II.
Class: A User’s Guide If class is a problem at the FCO, then any solution must be devised with the unique institutional culture of the FCO in mind. But it is important to distinguish between what an organization such as the FCO can and cannot do when it comes to class. Governments, for example, can approach the problem of social class on a societywide scale: the Labour Party’s revolutionary nationalisation programme in the 1940s, and the Conservative Party’s vision of a ‘property-owning democracy’ in the 1980s are both examples of political attempts to make Britain a more equal society. The FCO, though, is not responsible for class inequality at this level, despite the criticism often levelled at it as an alleged bastion of class privilege. It cannot be expected to mould the education system from which it recruits, nor the employment market in which it operates. Like every other employer, it interacts with wider society in its own, unique, way. What we need, then, is a definition of social class that makes sense to Civil Service recruiters, to FCO Outreach campaigners, and to diplomats in London and around the world trying to make sense of the environments in which they work. In short, we need a definition of class that makes sense in our day-to-day working lives on an individual, personal level. We know that sexuality, gender and race feel very personal. LGBT people describe the ordeal of having to ‘come out’ to every new person they meet – the assumption being that everyone is straight. Add to this the growing awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace, and the ‘micro-aggressions’ reportedly encountered by BAME people on a daily basis, and it is clear that our identities have implications in the minutiae of our working lives. Can class fit with other types of ‘identity politics’ in this way? Can we talk about ‘coming out’ as working-class, or experiencing ‘micro-aggressions’ as a result of our educational background? Does the FCO really have a problem with class, or is its historical association with social elites no more than a pernicious myth?
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The definitions and effects of social class are among the most challenging aspects of our identities, at once extremely powerful and at the same time too vague to describe. Race, gender and sexuality exist on continuums, and there are often complex and personally challenging difficulties in deciding whether one feels like a man or a woman, whether one identifies with a particular racial or ethnic group, or how and with whom one likes to have sex. But there are strong political traditions, and associated 9
