Admitting defeat
Anastasia De Waal, 16 January 2009
This week social mobility has been high on the government’s agenda – and something of a low, in terms of reception. First there was Alan Milburn’s new position as ‘remover of barriers’ for the disadvantaged, then there was Harriet Harman’s bid to foster equality through legislation. On the latter, in particular, the response has been less than favourable.
New Labour came into power with laudable and, at the time, unmatched aspirations of creating greater equality of opportunity in this country. However this aspiration has been more or less squandered through the mismanagement of the two best routes to generating that equality: education and employment.
Firstly, over ten years the government has failed to secure primary school pupils with a firm foundation in the basics – leading to failure in secondary school and beyond.
Secondly, a misguided bid to widen not university access, but university participation, has led government to push for ‘a degree at any cost, and of any worth’. This is having a hugely negative effect on the status of vocational education, as well as wasting the potential and money of millions on useless degrees. Furthermore, as a degree becomes a prerequisite, rising through the ranks without one is becoming impossible.
Thirdly, under New Labour we’ve witnessed a staggering 15 per cent increase in NEETs – young people neither in education, employment nor training.
Fourthly, a poorly thought-out welfare system has left millions festering in a stagnant state of benefit dependency. This is as crippling for social mobility as it is for self-esteem and morale.
Social mobility rests on getting ahead in education and subsequently employment. The latest attempts to artificially generate mobility through legislation signify Labour’s admission that its equality agenda has been defeated by its misguided strategies.
Here here.
More problems with Labour’s equality agenda.
1. Put aside the distracting and false name “equality” and Labour’s arguments are in fact for black and female privilege. This has the negative effect of increasing intolerance {in the pockets it remains, plus growing a few new ones} while also lowering the internal locus of control of the individual. Meanwhile, I suspect such legislation would mean that there would be reluctance to accept Labour’s victim groups had reached the top on merit, even when they had. Basically, expectation of behaviour is a strong determinant of actual behaviour, in the case of all parties.
2. The tactics mean that welfare is afforded on grounds of race and gender. Consequently, those with the same need (usually poverty) but not falling into a Labour victim class are further de-mobilised. (Evidence was found for this effect in education, I recall). This is atrocious victimisation.
3. Pressure is placed on women to live a life they may not want to lead. (This is not, I emphasise, to say that women want children and a homelife)… the point is that they might. And we should surely be aspiring for women (and us all) to make free choices, based on circumstances and desires, not Labour stereotyping how it deems a demographic group ought to behave, based on blatant prejudice.
4.It prevents solutions to crises in both sexes, which is about a transition of roles in Western society over several decades, stemming from economic freedom: Rather than assuming women=oppressed, men=oppressors, we could assume that instead: Some people have found the transition easy, others less so and others not at all – irrespective of sex etc. Such a tenet provides the positive basis for constructive support for all circumstances. You tackle male suicides, depression/mental illness, early death, violence and crime as well as the potential that women find the workplace hostile.
5. Labour’s policies are simply unethical: If the 21st Century did not teach us that we should not allow the State to legislate based on its prejudices of groups, what would? In this model, men get paid less, forcing them towards more dangerous and anti-social working patterns. They already die younger.
6. The spiral of legislation will go on for ever, trying to correct discrimination, but only reinforcing it: Stage 1 – “Equal opportunities”: result is a steady diffusion of women up the managerial ladder, to a point of earning practically the same as men for comparable work: remaining gap can be 95% attributed to choice. Stage 2 – “Equal outcomes”: result is employer avoidance: opportunities for women slow. Stage 3 – White male discrimination for FTE posts is encouraged by tax breaks for reaching quotas: result is little difference, because benefits are small. Stage 4 – Regulation strengthened, so that minority pay and occupation of company ranks has to meet certain levels in medium and larger sized organisations: Result is better off women, system fudging, disgruntled men. More smaller firms grow, adopting associate or contract models for staff. Wealth-generating men leave to join. Meanwhile economic productivity starts to decline slightly, not because men are “better than women”, but because more-productive men are the ones to leave. Legislation costs spiral. Stage 5 – Government provide taxes and support for all firms on the basis of their minority quotas: productivity of large companies starts to fall. Talented women face dilemma to join associate companies – losing social security for the sake of progression. More capable women leave. Birth-rate declines amongst the segment as they are choose to work within the associate model. Mixed response amongst women – some excel, others feel trapped. Stage 6 – Government attacks the growing associate companies – they need to prove 35% of payroll go to minority groups in 3 years or face tax hikes: Associate companies fragment into individuals. Informal support mechanisms that had started to grow for women (e.g. “pregnancy pots”) fall away. Taxes rise, but tax evasion from deals done under the table is endemic. Productivity falls further. Stage 7 – the BNP have revamped their brand and, despite widespread criticism, reached 10% of the national vote, as they become palatable in the middle classes….Stage 8 – Women’s pay reaches 80% of men’s. Emigration rate increases. Women suffering stress-related illnesses and depression continues to increase year-on-year. Other European countries, Australia and in China and the Far East, offer lucrative packages to tempt talented knowledge UK workers. A trend starts of young graduate couples leaving the UK. Stage 9 – Government introduce the “economic equality bill” – giving minority groups different rates of tax and NI, from 5% to 60%, based on race, gender and income. White working class riots seen in inner cities, since this group pay 40% tax despite being in bottom quartile of earners. Comparisons are made to Toxteth 3 decades before. Stage 10 – Government deems opposition to the bill to be a hate crime and outlaws legal challenges.
Quite so – but let’s add to the list grade inflation and the refusal to select. Admittedly the very word “selection” suggests exclusion and is therefore a gift to the levellers; but this could be answered with a bid to broaden selection itself. It was a commonplace some twenty years ago, when the influence of Correlli Barnet was riding high, that Britain had failed to create a class of skilled technicians. So obsessed were right and left with intellectual, abstract or literary skills that our economy had sagged in certain key respects: industrial innovation, the exploitation of technology and so on. Surely the answer lies in selecting according to a range of criteria. In the place of Labour’s sterile and destructive obsession with “class”, conservative forces should be offering an invigorated plea for education’s eternal goal: the identification and cultivation of inborn talent. Until we have thrown off the hard left’s relativism, which thinks you can hand out “life chances” – themselves defined by the left’s own narrowly middle class expectations – by simply printing certificates and betraying standards, then nothing can be done. But with an ignorant, frightened electorate, a skewed voting system and no institution free from leftist manipulation, the task is nothing if not daunting.