Social Mobility?

I recently went to an event at Westminster entitled ‘The Inclusive Society? Social Mobility in the 21st Century’. Held to coincide with the publication of Progress,Community and Rt. Hon David Blunkett’s research of the same title, it was an extremely well-attended conference and question and answer session.

The extremely laudable goal of the Messrs Blunkett et al is to find ways of helping youngsters to do what their family, neighbours, and peers couldn’t achieve. That is, to train for and take skills-based jobs. Research suggests there is a permanent underclass of people in the UK who can’t escape the circumstances into which they’re born. As Mr. Blunkett put it ‘It is not about getting people into any job, it’s about getting them into the right job.'

That more progress is not made in this area may, in part, be a result of electoral politics. Those that the Inclusive Society research focuses on are not the same people who vote in their droves during a general election. Consequently the parties tend to focus on the issues that matter to the middle classes, such as hospitals. A further problem may lay in the fact that Members of Parliament are not representative of those without aspirations. For those who make up the focus of this research, it should come as some comfort that Mr. Blunkett is an exception to this.