VII.
Conclusion In The Rise of the Meritocracy, a dystopian novel published in 1958 and set in 2034, readers are told of a Britain in which researchers have discovered the scientific formula for “merit” (understood in the book as “Intelligence + Effort = Merit”). Armed with this knowledge, politicians have rearranged the old ‘class system’ into a new apartheid based on IQ scores. The dream of a ‘just’ society free from class biases becomes a nightmare: everyone at the bottom of the system ‘deserves’ to be there, because they are, objectively, less meritorious than those at the top. The novel closes as the untalented underclass are preparing to overthrow violently their meritocratic overlords.59 Written by social entrepreneur Michael Young (who, among many other things, founded the Open University and Which consumer service), The Rise of the Meritocracy has often been misinterpreted as an attack on the idea of allocating jobs according to talent as opposed to social background. This was never Young’s intention. Rather, he wants us to ask a deep and pertinent question about our relationship with social class: what do we want social equality to look like? It is a question worth reformulating for the FCO in the twenty-first century. What do we mean when we call for a more representative Diplomatic Service, and what would it actually look like? We have seen that the aims of recruitment have changed with each historical period: in the nineteenth century, camaraderie and social connection were the aim; in the early twentieth century, it was confidence and adaptability; in the postwar period, the target was to build a Diplomatic Service in which anyone, no matter their background, had the opportunity to work. Working out that the Foreign Office must not only provide opportunities, but also encourage people to take those opportunities – and get the best out of those who do – is surely the most important challenge it faces in the twenty-first century. There are signs that the way the FCO engages with the issue of social class is changing. A new staff network, ‘Foreground’, committed to engaging the FCO and wider society on social mobility and diversity, was created in 2016, following similar initiatives like FCO Women, Enable (disability) and the BAME Network. Foreground quickly grew to become the biggest network of its kind in the Civil Service, and a large proportion of the outreach work and internship schemes with which the FCO is engaged are targeted, directly or indirectly, at those from disadvantaged class backgrounds. The FCO is also now accountable to the Cabinet Secretary on this matter – partly through the Staff Survey questions pioneered in 2019. Let us return to the scenario laid out in the introduction to this publication: the fictional meeting between Charles, Emily and David. Their backgrounds were designed to illustrate a plausible dynamic in which each participant possessed economic, social and cultural capital in different amounts. While the question ‘which person would you rather be?’ was deliberately devised to be unanswerable, it is surely 51
