THE concept of social mobility might well have achieved legendary status in some parts of society, but an Oxford professor is quietly smashing the myth to smithereens.

OK, it’s not quite a Wonder Woman scenario. The devotion to this idea has been doubted for a long time. 

The thrill which greeted a new infrastructure including government commissions, a foundation and innumerable private-sector projects has abated quite a bit.

Former Labour MP Alan Milburn was a “social mobility tsar” in 2010, and headed a commission — until he and its entire board resigned a few years ago, deflated by the government’s lack of real action.

He blamed Brexit. Professor Selina Todd would blame the fact that this social mobility malarkey is a myth, and a rather malevolent one, which has seen attention and resources directed to the wrong places.

Her new book, Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth, was launched this week. 

The Zoom event drew a decent audience of 250 of us — very many, academics, social justice activists, journalists, historians. Ironically, a cohort who might have benefited from social mobility, or something very like it.

And there’s the nub. Todd confessed that before she started her research, she felt that those who pursued such mobility were “snobs.”

She’d had a visceral response against this zeal to climb the ladder.

“This has dogged elements of the left — and I’d include myself — that this is a kind of individualist, sharp-elbowed way of thinking about the world, that I was in danger of sneering at. I’d never thought of myself as socially mobile.

“What I found was that, generation after generation, what people wanted was more autonomy over their lives.”

There were champions among the archives, she said, “socialists and feminists, who wanted a more egalitarian world.

“One of the things I realise was that the people who were seeking to get up the ladder were trying to escape the same things: the dire consequences of inequality and poverty. 

“And [I realised that] those kind of aspirations could unite us rather than divide us.”

The book looks at consecutive generations, exploring the opportunities, pressures and disadvantages affecting each, enlivened and illustrated with the stories of real people.

Todd was interviewed at the launch by former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who said: “Your books are very emotional, but this one is much more a challenge to the system overall.

“I think it’s so admirable that you set up the target from the start: this concept of social mobility is a completely myth; in fact, it’s conned generations of people. And you use, as near as dammit, the Marxist definition of class, which cheered me up no end.”

Much of Todd’s research has come from the Mass Observation archive and its detailed, personal accounts of the lives of ordinary people. 

McDonnell called them “valiant individuals who believed in a more equal society, not dog-eat-dog, or climbing up the greasy pole. If we go up, we all go up together, and no-one was left behind.”

Todd speaks passionately about the focus on education, especially the creation of the Workers’ Educational Association: “The labour movement really came to the fore. The whole idea was to move away from this notion — that I think we’ve still got — that for most people, education should be about only skills training, and that would be the be-all and end-all.”

The divide which emerged in the early days of the WEA is documented in the book, and serves as a good illustration of clashing views on social mobility itself.

“A division emerged, between those who thought it should provide a conduit for a few, ‘bright, working-class people’ to get into Oxford and Cambridge, versus this group who consistently said no, we need to broaden culture, and what culture and education is; we will all be enriched if we have a more egalitarian society.”

There are plenty of targets for Todd’s gentle wrath, not least the 11-plus exam system, which dealt crushing blows to those whose abilities bloomed later.

One woman’s testimony told a tale of the young girl taking the exam, knowing it meant a great deal to her family. She failed.

“She got a chance to go to one of polytechnics opened by Labour in the 1960s and ’70s … when mature students, particularly women, went into those opportunities, and she did really well, got a first-class degree.”

Urged on by her tutors to do more, this late bloomer felt she couldn’t bring herself to — having failed the 11 plus.

“I worry very much today about what we’re doing to our young people, by saying [they] have one chance at 16, or 18. We’re saying to them that there is no second chance!”
 
Todd has been professor of modern history at the University of Oxford since 2015, and is currently lead researcher on the Oxford Martin School’s programme on women’s equality and inequality. Its aim, “to identify drivers of individual upward mobility, and of generational uplift, that can help to eradicate educational and economic inequality for women around the world.”

Let’s hope some useful work emerges. We can be optimistic; it seems Todd will be looking in the right places, unfettered by misleading myths.

Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth is published by Chatto & Windus, £25.