O Lucky Man!

Friday, 23 October 2020

I come from a Working Class background, back in the days before Vicky Pollard and before Scum Class, before we were taught of ‘sink estates’ and a ‘feral underclass’. I grew up in a stable family with two loving parents who encouraged me in my education.

I was lucky. Not all kids got that.

My Dad was always in full-time work because back in those days, before joblessness was deemed ‘a price worth paying’ for low inflation, the Government’s economic priority was to maximise employment and ensure people had jobs. As a result, sure, sometimes money was tight, but we never went hungry.

I was lucky. Not all kids got that.

During my time at Primary School there was a guy called Mr Major who had committed himself to encouraging music in schools. He toured schools giving music lessons, arranging the provision of musical instruments for kids who wanted to learn to play them and organising youth orchestras in the city. To him I owe a debt of gratitude for the many hours of pleasure playing music has given me.

I was lucky. Not all kids got that.

Throughout Secondary School I was encouraged - not always successfully - to learn. I was guided toward university and was able to go - the first of my family to do so - because the state paid my tuition fees and provided financial support in the form of a grant. 

I was lucky. Not all kids got that.

So now, in my comfortable home, looking back after thirty-five years doing the job I wanted to do and which (apart from the Excel spreadsheets and other paperwork) I still enjoy doing, I think to myself “I’ve been lucky”. When I look back to my early years, the neighbourhood I grew up in, while not Walford, had its share of criminality and life-changing violence, but it never really involved me. At university there were the temptations of addictive drugs, but my circle of friends weren’t involved. Across the years countless occasions when accident, cost-cutting, economic downturns, emotional trauma could have cost me so much - as they have cost so many others so much - have not come my way. I’ve been lucky.

I’ve been damned lucky.

Of course we’re not supposed to think in terms of ‘luck’ any more. Since the 1980s we’ve been taught to believe that success in life is purely a matter of virtue; that it is a product of hard-work and talent and financial probity. “If you can dream it, you can do it,” according to Walt Disney. “Anyone Can Do It” ran the title of Duncan Bannatyne’s book. Yes, well, I’ve dreamed of flying to Venus on a magic swan and the nature of Capitalism is such that it is arguable that ‘anyone can become a millionaire’ but everyone certainly cannot. 

This is the gospel of Aspiration, the clarion call of Meritocracy, that if you want something enough, if you work hard enough for it, if you steer clear of the temptation to dissipation and have the drive to succeed then succeed you shall. Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!

It’s a fairy tale. Worse, it is the most poisonous myth that can infect a society.

Sure, hard work and determination can make a difference and I’m all for them but let’s not kid ourselves on that they are all that determine success or failure in life; that chance and contingency play no part in a person’s personal fortune. This child is born into a stable family and this one is not. This one goes to a school where they can’t afford text books and this one goes to Eton. This child’s talent is recognised and encouraged at an early age and this one’s is not. This young man starts work in a thriving city where jobs are plentiful and this one does not and so on and so on.

The myth of Meritocracy serves solely to persuade us that the wealthiest people in our society are there solely by merit of their hard work, grit and determination to succeed in which contingency has played no part. They are there as a matter of virtue. They deserve it. They’re worth it. Why should we expect them to support the poor? Why shouldn’t we expect folk to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility for feeding their own kids?

And there, right there, is how the myth of Meritocracy tears us apart as a people. For if the wealthy - the winners - are where they are through their virtues then it follows that the poor - the losers - are where they are through their vices. In the last few days much has been made of Marcus Rashford’s campaign for children who would normally receive free school meals - the children of some of our poorest families - to continue to be fed through school holidays. There has been heart-warming support for this. The Government, however, are unmoved.

Many of their supporters have been quick to leap to lazy assumptions of laziness, of feckless fathers and uncaring mothers; of poverty as a ‘lifestyle choice’, of Government largesse being wasted on booze and fags or, as one Tory MP suggested, “the crack den and the brothel”. If people are in such desperate straits, suggests the myth of Meritocracy, they must in some way deserve it. 

Not from where I stand. I’ve been lucky in my life - damned lucky. Not as lucky as some, but lucky enough. And I’m damned if I’m going to look down on folk who didn’t have the advantages I had in life as ‘losers’. I’m damned if I’m going to condemn folk who didn’t avoid the pitfalls of life that I evaded as ‘scum class’. I’m damned if I’m going to close my eyes to the poverty that haunts the streets of some of our cities and suggest that the kids who walk them should go hungry because their parents haven’t known the blessings that I have enjoyed. Because there, but for fortune, go I.