Working-class people face invisible barriers to progress in the Square Mile, according to the City of London Corporation, which reported this week that banks and other City firms need to do more to nurture those who don’t have posh accents or privileged parentage.
No sensible person would argue against this. Even so, the adage that ‘it’s all about class, not race’ has become a little too popular lately in public discussions about social mobility. The truth is that it’s not an either/or – as I know, having spent ten years helping Black students, many of them also from lower-income households, get into Oxford and Cambridge, and then to City firms.
