BBC can recruit less well-off by slashing stars’ bloated pay
CULTURE Secretary Nadine Dorries has accused the BBC of snobbishness, prompting the broadcaster to promise that a quarter of its staff will come from lower class backgrounds by 2027.
It’s been over a year since the BBC launched its Diversity and Inclusion plan, which included a drive to set a “meaningful target” for hiring more working class staff.
Setting aside the woolly use of the word “meaningful”, the scheme felt like a long overdue correction, but as with so many diversity targets, including the corporation’s own gender and ethnic minority drive, it falls well short of the mark.
Even the term “working class” feels hopelessly outdated and far too broad a concept to package into a neat little box. And why only a quarter of employees when a much greater proportion of the country is from poorer backgrounds?
A year on, the BBC is still largely made up of affluent middle class graduates. So can demographics ever really change there?
As part of a BBC workplace census, potential employees are being asked to declare whether they attended private school, if they were eligible for free school meals and what their parents did for a living.
ALL well and good, but what if a selfproclaimed “working class” applicant reveals their blue-collar parents sent them to a tough inner city school where they had free schools meals but that later on, through hard work, they gained a first at Oxford? Would that qualify them for a BBC leg up, and what would that leg up look like?
For several years my father worked as a hospital porter earning £5 a week before eventually becoming a journalist. I attended a tough comprehensive before he scraped enough money together to send me to a top public school. We lived in a pretty village in Derbyshire but for various reasons were forced to move to a deprived inner city neighbourhood of Derby where we were the only white family on the street.
I have a double-barrelled name but not because of aristocratic connections; my great grandfather merged surnames for pragmatic reasons.
Like most writers I just about manage. So what class do I belong to exactly, and would I qualify as part of the BBC’s “meaningful target”?
The corporation’s initiative misses the point again. DirectorGeneral Tim Davie has finally acknowledged accusations that it lacks diversity of thought, but why does he assume that hiring more working class people will fix what many viewers see as political and cultural biases?
Is he suggesting that working class people are all of one
Right-wing, Brexit-supporting mind? If he is to make such sweeping assumptions surely he should be targeting well-off suburban middle class people who really do tend to vote Tory.
There has always been a class element to unfairness but it’s far more complicated than the old “I look up to him, I look down on him” hierarchical structure that used to define this country.
The reason there is such a preponderance of middle class employees at institutions like the BBC isn’t because working class people are being denied entry – look at the number of working class ethnic minorities employed front of house – it’s because the broadcaster thrives on attracting well off, creatively ambitious graduates willing to sacrifice big money for prestige.
Poorer people, not only those from working class backgrounds – I know plenty of upper class
people who struggle – may well have the same level of determination but lack the means to make the necessary sacrifices.
If a northerner from an impoverished background for instance made it past the fiercely competitive BBC selection process, they would still struggle to take up the post, not because of a lack of talent, but because of London’s exorbitant living costs.
M‘A year on, the BBC is still largely made up of affluent middle class graduates’
IDDLE class applicants are far more likely to have financial backup from parents. Yes, it’s easier for those with money, good education and a supportive family to gain a job at the BBC, but is Davie suggesting working class people are incapable of achieving such goals? Isn’t it a bit insulting to lump an entire class into a category marked “dysfunctional”?
Yes, there is discrimination there, but only because they are presumably doing their job correctly by hiring people on ability rather than random ethnic or socio-economic box ticking.
If they really want to achieve a more diverse workforce, they should maybe think about paying Gary Lineker less and low ranking creative staff more.