The Myth of the Society of Equality of Opportunity

One of the most astute moves ever played by Tony Blair – a politician whose deftness and manipulative skill appear almost fantastical compared to the clunking fists of his now flailing successor – was to invoke in the minds of a naturally conservative-leaning but disenchanted middle class the idea of a classless society. To put it into voters’ heads that “we are all middle class now” was a stroke of genius. Not only did it mollify the Labour party in the eyes of the “property-owning democracy” of Thatcher’s legacy – after all, if there is no working class, how could Labour any longer be perceived as the party of the unions or the great unwashed masses? – it made people feel comfortable about New Labour’s cynically effective occupation of the political centre-ground, for so long the preserve of the Tory party. Thus Blair with one masterful stroke both reassured those wary rightist whom Neil Kinnock had failed to woo (and who had thereby handed the country over to John Major for five more years), whilst placating those already established Labour voters troubled by Blair’s unashamed repositioning of Labour ever further to the right.

There exist two key components, amongst others, to the success of Blair – and New Labour generally – instilling in ordinary people the belief that Britain’s is a society which, by the close of the 20^th Century, had transcended class. These key components are meritocracy and equality of opportunity. Both are inter-connected, and both are far trickier concepts to bring under control than a New Labour spin-doctor would ever like you to know. Ask any academic political theorist about these two concepts, and watch as they roll their eyes and ask if you really want to pick up that rock and attempt to count those woodlice, which you will inevitable set scurrying about. But I have a passion for woodlice, so here goes.

First of all, it is worth recalling that the term ‘meritocracy’ was not introduced into the English language as a term of approval – though post-Blair (not to mention Clinton and other pioneers of the Third Way or of ‘Triangulation’) you’d be forgiven for not knowing this. Rather, ‘meritocracy’ was originally conceived by Michael Young in his 1958 work The Rise of the Meritocracy in which Young depicted a distopian society gone terribly wrong. A society in which the rich and powerful justified their wealth and influence over the less fortunate by claiming that they merited what they had and that the less fortunate were less fortunate because they deserved to be. Young was deeply troubled by the prospect of a society in which the needy were abandoned on the grounds that such neediness was itself considered proof of their deserving to be abandoned. But he was also worried by the possibility that a society could endorse a public policy of simply abandoning the needy even if the need really were responsible for their desperate state – let alone the likely reality that the vast majority would not be so responsible. This background is worth bearing in mind when discussing meritocracy because Young’s vision warns us of the dangers of pronouncing upon what people deserve, why they deserve it, and how much desert really ought to matter when it comes to helping or abandoning fellow human beings.

Of course, when Tony Blair advocated the meritocratic society he wasn’t referring to what Young had in mind. Blair meant something like ‘a society in which people do well because they deserve to do well, and are not constrained by their colour, sex, sexuality, class, religion and so forth’. And that all sounds very laudable – isn’t that something we should all endorse? Well, with the proviso that the word ‘deserve’ in that sentence probably means ‘judged by the standards of a capitalist market economy which rewards competitive ruthlessness and self-serving acquisition of wealth in order to obtain certain goods and positions deemed by the capitalist ethos to be of value’, it sounds about right. We might want to add a proviso which runs ‘and even those who don’t do well because they don’t deserve to – because unfortunately for them they were born a little slower than their economic rivals, or suffer from persistent bad luck combined with poor market choices, and so on – are nonetheless looked after and cared for by the rest of society regardless of the fact they don’t “deserve” to reach the top of the capitalist meritocratic ladder’. Although that proviso might sound a little too, well, socialist for Blair and co. it seems that on the whole we think that it is surely right that bars should not exist to people’s socio-economic advancement due to something as arbitrary as the colour of their skin, or their choice of sexual partner, or their class background.

