The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy

Fifty years after the term “meritocracy” was coined, this book asks where the idea of meritocracy has led.

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• A team of commentators consider diverse topics such as family and meritocracy, meritocracy and ethnic minorities, and what is meant by talent
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• Contains commentaries by a selection of researchers, activists and politicians, from Asa Briggs to David Willetts, on the origin, meaning and future of meritocracy
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• Demonstrates that Michael Young, who wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy, was right to question the viability of political systems trying to organise themselves around the idea of meritocracy
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• Essential reading for everyone interested in where we are going, and the future of New Labour itself

Acknowledgements vii

Notes on Contributors viii

Introduction: Reviewing Meritocracy 1
Geoff Dench

Origin and Reception 15

The Labour Party as Crucible 17
Asa Briggs

Meritocracy in the Civil Service, 1853–1970 27
Jon Davis

A Tract for the Times 36
Paul Barker

We Sat Down at the Table of Privilege and Complained about the Food 45
Hilary Land

The Chequered Career of a Cryptic Concept 61
Claire Donovan

Looking Back on Meritocracy 73
Michael Young

Relevance to Modem Britain 79

A Brief Profile of the New British Establishment 81
Jim Ogg

Face, Race and Place: Merit and Ethnic Minorities 90
Michelynn Laflèche

Marginalised Young Men 97
Yvonne Roberts

The Unmaking of the English Working Class 105
Ferdinand Mount

Age and Inequality 109
Eric Midwinter

Ship of State in Peril 116
Peregrine Worsthorne

Analytical Value 125

The Moral Economy of Meritocracy: or, the Unanticipated Triumph of Reform and the Failure of Revolution in the West 127
Irving Louis Horowitz

Japan at the Meritocracy Frontier: From Here, Where? 134
TAKEHIKO KARIYA And RONALD DORE

Just Rewards: Meritocracy Fifty Years Later 157
Peter Marris

What Do We Mean by Talent? 163
Richard Sennett'

Resolving the Conflict between the Family and Meritocracy 168
Belinda Brown

Meritocracy and Popular Legitimacy 183
Peter Saunders

The Future 195

The New Assets Agenda 197
Andrew Gamble And Rajiv Prabhakar

New Labour and the Withering Away of the Working Class? 205
Jon Cruddas

A Delay on the Road to Meritocracy 214
Peter Wilby

Putting Social Contribution back into Merit 221
Geoff Dench

Ladder of Opportunity or Engine of Inequality? 232
Ruth Lister

The Future of Meritocracy 237
David Willetts

Notes 245

Index 263

Geoff Dench is a senior research fellow of the Young Foundation, and was formerly head of sociology and social policy at Middlesex University. He has written a number of books on ethnic relations and on family relationships, and edited several collections. It is now fifty years since Michael Young wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy — a sociological fantasy set in the twenty-first century and portraying a sinister, highly stratified society organised around intelligence testing and educational selection. After some difficulty getting published, it was an immediate success and became very widely read. But it does not seem to have had the influence that Michael most wanted for it, over Labour Party thinking. The story was intended to help turn Labour away from meritocracy, by reminding it of the importance of communitarian values. Curiously, though, half a century later we have a Labour Government declaring the promotion of meritocracy as one of its primary objectives.

So what is going on? This book offers a variety of opinions. Building on a conference held to mark the half-centenary of Michael Young’s Institute of Community Studies, it contains commentaries by a selection of academics, journalists and politicians, from Asa Briggs to David Willetts, on the origin, meaning and future of meritocracy.