Inequality in wealth and income has slowly grown over recent years until it has become a major political issue of our age. I first became aware of it a few years ago when a friend of mine recommended that I read, 'Winner Take All Politics'. This book, by Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, first published in 2010, tells the story of How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, to quote its subtitle. We have learned that this is not a phenomenon restricted to America, but one that is common to the emerging countries and much of the developed world, led by the Anglo Saxon economies. The recent publication of French Economist Thomas Piketty's magisterial Capital in the Twenty-First Century has created a stir among academics and commentators that has injected new impetus into the issue. Only last weekend, the Sunday Times led with a story entitled 'Rich double their wealth in five years. Top 1,000 worth record £519bn'.
The story of inequality is not just one about income and wealth. It's also about the collapsing of social and occupational mobility that has gone along with it. As Piketty points out, growing inequality is not just about the tremendous rewards that capitalism can give to a few top CEOs and entrepreneurs. It's becoming more a story about inherited wealth. How can the son or daughter of, say a postal worker, get the same life chances as the offspring of an oligarch, particularly when public services are being cut and many people in power don't see equality of opportunity as important?
In the 1950s my father-in-law, the son of a lorry driver and living in an agricultural labourer's cottage in rural Hertfordshire, won a place to read history at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He went on to become a factory manager for Cadbury's. Have the chances of something similar happening today, some sixty years later, increased substantially? I doubt it.
In 1983, I won a place to read Economics at Cambridge from Brockley County, a comprehensive school in Lewisham. At the time, I attended what was called the Lewisham Sixth Form Centre. This was based in Ladywell on the site of what was then called Lewisham Girls' School. It took pupils from our two schools plus Roger Manwood School in Forest Hill. Also in 1983, a fellow student from this school won a place to read Science at Oxford. These three schools went on to amalgamate to form Crofton School. I don't know how many students from Crofton have won places at Oxbridge, but I suspect that 1983 was something of a high water mark.
When I was at Cambridge, I have no doubt that some found my working class demeanour and Cockney accent irritating. However, no one ever said anything to my face. I think this was because it would have reflected badly on the person doing so, such were the social norms at that time. Recently I heard a state school educated female comedian talking about her first days up at Oxford. She recounted a story of how she had gone along to a social gathering, feeling rather nervous but keen to meet new friends, only to be greeted by a cocksure, 'braying public schoolboy', who bounded up to her and in a loud voice said, 'I hear my parents paid for your education!'. I think she is around twenty years younger than me. Whereas in the 1980s the children of the well-off felt somewhat embarrassed and apologetic about what they considered to be their privileged upbringing, today they seem far less troubled by such sensibilities.
In the last few years, we have seen revolutions in Tunisia and Libya, civil war in Syria and latterly riots in Turkey. It's generally accepted that high and rising inequality played a role in igniting these uprisings. We have also seen violent demonstrations in European periphery countries like Greece and Spain, as people fought back against what they saw as the injustice of the EU's Austerity policy. In June 2011, in an article entitled Society will not suffer huge pay-offs for ever, the former editor of the Daily Mail, Max Hastings, writing in the Financial Times said:
It seems rash to assume that the majority will indefinitely acquiesce in such an extraordinary concentration of wealth, which is even more emphatic in America.
Riots came to the UK a few months later.
Shouldn't we be raising this issue again now that 3 years have passed and inequality has got worse not better? Andrew Sullivan, a prominent US conservative blogger, is doing just that. He is worried that there comes a point where inequality becomes so large that it destabilises society. He thinks they have reached that point in the US.
I think this is is an extremely positive development. This is because if sensible people on the right come to see the reduction of inequality as imperative, if only to preserve civil order, then there is the real possibility that a consensus on this issue can be built. This is vital because I don't think that those of us on the centre left are going to be able to deliver greater equality without the support of many of those on the right. After all, although it was a Labour government that created the Welfare State after WWII, it was doing it in a political environment where it was generally agreed that something of the sort needed to be done, if only to stave off communist revolution.
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