There was a time when trade unions were routinely attacked for their defence of the closed shop. ‘A symbol of excessive sectional power’, its opponents would argue, ‘unions feathering their own nests at the expense of personal liberty’, ‘jobs for the boys’. The idea that working-class people should have any sort of exclusive agency through which they might exercise industrial or economic power was anathema to some.
Ultimately, the closed shop was outlawed by the Conservative government in the early 1990s – a move designed not only to tame the unions, but also to bring the UK into line with European legislation. (I wonder how many among today’s fanatically pro-EU labour movement know or even care about this.)
But there is one closed shop that wasn’t outlawed. In fact, it’s the most powerful that ever existed, and it remains alive and well. It members are not those fighting against the system, but those running it.
After years of talk by politicians about the value of meritocracy and the need to smash glass ceilings, progress at tackling the culture of elitism that infects the upper echelons of our public life and institutions has been utterly lamentable. And this failure is resulting in a nation increasingly atomised, and in which large numbers simmer with resentment at those who exercise power over them while seemingly being devoid of any desire to understand their lives.
Politics, business, the media and public services remain resolutely in the grip of those who (let’s be clear, through no fault of their own) were born into wealth and privilege. Class, parental income and geography remain key determinants in how far one might rise. Advancement in today’s Britain is still as much about who you know, not what you know; about where you came from, not what ability you might have.
In its most recent State of the Nation report, the Social Mobility Commission found a labour market highly polarised, with five million workers caught in a low-pay trap from which there is little chance of escape. Predictably, London, the Home Counties and East of England dominate when it comes to high-skilled, high-paid and knowledge-based jobs. 58% of internships – often a pathway to a plum job and career – were located in the Capital, placing them out-of-bounds to millions. That many were unpaid rendered them further inaccessible to the less advantaged. And it’s not only workers in the old industrial heartlands who are locked out of good-quality employment. Those in rural areas and coastal towns suffer the worst outcomes.
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