The Economist on social mobility

I read an interesting article about social mobility in the USA, and reflected on my social mobility. I came from dust, from nothing. I am the highest achiever in either branch of my family, the first person in all the twentieth century to have attained to higher education – the first in many generations. My mother and father were clever and able enough, but the opportunities were not afforded to them. My father got to Grammar School but going from there to university in 1950's England,  given his mother's financial resources, can only have been a dream.

I have come further and higher than any before me in my family – and the reason is social mobility. Social mobility in the 1980’s has got me where I am now. I got A levels, got into a polytechnic, and got a job – all through either luck or just brains. This illumines my politics and my beliefs. It is why I have no patience with public school educated sons or daughters of privilege who have got to top jobs through background and education. This is why I admire Mrs Thatcher – who got into Somerville on a scholarship, and that by luck rather than anything else. It is why I tend to look down my nose at the current front bench on both sides of the House – for they are all public school educated sons and daughters of privilege. 

I'm no socialist, but I am a firm believer in social mobility. I believe opportunities should be available for the scum of the earth to rise to the top, given native ability. Common people; people like Clive James, like Norman Tebbit. People from the lower depths – people like me. It is why I have little patience or empathy with those who have a huge weight of generational expectation behind them – four generations a clergyman, or four generations an officer of the Royal Navy. I recall talking to the wife of one such officer at a party. What’s that like to be?