letter to observer

Sir

Alan Milburn observes that the UK is ‘an unequal society in which class background too often determines life chances,’ with professions becoming ‘more socially exclusive, not less.’ And yet, in the dying days of New Labour, with no obvious contender on the left, he looks forward to a ‘great wave of social mobility’ in the near future.
Milburn rightly notes that greater equality would benefit many middle-income people as well as the poor and eschews ‘clumsy class-war politics’. But, while Barry Sheerman sees Harrovians who ‘walk around as if they own the world,’ a Fabian warns against ‘silliness about top-hatted toffs.’ The answer, he suggests, is not class-war, but a war against class.
From my own old public-school, Oxbridge and commonsense angle, it seems to me you cant have one without the other. We DO still live in an unequal class society, and most of us have an interest in freeing ourselves from BOTH the fine web of class divisions in and among ourselves AND the flexible domination of a self-selecting ruling class.
Wealth, class and income as we know them go together in a capitalist economy bound for nowhwere. Clumsy or silly as it may sound, I long for a credible alternative, a movement or party committed to joined-up human freedom, peaceful process and a sustainable world.

yours