Making Equal

Levelling Up is widely recognized failed as policy in the UK. ‘Making Equal: New Visions for Opportunity and Growth’ considers what lessons can be learnt and what might be done differently with cogent views from across the political spectrum. A century ago something similar happening in the UK, the 1920s were time of failure, but by the 1930s the idea that Special Areas needed an Act of Parliament to help them was accepted. In these pages we may be seeing history and consensus repeat.

This is a hugely impressive book - hooked onto the 125th anniversary of Ruskin College but whose writ encompasses Dickens’ ghosts in A Christmas Carol - past, present and future. Its editors, Graeme Atherton and Peter John, have attracted a galaxy of impressive contributors - academics, politicians, social scientists, journalists, researchers - and let them fly.

The mounds of statistics are the backdrop to an urgency to that - and Graeme Atherton’s introduction has all the figures you might want, but along rising with eloquent anger - real people, real places, real heartbreaks, but also the determination to put things right.

As I am an historian, a tutor for The Open University for 20 years, and a further 22 years as a Blackpool MP (where Graeme grew up) I assure you this book is the genuine article. The five sections - Creating opportunity from birth, Higher education – the driver of growth and opportunity, Making places matter, Growth, the economy and the role of business, Labour and inequality – past, present and future - bring out in David Blunkett, Hilary Armstrong, John Bird and Rupa Huq some very personal narratives when the stats hit home.

What happened then matters now - echoes of Victorian philanthropists (Titus Salt and Robert Owen...) rub shoulders with Place matters - the epiphanies of Sure Start but also 12 years’ gaps of life expectancy within (let alone) within cities and towns.

This could not be more timely - as a Labour government grapples with devolution, hard choices, and the growing divide between public and private, in the post Covid world in education. This book should be on the virtual shelves of those who have the power to get some of this right.

As the government’s honeymoon has soured into widespread voter disillusion, it has offered us new ‘missions’, ‘targets’ and ‘milestones.’ What remains missing is a clear moral anchor, rooted in the Labour Party’s history. This book, by contributors with deep practical experience of struggles against social injustice, helps to fill that lamentable void. It needs to be read by those with the power to reset public policy.

Ruskin College with its history of opening its doors to those who have been historically marginalised and offering them socially just pathways to empowerment and consciousness raising is reflected in this outstanding, timely, visionary and politically engaged collection.

The contributors bring a dynamic, multifaceted, radical and engaging lens for exploring, challenging and repositioning what it means to resist and remove the tough and often deep layers of inequality in society and education.

They offer critical in and out roads for humane and sustainable action and change, where people and their community are at the heart of levelling up; no matter what the circumstances of birth, dignity, hope and fairness is offered a space to flourish.

I will be dipping into this robust collection again and again. I highly recommend it for academics, educationalists, policy makers, students and anyone who cares about, challenging inequality and exploring real solutions for a shift towards a more just and joyous society.