Labour may be struggling but there is more intellectual energy on the left than for a generation

Published 23 July 2009

There are signs that the centre left is slowly emerging from the intellectual deep freeze in which it has been suspended for so long

If the response to Unleashing Aspiration, Alan Milburn's report for the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, is anything to go by, most of us believe in greater social mobility and equality of opportunity these days. The panel's commitment to breaking open the informal closed shop that strangles entry to top universities and the professions was endorsed by politicians on both left and right, including David Willetts, the shadow universities and skills secretary, who "welcomed" Milburn's prescriptions for broadening access to higher education. (Though he was notably silent on a number of the report's other recommendations, including the proposal that unpaid internships, a principal mechanism of social and professional exclusion, be subject to regulation.)

But, as that great tribune of ethical socialism, R H Tawney, observed nearly 80 years ago, a rhetorical commitment to equality of opportunity costs nothing, not least to those who would resist even the most tentative attempts to put it into practice. Happily, there are signs that several leading Labour politicians are ready to acknowledge this, and that the centre left is slowly, very slowly, emerging from the intellectual deep freeze in which it has been suspended for so long. They are talking seriously about equality again.

It would be a scandal if the left fumbled the opportunity for ideological renewal offered by the shock that the financial crisis has administered to the New Labour project simply by tinkering at the edges of lightly regulated financial capitalism.

At the recent launch of his Open Left project at the think tank Demos, the former work and pensions secretary James Purnell said there was more energy "on the left" than at any time he could remember - and a readiness, he might have added, to talk in terms that would have been unimaginable until only recently. Purnell has written that ensuring that individuals are genuinely free to choose for themselves the kinds of lives they wish to lead requires more than a Kitemark on internships: it requires a full-frontal challenge to "unfair distributions of power, wealth, chances, knowledge and choices".

This is inspiring stuff. However, this is only the beginning of a debate about progressive core values, of which the notion of equality is surely the most fundamental.

“People on the left are all egalitarians," Purnell also declared. "We [only] disagree about equality of what." As Jonathan Derbyshire shows in his profile of Amartya Sen on page 32, Purnell is increasingly influenced by the Nobel Prize-winning economist. For Sen, inequality of income matters. And Labour has done much, since 1997, to attenuate the effects of extreme poverty in this country. But Sen reminds us that income is not the whole story: people want income and resources not just for the sake of having them, but for what they allow them to do. And giving people more money won't help if they don't also have certain basic "capabilities". By capabilities he means not only basic needs such as nutrition and literacy, but also the power to participate in society at large as a citizen. This is genuine empowerment.

The idea that inequality is about more than money is an attractive and obvious one, but it doesn't follow that disparities in income and wealth don't matter. They do, and this is something that Purnell's intellectual sparring partner on the left of the Labour Party, Jon Cruddas, has insisted upon: inequality of wealth and assets skews the distribution of both capabilities and opportunities.

Cruddas is playing Tawney off against Purnell's guru Sen here. For Tawney insisted that greater equality is crucial to social well-being for two reasons: first because it enables individuals to write their own life-scripts, to choose
their own version of the good life. Freedom and equality, by this view, are inseparable. Second, and just as important, equality matters because cohesion and solidarity are as important to societies as freedom and diversity.

Which means that the centre left should not be "intensely relaxed" about the super-rich getting richer so long as the people
at the bottom and the middle get dragged up behind them. A society as unequal as ours is, as Cruddas says, "simply dysfunctional".

So the debate has begun. And between now and the next general election we shall be opening up our pages to those progressive thinkers and politicians who are serious about ideas, both in the abstract and in their application to the way we live today.

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5 comments from readers

Gerry Myer
24 July 2009 at 10:00

“Lurk Sarah, this has godda stop” proclaimed Milburn on the BBC Today programme as he attributed limited social mobility to a conspiracy of old-boy networks. Well, there is a positive correlation between income level and the number of friends previously made at school but that does not necessarily prove an old-boy network; it simply points to the importance of social skills in determining career advancement.

It is ironic that New Labour politicians bemoan poor social mobility when it was Labour who destroyed the grammar schools which had given opportunity to bright children regardless of social class.

As an ardent advocate of equality of opportunity and an opponent of extremes of income, I am constantly amazed by the obsession of the Left for total equality – “equality of capability” according to Milburn – and by their denial of the role of genetic inheritance. Equality is impossible unless the state controls the breeding and rearing of children, and what an undesirable aim that is – a nation of virtual clones.

Next in dominance to the genetic factor is early upbringing; an infant who has been constantly talked with and always treated reasonably by both parents can, by the age of 3, have the vocabulary beyond the average 9 year old. But Labour has encouraged materialism and working mothers and who, through the tax system, has undermined traditional marriage. Yes, Mr Cruddas, our society is dysfunctional; just look at the marriage record of Labour MPs.

Is not Milburn’s latest wheeze merely a thinly-veiled electioneering stunt intended to alienate the electorate from the Tories who are perceived to epitomise privilege.

