Afterword Paul Johnston HMA Dublin-Designate and Senior Sponsor, Foreground
Growing up in what used to be called a lower middle class family in a small Scottish market town, the idea of entering the “Whitehall” civil service, let alone the Diplomatic Service, never entered my mind. Three things changed that: -
getting interested in, and studying Politics;
-
adoring “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister”; and
-
a BBC documentary in the late 1980s on applying to the Civil Service, which I saw by chance at the start (I think) of my final year at University.
The documentary showed a group of white/grey middle aged men debating the merits of various candidates. The main criterion seemed to be less ability than “suitability”, how well would they fit into the world of Whitehall. Years late I read the “Strangers and Brothers” novels of C P Snow, charting the rise of a lower middle class man from a small market town to the Bar, Cambridge University, Whitehall and Westminster. In one of them, “Homecomings” a group of senior civil servants debate whether to offer a permanent place to a solicitors’ clerk, a man of unusual brain power but also (to the mandarins, at least) an unusual personality. In the end they decide against him on the basis that he wouldn’t “fit in”. Almost the same phrase was used in the BBC film about an obviously bright and articulate young man with strong views who had dared to challenge the interviewers. This was juxtaposed with a less impressive (or so I thought) upper middle class interviewee, who was given a place essentially on the grounds that they would “fit in” Inexperienced though I was, I suspected this must be a caricature of the actual process, But it “inspired” me to take a punt. I found, in the application process and in my subsequent 30 year career to date, nothing so obviously or structurally biased. But it is undeniable, that in the FCO, as in other walks of life, and as James Southern’s excellent publication observes, in-built social and economic advantages inevitably give a head start in life, and at work, to people from certain backgrounds. What to do about it? To my mind, three things, which is what Foreground, the FCO Staff Association for social diversity, is trying to do: -
explain; 53
