There’s nothing fair about forcing old, white men out of their jobs

Prof John Pitcher was only 67, and a Shakespeare scholar of great distinction, when he was forced out of his job three years ago. By modern standards, 67 is the prime of life: if he’d been a Rolling Stone, he could have looked forward to another decade of stadium tours and making babies with hot ballerinas.

But the Academy is less forgiving than rock’n’roll towards ageing. In 2011, when the government abolished the default retirement age, Oxford University hastily adopted something called an employer justified retirement age (ERJA) policy, which means it can force older employees to retire in the interests of the institution. The aim was to promote “intergenerational fairness and improvements in diversity” – in other words, to clear out some of the male, pale and stale academics in order to bring in a younger and more diverse set.

A tribunal judge has just dismissed Prof Pitcher’s age discrimination case against the university. Other employers may now adopt ERJA policies, enabling them to winkle out older employees in order to diversify their workforce.

This is, of course, horribly unfair on old white men. Why should anyone be forced out of a job they can still do well, purely because of their age or ethnicity? And besides, aren’t we all supposed to be working until we drop these days?

Britain, like the rest of the world, is growing older. By 2066 a quarter of our population will be aged 65 or over. We simply can’t afford to become a nation of retirees. The longer each of us keeps earning and paying tax, rather than claiming a pension, the less strain we will put on the public finances.

But there are other strains on society. Young people in this country are already poorer and less optimistic about the future than

previous generations. As voters, they are hugely outnumbered by the old and middle-aged. They feel powerless and angry, blaming their elders for everything from Brexit to climate change.

Working hard in the expectation of moving up the career ladder is – like that other vanishing dream, home ownership – one of the ways that young people have traditionally knitted themselves into the fabric of society. But if the top jobs are occupied in perpetuity by senior employees reluctant either to retire or die, what is there for young people to strive for?

Older people in this country have, through an accident of history and demography, ended up with a disproportionate share of the money, property and power. But age also makes you fragile. We all, in the end, become dependent on the goodwill of the young.

The more old people there are in the world, the more they tend to be resented and neglected. Even in Asia, the cracks are starting to show. In China, where the former one-child policy has created the fastest ageing population in human history, the Confucian tradition of filial piety is waning. The majority of old people live alone, and “elder neglect” is becoming a source of national shame. Communist officials warned recently that children who don’t visit their elderly parents may go on a credit blacklist.

In the West, where individualism is prized above duty, there is less shame about treating the old shabbily. In this country, “intergenerational fairness” actually means: Budge up, Grandpa, your time is up. There’s nothing fair about it. But the alternative might be worse.