A rather sticky problem with meritocracy as the Blairists would have you understand it, however, should not be overlooked. The draw-back with meritocracy is that it creates intergenerational inequalities. For example, if my parents do well in the capitalist rat-race and yours don’t, then my parents are in a position to pass on to me not just wealth itself, but derivatives of wealth like access to improved educational resources (who is going to have the time to read their child bed-time stories? The affluent parents who can buy books, or the couple working over-time to pay the bills?). The problem is that even if we can say that my parents deserved to do well and yours didn’t – a big ‘if’ in itself – this creates inequality between you and me. The son of wealthy parents, I have a higher likelihood across a range of indicators to do well in a market-based society than you do if your parents are poorer. Yet surely I no more ‘deserved’ to be the son of wealthy parents than you ‘deserved’ to be the child of poor parents. Thus in order to establish a genuine meritocracy in the sense Blair was appealing to, it is essential to have that other key component mentioned earlier: equality of opportunity.

Equality of opportunity is the lynch-pin of a society which is generally meritocratic in a sense that I believe most left-leaning people wish to endorse – the society in which people are not unfairly held back by arbitrary aspects of their person, history or situation, and who are instead judged upon their merit (though perhaps not their merit alone, as Young would be keen to remind us). Equality of opportunity is the guarantee that even if I am born to richer parents than you are, you will nonetheless have the same opportunity to do as well in life as I have. Equality of opportunity is thus something which we can see as not only important in itself – who but the self-avowed snobs of the upper classes could with a straight face publicly denounce such a thing? – but is essential if we are to have anything like a meritocracy in Britain today. Yet if Britain is really the ‘classless society’ Blair pronounced it to be, if we are really ‘all middle class now’, then surely we must live under a meritocracy – and in that case, we must surely have genuine equality of opportunity. For if this is not a meritocracy in Blair’s sense, then surely it must be a society of class. And if we lack equality of opportunity, we in turn cannot have meritocracy.

Thus, 11 years after Blair was elected to power partly on the back of pronouncements about this fabled classless society, it is worth reflecting on the extent to which Britons really do enjoy equality of opportunity. I hope to have cleared some of the more tricky conceptual undergrowth hidden by Blair’s appealing rhetoric, so that it can now be seen why it really matters to the state of the modern British class system whether even the deserving enjoy a genuine equality of opportunity.

In considering this it is worth reflecting upon something as basic as the inheritance tax. There is periodic uproar in the right-wing media about the so-called “death tax”, and in the USA following the 2001 repeal of the estate tax, inheritances of up to several million now have the potential to be accrued tax-free. Now it seems clear that a 100% inheritance tax is going to far – we all want to leave something behind for our children after we die, and many people need and appreciate the funds left to them by deceased parents and other relatives. Yet it is hard to reconcile the act of leaving sums of money – even that which is fairly and deservedly acquired through hard work – to those who themselves have done nothing to earn it, thus placing them at an economic advantage relative to those whose relatives could not bequeath them such great sums. Now this is not to say that inheritance is thereby wrong, or even that it is automatically incompatible with a genuine meritocracy or with equality of opportunity. But it does raise the question about the extent to which these things are compatible. If one genuinely desires a classless society, it becomes difficult to justify allowing people to bequeath sums to their children and relatives which privilege their economic (and thereby social) status.

Let us, however, leave the controversial issue of inheritance to one side and concentrate on a more anecdotal account in bringing into question the existence of modern British equality of opportunity. It is frequently remarked that while the poor in Britain have become better-off in absolute terms compared with 20 years ago, the gap between rich and poor has widened since 1979. Although one might be tempted to point out that as a developed OECD country with (until 2008) 15 years of continuous economic growth, it would have been utterly disgraceful if the poor weren’t getting better off now that 20 years ago. We might, however, be inclined to forgive this gap between rich and poor if it could be demonstrated that, in some sense, the rich were getting richer because they deserved to be, and that the increase in relative poverty was in turn reflective of the fact poorer people simply deserved less. While we might still wish to heed Young’s warnings and question whether economic desert should be the only concern of even a capitalist market-based society, perhaps such knowledge would placate us. My contention here is that we should not feel placated because such knowledge has little potential for basis in fact.

