HIDDEN AGENDA

noun (Politics) A secret motivation or bias behind a statement, policy, etc.; an ulterior motive. Etymology: Formed by combining hidden in its principal figurative sense of 'secret' with agenda, a word which is increasingly used as a countable singular noun meaning 'a list of things to be discussed at a meeting' and hence also 'an individual issue needing discussion or action'. History and Usage: Like heterosexism, hidden agenda derives from the discussion of social issues in education; particularly during the late sixties and seventies there was much discussion of the concept of a hidden curriculum in schools, whereby pupils acquired a sense of social value or disadvantage from the prevailing attitudes rather than the subjects that were taught. This concept was translated into that of the hidden agenda in political contexts, international relations, labour relations, etc. during the late seventies and eighties and this became a favourite phrase among journalists in the second half of the eighties. Hidden Agenda was even the title of a controversial British film dealing with the question of a 'shoot-to-kill' policy in Northern Ireland (see Stalkergate in the entry for -gate). There's family politics, sure, but our jobs are not being threatened...So when we get into disagreements there's no hidden agenda. Cambridge Chronicle (Massachusetts) 6 Mar. 1986, p. 13 Barrell's general programme is to point out the presence of a hidden political agenda in the strategies of a poem. Essays in Criticism Apr. 1990, p. 161