In conversation with Justine Greening
“You need a policy agenda that is pro-social mobility… to connect more people up to more opportunities, have more success and lift a whole country.”
Summary
Former Education Secretary Justine Greening talks with the RSA’s Chief Executive Andy Haldane about the shifting sands of opportunity across Britain, and the vital role businesses play in driving social mobility and growth. With shared roots in deindustrialised Northern England, the pair discuss their shared drive to improve social mobility. Greening calls for a policy agenda that reconnects effort with opportunity, believing the education system and business must work together to unlock potential.
Former Education Secretary Justine Greening talks with the RSA’s Andy Haldane about the erosion of opportunity across Britain, the crucial role of businesses in driving social mobility and growth, and their shared experience of ‘Yorkshire grit’.
Andy Haldane: There’s so much I need to talk to you about, but I wondered whether we might start at the very beginning – a bit about your background.
Justine Greening: My journey starts in Rotherham in the 1980s in a really ordinary working-class family. Nobody in my family was involved in politics – yet it was a really political environment to grow up in. We had the miners’ strike, the steel strike. My dad worked in the steel industry and was on strike for a bit – because everybody was. He lost his job at the end of it all.
This was almost the first wave of what would be known as globalisation. I couldn’t believe that my dad was doing something every day that other people didn’t care about or value. I just saw this huge talent that he had, wasted in front of my eyes. This made me promise myself that I would do what I could to never have that happen to me.
What happened with my father stuck with me as a sense of absolute helplessness and frustration. I was never able to shake it off. So, I’ve almost spent a lifetime trying to fix that basic problem.
Haldane: Your personal story is so close to mine. I grew up slightly north of where you did, in West Yorkshire – the 1980s deglobalised and deindustrialised Britain. That’s why I got into economics.
Greening: You saw that in your own family.
Haldane: Luckily, my dad didn’t lose his job, but lots of my friends’ dads did. Looking back on that swathe of deindustrialisation that we saw across large parts of the UK, do you think that was just the inevitable tide of history? That globalisation was coming and these were the casualties? Or should we have done things differently to provide more safety for people like your dad?
Greening: First of all, the change was almost certainly happening. You have to make the numbers add up – the big error was not confronting the challenges when they didn’t. I was always resentful, as a child, of the adults who had found it all too hard to face reality. If they’d done that, then maybe only half the people would have lost their jobs, rather than everyone, had the steel industry specialised earlier.
So, there was a bit of me that blamed management for bad strategy. I guess I blame the unions for not being prepared to realise that they needed to work to save some of the roles by accepting change. The government clearly could see that change was going to happen. The issue was too little support and strategy around transition.
My dad ended up filling up vending machines because it was the first job that he could get that would pay money. But in other parts of the country, there was ultimately more of a strategic economic shift into new sectors. That’s the lesson. You have to stay competitive, but economic shifts are going to continue to happen. We’re in the midst of one right now with tech and AI, for example, and there’s another one around talent. But you succeed by embracing them, harnessing them and dealing with the downsides.
In the 1980s, we should have thought much more carefully about social mobility, the systemic piece around what happens in communities when everyone loses their jobs.
Recommended reading
“Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way is a brilliant guide for navigating those more difficult times in life and getting positive outcomes from them. In essence, it’s the journey that builds you – so understand it and learn from it.” Justine Greening
Haldane: What’s amazing is, 40 years on, we are having discussions on steel and the future of it in this country. In some ways, much of what Donald Trump is now doing in the US is motivated by the plight of people like your dad.
Greening: Workers from working-class backgrounds and, to some extent, white working-class backgrounds, are left behind. But these are all communities where the link between effort and reward feels like it’s completely broken. Even if you see growth happening in the economy, it’s growth that’s benefiting other people, not you.
I grew up in an age where there wasn’t social media, but I had a sense that there were people getting a better start than me. I bought into this message that I heard from Margaret Thatcher, that there was effort and reward. If I worked hard, I would be able to get places. I totally bought into that and thought, yeah, that’s exactly what I am willing to do. But today, how would I have felt? I would have felt a lot angrier.
That’s what is at the root of so many of our social and economic challenges. This link between effort and reward has become degraded over time. Until we put it back together, this won’t be a country that is as inclined to feel aspirational.
