ABSTRACT
The outstanding exception is the article by Haia Shpayer-Makov, whose calculations for the Metropolitan police early in the twentieth century provide a benchmark.1 Shpayer-Makov found that after serving their probation, only a quarter of the sample drawn from a decade of recruits ever rose above the rank of constable. She analysed the factors that were associated with a stronger chance of promotion, and found these included previous non-manual occupation (especially as clerks) and better levels of education. For a later period, Reiner’s study confirmed that there were indeed consistent differences between the promoted and the non-promoted that correlated with the pc’s previous job. Thus, despite the stress laid on an ethos of equality of conditions and opportunity, a tendency for those in supervisory grades to have attended secondary school and to have held non manual jobs prior to joining the police held good over the half century covered by the two studies.2
