Roy Hattersley has encouraged Quakers to reject meritocracy and recognise that equal opportunities are not enough to achieve a just society.

The former Labour politician urged Friends to focus on economic equality instead. He was applauded by an audience of around 400 as he encouraged them to become ‘evangelists’ for equality.
Hattersley was delivering the Salter Lecture, an annual event of the Quaker Socialist Society, held just before Britain Yearly Meeting.

Meritocracy does not lead to equality, he argued. He said that an ‘open road’ has little meaning when economic conditions allow some to move faster than others.

Hattersley passionately attacked the idea that selective education should allow people to ‘escape’ poverty. He said he would rather change ‘the conditions from which only a few are allowed to escape’.

There was laughter when Hattersley became so enthused about the recent book The Spirit Level that he encouraged the audience to rush off to buy it rather than listen to him. The book’s authors, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, provide extensive evidence of much lower rates of crime, drug-taking and unwanted pregnancy in more equal societies.

Recent Labour governments came under repeated attack, particularly for increased gaps between rich and poor. Referring to Tony Blair’s insistence that he wanted more millionaires, Hattersley said, ‘I am in favour of people being millionaires in their primary income and less than millionaires after they’ve been taxed a bit’.

He argued that Labour could have won the recent election had they focused on equality. Despite having been regarded as an enemy of the unions when he was a minister in the 1970s, Hattersley was adamant that he would not cross British Airways picket lines.

Hattersley argued that equality leads to freedom, giving the example of taxing a billionaire who might then ‘not be free to take his yacht to Scandinavia’, but the pensioners who benefited might be ‘free to take railway journeys… and to turn on the electric heater’.

He urged Friends to take the initiative and promote equality with confidence. ‘We have to evangelise,’ he insisted, ‘Nobody will believe it unless we argue for it’.