Paul Barker: The explosive truth behind our 'meritocracy'

In every mixed-race school I've been in, teachers perceived the poor whites as the thorniest task

This is an unfashionable focus. The risk is that you'll be accused of racism. But all progress requires looking facts in the face. Geoff Dench is a British social scientist who, to his credit, has always been a member of the intellectual awkward squad. In an updated edition of his perceptive study, Minorities in the Open Society, he draws on new research in east London to warn that the white working class may now be "slipping fast into a white underclass". He argues that the emphasis on meritocracy – endorsed by all recent prime ministers – makes matters worse, not better.

Dench's book is timely. This week the Department for Education trumpeted a new drive to improve ethnic-minority pupils' performance. It published a list which showed that only 30 per cent of black Caribbeans sitting GCSEs got top grades, against 51 per cent of whites.

I sometimes think that in social reporting percentages should be banned. Absolute figures tell a different story, as my follow-up phone call to the department confirmed. Seventy per cent of black Caribbeans were reportedly unacademic. But only 42,146 black Caribbeans took GCSEs in England last year. By contrast, the 49 per cent of white underperformers came from a white candidate total of 2,707,404. So which is the really big problem? Dench is right.

It's no obscure question of statistics. "Many people in Britain," Dench argues, "feel that there is a madness running through much of our social policy at the moment, which revolves around the place of minorities." It also, he maintains, revolves around the shortcomings of meritocracy. Aptly, Dench works at the Institute of Community Studies in Bethnal Green. This was founded by the late Michael Young, author of the 1950s sociological satire The Rise of the Meritocracy. Young forecast that meritocracy, already burgeoning as he wrote, would have severe limits.

History taught us, Young said, that the newly ascendant class would seek to protect its own, and pull up the ladder behind it. This week's rows over quotas for working-class admissions to universities, and the private schools' hysteria over Bristol University's entry system, show that this is already happening. The great surge of upward social mobility, which lasted for a generation after the mid-1950s, has been put on hold.

The tweaking of university funding announced yesterday is mere fudge, Dench reckons. Amazingly, students' home postcodes will be the yardstick of deprivation. This is good news for all east London gentrifier parents.

Meanwhile, the new meritocrats want schools which deliver good A-levels and good university places. To meet the new market, even private schools – as Michael Young also forecast – sell themselves as grade factories, rather than character-formation forcing houses. Is this all to be taken away from the meritocrats' children and their grandchildren because of clamours to help those still stuck below? It will be hard fought.

But ethnic minorities are the accredited exception. They're consistently picked out for official help in still climbing the ladder. Dench is caustic about this "multicultural" strategy. His research shows it builds resentment. White working-class parents "can see that this sponsorship of newcomers is good for the country as a whole". But many are resentful, because they feel "it is their children who are paying the price for it. Teachers have limited time. And the opportunities for social mobility are not just limited but effectively zero-sum".

All of this is especially true in London, host to nearly all refugees and to very many of the families of recent migrant descent (about half of all black Caribbeans, for example). It's one reason why London is increasingly untypical of Britain as a whole. Yet much public policy is London-orientated.

This resentment showed in the election of British National Party candidates in some northern towns, including my native borough of Calderdale. Up on the bleak moor-edge housing estates above Halifax, the meritocracy doesn't bring much joy. It's no use public-policy wonks muttering about "diversity". It cuts as little ice as "multiculturalism".

Dench is scathing: "In recent years, and especially since the return to power of Labour, people have felt as though the rights of immigrants and of potential immigrants – who have yet to enter the [social] system or even to think about doing so – are given greater weight than those of families who have been here for generations." Explosive stuff, you might think. Or, at least, balm to David Blunkett's soul. But Dench reckons that many migrants are also let down. The apparent (and sometimes facile) official concern can lead to unrealistic expectations. "It makes no sense to tell them that all this [social advancement] will come about instantly." Alongside those BNP election successes, you get young Kashmiris rioting in Bradford. Rival frustrations meet, in blood and anger.

As a paid-up meritocrat, I wouldn't abandon meritocracy so easily. In the long run, I think it might kick-start social mobility again. Nor, being deeply hostile to quotas, do I see any easy alternatives. But I present Geoff Dench's arguments here because I agree with his clear-eyed criticisms of the way the system works. In every mixed-race school I've been in, teachers perceived the poor whites – especially boys – as the thorniest task. To do better, we must try honestly to understand our society as it is.