Haldane: I can’t think of a model of growth that isn’t about unlocking individual opportunity. When you talk about this severed link between effort and opportunity, it’s another way of saying the engine of growth has failed individually, at the community level, and, ultimately, at the nation-state level.
Greening: When you look at Britain’s constant struggle to boost productivity, the tide against us has become harder as this link has been progressively broken. It’s been additionally challenging for us because we’re in a service economy and because economic success in the 21st century is more inextricably bound up in human capital than perhaps it was 50 years ago.
All the evidence suggests that this is a systemic problem, and therefore, the way it works is that advantage accumulates over time, and disadvantage accumulates over time. None of this happens overnight. What you are seeing is a very slow, multi-generational playing out of that. If you think of a ladder to climb – I climbed up, you climbed up – but the middle rungs are starting to drop out for people, they’re more likely to fall down than to move up.
“… disadvantage accumulates over time. None of this happens overnight.”
Haldane: I’d like to know a bit about the secrets of your own success climbing the ladder from that working-class background to the highest offices of state. Then, from that vantage point, why are there so few Justines around?
Greening: Looking back on it now, I was just incredibly single-minded. My dad used to take me swimming and I used to plough up and down the lanes. I learnt over time that I was better at keeping going than most people, that keeping going was one way that I could win. So there was a sheer bloody-mindedness, a lot of drive, a ton of hard work and some lucky breaks occasionally that went in my favour. It was just keeping going and never thinking about the destination too much.
The secret of success for me was realising that the journey was my advantage. That it was everything I’d learnt on the way that made me, me. That, actually, I was a better minister for all of these different experiences – growing up in Rotherham, going to Southampton University, going off to Switzerland for a couple of years to work, coming back to London to work, being in industry, being in different companies – then becoming part of a local Conservative Association, where you’re flung in with people who are 60, 70, 80. I was in my 30s!
That was where some of my confidence came from, and I shook off any impostor syndrome and thought, ‘No, I know I’ve earned the right to be here.’ That’s a really precious thing.
Haldane: Having had a ringside seat on all matters education for a long time, is our current education system part of the solution or part of the problem?
Greening: Well, it’s both. The thing about kids is, they do grow up. So we are making a decision about their futures. The decision is, are they going to grow up able to contribute, make the most of their potential, have a sense of their place in this world, and have a lifelong love of learning that they can take into adulthood, or not? For too long, we’ve fudged that. There’s been a complacency at times in government that – somehow these gaps, well, they’re just going to happen, aren’t they?
I think that’s false. We were using the phrase ‘levelling up’, as you know, when I was at the Department for Education. It was in my foreword to the DfE’s Social Mobility Action Plan of 2017. I said the problem with Britain is that talent is spread evenly, but opportunity is not. That was an important phrase for two reasons. One, it was the articulation of two halves of a social mobility strategy. Talent is spread evenly, but not developed consistently, in our education system. Businesses are the opportunity creators, the opportunity holders, and therefore, they have to be part of driving equality of opportunity too.
But the second reason it mattered, being absolutely frank, is you either believe that or you don’t. There are too many people in government for whom it was a wonderful bit of rhetoric, but who, deep down, don’t really believe that talent is spread evenly – but I do. I’ve lived it. You’ve lived it. It’s just the truth. But if you believe it’s the truth, then it has to be a design principle for government. That surely starts with education.
Haldane: You mentioned before about nurturing that love of learning. But we also know that there are a great many young people leaving our education system. Isn’t this a diagnosis of a system not working for too many young people in the poorest parts of the country?
Greening: If there’s a purpose of education, it’s above all to give people the skills, knowledge, advice and insights to connect up to opportunity. But we haven’t tailored the education system to what we need in the 21st century. It’s a rear-view mirror on a version of Britain that doesn’t exist any more.
If you’re looking at what you need to go forward, it’s less around stuffing your brain with facts – I can find those on Google now. That’s not what intelligence is any more. Now it’s about: Can you really synthesise? Can you see connections? Can you problem-solve? What’s the creativity that you bring? Are you able to see those crossovers?
We have to teach people in the education system to develop their critical thinking and ability to use the human intelligence they have. It’s crazy that the Treasury in the last government announced a £900m investment in AI – this is artificial intelligence that scored on the nation’s balance sheet as an asset. Yet, had we put the same amount into HI, human intelligence, then that would have just been a cost.
