Origin and reception . The labour party as crucible - Asa Briggs . Meritocracy in the civil service, 1853-1970 - Jon Davis . A tract for the times - Paul Barker . We sat down at the table of privilege and complained about the food - Hilary Land . The chequered career of a cryptic concept - Claire Donovan . Looking back on Meritocracy - Michael Young Relevance to Modern Britain . A brief profile of the new british establishment - Jim Ogg . Face, race and place: Merit and ethnic minorities - Michelynn Laflèche . Marginalised young men - Yvonne Roberts . The unmaking of the English working class - Ferdinand Mount . Age and inequality - Eric Midwinter . Ship of state in peril - Peregrine Worsthorne Analytical Value . The moral economy of meritocracy: or, the unanticipated triumph of reform and the failure of revolution in the west - Irving Louis Horowitz . Japan at the meritocracy frontier: From here, where? - Takehiko Kariya and Ronald Dore . Just rewards: Meritocracy fifty years later - Peter Marris . What do we mean by talent? - Richard Sennett . Resolving the conflict between the family and meritocracy - belinda Brown . Meritocracy and popular legitimacy - Peter Saunders The Future . The new assets agenda - Andrew Gamble and Rajiv Prabhakar . New labour and the withering away of the working class? - Jon Cruddas . A delay on the road to meritocracy - Peter Wilby . Putting social contribution back into merit - Geoff Dench . Ladder of opportunity or engine of inequality? - Ruth Lister . The future of meritocracy - David Willetts