CAN ‘LEVELLING UP’ EVER REALLY WORK?
Snakes & Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth Selina Todd Chatto & Windus £25
In 1898 John Gray, a shepherd’s son, exceeded everyone’s expectations by doing so well in his exams that he was offered a prestigious clerkship at the Bank of Scotland. Boys like him were supposed to follow their father on to the land, or perhaps move to the city for a factory job. John started work alongside boys whose fathers were themselves senior clerks in the bank. But rather than congratulate the ambitious lad, they resented him for taking up an opportunity that wasn’t really meant for him.
In one way Gray’s story is a textbook case of social mobility – advancement up the ladder by means of hard work and talent. It is what governments of all political persuasions have been claiming to encourage since Victorian times. But in this fascinating, important book, Professor Selina Todd shows us that ‘levelling up’ has always been a far more chancey, even unrewarding, business than we like to think.
It didn’t take long before Gray found himself running into trouble. His humble manner had gone down well as a 16-year-old clerk, but as a 25-year-old would-be manager, he seemed shy and gawky and lacked confidence. Stressed by having to pretend to be something he wasn’t – it wasn’t just the clean collars and bowler hat but a certain savoir faire – his health began to buckle. He asked to be taken off the managerial track, and was punished for his ingratitude by a series of dud postings. On retirement, he and his wife moved back to the country to be near to his sister, whose husband worked as a groom. The acorn turned out to fall not very far at all from the tree.
Todd’s point is that while it’s nice to believe your good fortune is the result of your own efforts and talent, it’s actually much more to do with economic and social forces beyond your control. Even the most enthusiastic ladder- climber can find themselves, thanks to a bad back or bad economy or just plain bad luck, sliding down a particularly slithery snake and ending up at the same place as when they started out.
Women experienced their own version of this. In the late Victorian period, a clever working- class girl could stay on at school and train to be a teacher ‘on the job’. After the First World War, as teaching raised its status as a ‘profession’, it now became essential to take a degree before starting work. This put it out of reach of poor but ambitious girls. Something similar happened with nursing – the salary of ‘ probationer’ nurses was deliberately set very low so that working-class girls would not be tempted into joining a ‘vocation’ that was really meant for young ladies with prosperous parents.
What Todd finds in reviewing the evidence from the 1880s to the 1990s is that the main reason people want to better themselves is not to get more money, prestige or power but to acquire a level of security for their families. In the 1960s and 1970s, being a middle manager promised to take you out of the endless cycle of strikes and redundancy experienced by your working-class parents. How ironic, then, to find ourselves now, emerging into a new world order where the most modest markers of middle-class security – a house, a meaningful career, a pension – are starting to seem like the stuff of extravagant dreams.