Haldane: Over the last few years, you’ve been working on the bridge from learning into earning, and the role business might play in nurturing social mobility and growing those communities. Can you say a bit about the work you’ve done and the importance of business as a conduit for social improvement?
Greening: Unless business is strategically part of driving social mobility and equality of opportunity, it simply won’t happen. In the work that I do with businesses now, the most important category is action. I want them to think strategically about how opportunities change lives. How they can build talent pipelines into some of those communities, into some of those people who are more locked out from opportunity. Not just because it’s good for those communities, but all the evidence is that it’s good for business too.
I think the companies themselves being able to do it better means they’re more likely to succeed and win. Who would you prefer to work for, a business that’s really diverse in its talent, has all sorts of ideas coming into it, knows how to progress that talent, and that’s got leadership that understands this or a business that doesn’t?
Haldane: You mentioned that sometimes our systems need a jolt to change themselves. The world economy has just had a jolt, courtesy of Donald Trump. Could that have an energising effect among businesses and politicians, to make those brave choices about shifting systems in all the ways you’ve described?
“… we could become a version of Britain with equality of opportunity.”
Greening: It depends whether the penny finally drops that our problems are home-grown. The pressures on our political systems are from what’s happening inside our countries. The biggest issue is that people have just stopped believing that their prospects are ever going to get any better. They’re understandably turning to ever more dramatic solutions to try to see if there’s an answer out there.
The good news is that we could become a version of Britain with equality of opportunity, or we could get a lot closer to that. Businesses are really up for being part of this challenge. We can do this, and we need to, because we’re a very socially stratified country. We’ve got one of the biggest problems in weak social mobility.
If we could redefine ourselves, then that would be a huge gift for the wider world – to be a country with some of the most ingrained challenges around social mobility that was able to confront them, to find the solutions for them. For me, that would surely be something we could be proud of as future generations look back on it.
Haldane: Hard to think of a better endowment. I’m going to take you back to where we started. I spent a day in Rotherham last year with local leaders and businesses, talking about a place that’s not just been laid low economically, but has had its social problems as well. Nonetheless, I came away from that with a sense of optimism. The spirit was willing.
Greening: The Yorkshire grit.
Haldane: The Yorkshire grit. There was a sense of purpose, there was a sense of leadership, both governmental and civil society and business. I wonder whether you shared that sense of optimism?
Greening: I do. When I first started in Cabinet, banging on about social mobility, to some extent, it almost felt like it was my pet project. I came up with the phrase ‘levelling up’ because I wanted to refresh social mobility. I felt probably we just needed a new name for it that would get some attention. Labour has got its ‘breaking down barriers’ mission, quite rightly. Different words, but the same aspiration and purpose.
Crucially, we’ve moved from a discussion around whether or not equality of opportunity should happen in Britain to how to do it. That’s a huge strategic shift. When I look at what’s happening in other countries, we’re further ahead on that debate.
We recognise it’s the debate that we’re in. The challenge now, for all of us – and that includes the political system – is working together to do it and being really systematic about the solutions that we know work and understanding how you can find them, spread them, learn from them and then deliver them in a tailored way but at scale.
In the same way that you have a policy agenda that enables companies to get further, faster on investing in climate, you need a policy agenda that is pro-social mobility to enable that wider ecosystem to connect more people up to more opportunities, have more success and, in doing so, lift a whole country.
Justine Greening is a former MP and Secretary of State for Education, International Development and Transport, Minister for Women/Equalities and Founder of the Purpose Coalition.
Andy Haldane is the former Chief Executive Officer at the RSA.
Lydia Goldblatt is an award-winning photographer based in London. Her work creatively fuses the approaches of both documentary and constructed technology.
Knowledge grows when shared.
If you found this interesting, pass this article on to your friends and family.
Browse all articles from this issue
Justine Greening
On business, social mobility and the power of place
How feminist urban design is shaping a fairer Glasgow
Open Britain
Portraits of migration, belonging and hope
What’s next for education?
Back to the drawing board
Stones, songs and secrets
Lithography, lore and the RSA’s secret history
Adarsh Ramchurn
On empowering new voices
And it’s goodnight from him
UK Pavilion shines at Osaka Expo
Mixing Matters
Why diverse social networks fuel mobility
Myths of merit in an unequal society
Almost home
Incarcerated women curate a moving artistic statement
Voice
It can be harder to stand up for yourself than for everyone else