Daniele
26 July 2009 at 21:22

As a European citizen living in this country, when talking to my British friends,I often seem to be the only person who can see the elephant in the room.There is simply no way there can be social mobility in Britain because the game is fixed! The existence of an anti-democratic Monarchic system (which epitomises privilege and unearned wealth) and of an aristocratic and/or super rich class (0.6% of the population) which owns 69% of British land (as revealed in last week "New Statesman") means that any attempt to equalize the opportunities for people in this country is doomed to failure from the start.The fact that rich or reasonably well off people can withdraw their children from the cesspits of State schools and have them educated in a cocooned, privileged and separate environment, makes a complete mockery of any serious attempt at tackling the issue of social mobility in this country

The truth is there is social apartheid in Britain and very few people, including people of the left, appears to actually see it, never mind doing anything about it!

Unlike most other European countries where the sons and daughters of judges and the sons and daughters of factory workers are educated together from the start, in this country these people would simply never, ever meet!, never mind compete with each other. This makes true democracy a mirage and social mobility virtually impossible! The ongoing discussion about grammar schools is an irrelevant diversion as this system only maintained the status quo by reassuringly producing a few exceptions to the rule, the token working class kid!

Anyone serious about eradicating social injustice in this country would start by abolishing the Monarchy and private schooling. We would then see the best of society rising to the top and we would then benefit from a proper meritocratic and fair society.

Gerry Myer
28 July 2009 at 20:35

Danielle describes state schools as “cesspits”, yet part of her recommended remedy for the alleged poor social mobility in Britain is to consign all children to such schools. Abolition, i.e. destruction, of private education is advocated as her way forward.

I too would like to see the end of private education, not by abolition but by market forces. Private education would decline spontaneously if state schools were safe, disciplined, studious, stimulating environments. Grammar schools were, in the main, such environments and Danielle, by her cynical dismissal, shows remarkable ignorance of what they achieved. Social mobility in Britain has declined as grammar schools were phased out. The various assisted places schemes, such as those supported by the Attlee government, also allowed large numbers of working class children to become well-educated.

By all means abolish the monarchy for reasons I have given elsewhere but it is nonsense to suppose that educational standards of working class children will thereby improve.

Daniele
29 July 2009 at 19:43

OK cesspit was a little strong but as everyone knows they are not brilliant. Unfortunately, Gerry Myer, I do not speak out of ignorance as I have taught in such schools for 20 years. I have also taught in grammar schools and in private schools. Sorry to disappoint you, but I really know what I am talking about. I have also been educated in another foreign system, which I think gives me quite a lot of perspective on this issue.

What I mean is that if there was no private sector and no elitist schools there would be an automatic rise in standards for everyone as the rich, the powerful and the clever parents would soon force schools to readopt a more traditional approach to learning with proper subjects and standards. At the moment the more vulnerable children are experimented on with ludicrous methods and Mickey Mouse, watered-down subjects which are meant to motivate "the less able", but leave them with no worthwhile qualifications. It is a criminal con which produces an uneducated working class. Then everyone wonders how come these kids do not make it to university! Anyone who has taught in a British tough comprehensive could tell you there is really no mystery about that and certainly no intent to discriminate on the part of the universities. The kids just don't make the grades because of cool Heads taking decisions such as getting rid of history and French because "it's irrelevant to these kids". Instead they started doing "construction" and "child care".

One system would allow a real chance for all kids and their various talents would be taken care of by streaming if need be or redoing the same year again, as is the case in the rest of the entire world, I believe. The very existence of grammar schools is an admission of defeat. It is like a rescue mission for the very few (that is what is implied) clever poor kids. The rest is in fact abandoned. It is a disgraceful system which achieves nothing for society as a whole.

Daniele
29 July 2009 at 21:37

OK, cesspit was a little strong! Unfortunately, Gerry Myer, I did not speak out of ignorance, as I have taught in comprehensive, secondary modern, grammar and private schools for the past 25 years! In addition, I have been educated abroad. So I think I am entitled to an opinion on the issue of education, as I believe I have quite a wide perspective.

What's happening here is that the most vulnerable kids have been experimented upon for decades, with crazy, alternative, so-called "modern" methods and Mickey Mouse subjects. While the rich kids and a few clever kids continue to receive a more or less decent, traditional, sound education leading to proper qualifications, the poor working-class kid is given a diet of watered-down topics, where "skills", as opposed to "education", is constantly referred to.

Because some cool Heads of schools decide that "history and French are not relevant to these kids" (an actual quote!) and they should be replaced with "construction" and "child care" (no kidding!). That's the way these children are encouraged and lured to take up soft options ("much more useful", they are told) under the pretence of motivating them (in fact, it is a measure of containment). Then everyone shouts in horror that they are discriminated against at university level! Well no! They just don't know anything worth knowing and have no decent qualifications, that's why!

This nonsense would not happen if the rich and upper-middle-class parents would send their children to those same schools. They simply would not allow it and British schools, under parents' pressure, would soon revert to a more traditional type of education which would give everyone a real chance at getting properly educated. The less able or the troublemakers would have well behaved and studious kids to emulate and the ethos of the schools would eventually be reversed. I know it all sounda like a dream here, but I know it happens, more or less perfectly, in some other countries. Why not in Britain?