Britain’s civil service remains upper-middle class
Not so much has changed since the 1960s, a new report says
THE KEY, thought John Fulton, was to do away with the dominance of Oxbridge-educated generalists and promote officials with technical skills. It was 1968, and Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, worried that Whitehall was too institutionally conservative. He had commissioned the Fulton report with the aim of forging Britain into a science-fuelled meritocracy. One enraged traditionalist declared his preference to be ruled by men who had read Plato and Shakespeare rather than by nuclear scientists.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The servant class”
Britain May 22nd 2021
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- A coronavirus variant is spreading in Britain—but this time is different
- Two unionist parties are under new management
- London is likely to get a swanky new theatre
- Why the best farmland in Britain has become cheap
- Britain’s civil service remains upper-middle class
- A covid-19 inquiry will scrutinise the British state
- How to do foreign policy in a multi-ethnic society
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