequently returned to the Conservatives in 1951, 1964, 1966, 1970, 1974 (twice), 1987, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2024.
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