Take, for example, my friend who I shall refer to only as L. L is female, and comes from a modest, hard-working family in the North East of England. Her parents have worked continuously since the age of 16, and have supported L and her sister on a modest income. L excelled in school – a state comprehensive – and became one of the first members of her family to attend university. Indeed, she managed to break down what appear to be a number of traditional barriers to equality of opportunity by gaining admittance to the University of Oxford, and at a statistically male-dominated college. Though finding the intense, competitive and often macho Oxford environment at times intimidating and oppressive, she worked hard and earned a solid degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (all subjects dominated by white males, where one learns mostly about dead white males).

So far this sounds like a meritocratic success-story – but don’t jump to any conclusions just yet. In being female and state-school educated, with parents who had themselves never attended university, L had apparently smashed down the walls – indeed a recent Observer article noted that although independent schools account for only 7% of school children in the UK, 40% of Oxbridge students come from the private sector – L had made it into an institution which still disproportionately favours those who are privately educated. Thus despite the glaring lack of equality of opportunity in respect to gaining access to Britain’s elite educational institutions (though one should hesitate to lay the blame solely at the door of the university – the ailing state education system is also an important factor), L seemed to have triumphed. Surely all the doors were now open? With a degree from Oxford, isn’t it common knowledge that one can do anything?

You’d be surprised. L was dismayed to find that in making numerous applications to positions of employment she was declined on the grounds of having too little work-place experience. Enquiring as to how this experience might be gained, she was advised to apply for internships. Yet as anyone who has travelled to London in pursuit of such internships will know, outside of investment banking or management consultancy – two professions L found less than appealing given her political and ethical stances, not to mention her partiality for weekends – internships are rarely paid. Rather, graduates are expected to work for free on the promise of a CV reference. Of course, for those without relatives in London and who lack parental financial support to the tune of several thousand pounds, interning thus becomes an effective impossibility. Looking for another route into the employment sectors she felt she had earned the right to be considered for, L noticed that post-graduate qualifications were often looked upon favourably by prospective employers. She duly applied for postgraduate study, was delighted to be accepted – only to be informed that her fees would amount to several thousand pounds per annum, not including living expenses, and that she was eligible only for very partial funding. Her parents simply could not afford to subsidise her education, and so she was forced to decline her place. Ultimately L did take a brief internship with a prominent management consultancy firm – but she freely admits that it is unlikely she would have made it onto the programme if a friend’s father (the friend being, of course, an Oxford connection) was not a prominent member of the organisation and hadn’t ensured her CV was picked out from the thousands of declined applications.

In short, what L discovered is that despite hard work and the over-coming of many barriers to reach even the ivory towers of Oxford, that was not enough. To get anywhere near the top jobs that even the privileged graduates of Oxford and Cambridge are promised, she discovered that money still calls the shots, and connections still get you the jobs. It is fair to point out that as an Oxford graduate L is still placed to command a far better salary than most ever will – and that is surely true. The point, however, is that even somebody like L – deserving, hard-working, academically gifted and persevering – could not make it off the back of merit alone. If somebody like L finds that this ‘meritocracy’ is one whose cogs are greased by money that she does not posses, what hope for the less naturally able, for those with less dedicated or fortunate parents, for those whose schools were poorer and know nothing of the mysterious ways of Oxbridge, for those – and there are many – born into families poorer than L’s?

This is not a society of equality of opportunity. This is not a society where the rich are getting richer because they deserve to. This is a society in which money still matters. This is not a classless society. If opinion polls are anything to go by, the Eton and Oxford educated millionaire David Cameron will be our next prime minister. Tony Blair always cared a great deal about his legacy. 13 years after he walked into Downing Street to the tune of “things can only get better”, the election of David Cameron will constitute a suitable appendage.