On one of the many recent “crunch” votes in Parliament, I caught the 10 o’clock news and saw a new and unexpected twist on the tortuous road to Brexit. One of the MPs acting as a teller was not wearing a tie! As someone who used to work in Parliament in my years before teaching, this was a shock and a revelation. Since when did MPs not wear ties to vote? Why had I spent a hot afternoon enforcing neckwear rules in school when the mother of Parliaments had already ditched the traditional tie?
Actually, two of the other tellers weren’t wearing ties either – the two female MPs on camera – but it was the sight of a tieless male MP that caught my eye. Female MPs have little time for ties; and their growing numbers is, of course, one of the ways in which Parliament is finally catching up with the rest of society. But if their dress code is also moving into the 21st century, it could leave thousands of schools looking, well, decidedly conservative when it comes to neckwear.
Apparently, Parliament has Liberal Democrat Tom Brake to thank for this loosening of the collar rules. It was Brake who broke with tradition last year – and the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, who allowed him to address the Chamber open-necked. Ties for gentlemen were never a rule, only a convention, it seems (according to Erskine May, the gospel of Parliamentary procedure – a volume we spoke of in hushed tones of reverence when I worked there). Bercow insists only on “business-like attire”; and anyone who deals with business people on a regular basis (as schools aspire to) knows that the tie is as essential in today’s office as a fax machine or a Dictaphone. If I caught less of my parliamentary news on the Today programme and more on the gogglebox, I’d have spotted sooner how MPs had stolen a march on us. It’s all part of Bercow’s modernisation programme, updating the dress of the clerks, for example, so that wigs in the chamber are now as rare as Whigs in the chamber.
When will schools catch up with the tie reality?
I have lawyer friends who don a tie only for court, banker friends who only have a tie for funerals – and female colleagues and friends (bankers and lawyers among them) for whom the whole ridiculous question never arises. Why do schools persist with a piece of male attire that is going the way of braces and breeches? And why do we inflict it on female pupils, too, in the name of equality and a non-litigious, gender-neutral uniform policy?
My current school’s tie is a nasty elasticated pre-tied affair. I’m not sure if its ready-made design is to avoid pupils having to master a tricky Windsor knot or to stop them strangling each other in moments of confrontation – just as policemen’s ties are rarely the genuine article. Requiring a tie in school puts us in esteemed company, of course: Wimbledon, the Ritz, MCC members sat in the Pavilion at Lord's cricket ground. But shouldn’t we be siding with the Commons, not Lords? Shouldn’t we be preparing our pupils for the workplaces of the future, not the bastions of privilege in the past?
Schools don’t need to ditch uniform altogether as they untie this particular knot. There are other forms of corporate identity and – yes – branding that a school can adopt. A badge on a blazer or a design on a sweatshirt can still help to proclaim what we stand for and where we learn. But to cling to a fashion item created by Croatian mercenaries in the 17th century seems outdated. The fact that the fashion accessory was popularised by the French king Louis XIV says it all. Tom Brace summed up his response to the parliamentary ruling by tweeting “Revolution!” Let’s follow suit In our meritocratic, democratic Britain, the old school tie is – let’s face it – old school.
John Gallagher is faculty learning leader for English and media at Sponne School in Towcester, Northamptonshire
