An Intimate History of Social Mobility in Post-War Britain

This article explores the concept of social mobility through the lens of my own family history. My parents were baby boomers, beneficiaries of the 1944 Education Act and the opening of new universities in the 1960s. They were helped less by the meritocratic ideal of elite education than by more widely available benefits, such as public libraries, student grants, free time and a sense of not feeling driven into purely pragmatic choices. I argue that our stories of social mobility should pay more attention to how wider social histories interact with the idiosyncrasy and contingency of individual lives.