The Black Papers were a series of pamphlets on education, their name being a contrast to government White Paper

White paper

A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions, and are often requested and used in politics, policy, business, and technical fields. In commercial use, the term has also come to refer to...

s.

According to the Critical Quarterly website the Black Papers were:

"...an attack on the excesses of progressive education and the introduction by the Labour Party of a system of 11-18 comprehensives to replace the grammar school...the furore it created led to the publication of four more pamphlets. Contributors included Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis

Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

, Robert Conquest

Robert Conquest

George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...

, Geoffrey Bantock, Jacques Barzun

Jacques Barzun

Jacques Martin Barzun is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United...

, Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch

Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...

 and Rhodes Boyson

Rhodes Boyson

Sir Rhodes Boyson is a British educator, author and politician and a former Conservative Member of Parliament for Brent North...

. The Black Papers were not opposed in principle to progressive education, only to its excesses, which were rampant in British schools in the 1960s and 1970s. They criticised selection for grammar schools at the age of eleven and advocated it should be delayed until children were at least thirteen years of age. They criticised the student sit-ins which were damaging the reputation of British universities...The editors became leaders in a national campaign; today the Black Paper proposals for schools by and large are accepted by both the Conservative and Labour Parties in Britain."

The first two, both published in 1969, had the most impact:

• Fight for Education, March 1969, edited by Charles Brian Cox and A.E. Dyson
• Crisis in Education, edited by Charles Brian Cox

The Labour

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 Secretary of State for Education

Secretary of State for Education and Skills

The Secretary of State for Education is the chief minister of the Department for Education in the United Kingdom government. The position was re-established on 12 May 2010, held by Michael Gove....

 Edward Short

Edward Short, Baron Glenamara

Edward Watson Short, Baron Glenamara, CH PC is a former Labour Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, England. He was a minister during the Labour Governments of Harold Wilson...

 said in a speech to the National Union of Teachers

National Union of Teachers

The National Union of Teachers is a trade union for school teachers in England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It is a member of the Trades Union Congress...

in 1969:

"In my view the publication of the Black Paper was one of the blackest days for education in the past century".

...and forty years later had not changed his views, saying of them:

"These were scurrilous documents; quite disgraceful".