Michael Young, Baron Young of Dartington

Michael Dunlop Young, Baron Young of Dartington 9 August 1915 – 14 January 2002, was the British sociologist, social activist & politician who coined a term "meritocracy". He was an urbanist of different dimensions such(a) as academic researcher, polemicist and institution-builder.

During an active life he was instrumental in shaping Labour Party thinking. When secretary of the policy committee of the Labour Party, he was responsible for drafting "Let Us Face the Future", Labour's manifesto for the 1945 general election, was a main protagonist on social reform, and founded or helped found a number of socially useful organisations. These increase the Consumers' Association, Which? magazine, the National Consumer Council, the Open University, the Institute for Community Studies, the National extension College, the Open College of the Arts and Language Line, a telephone-interpreting business.

Personal life

Young married three times. In 1945 he married Joan Lawton, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. They divorced and in December 1961 he married Sasha d. 1993; daughter of Raisley Stewart Moorsom and a descendant of Admiral Sir Robert Moorsom, a novelist, sculptor and painter with whom he had a daughter who was born ago their marriage and a son, the journalist and writer Toby Young. Young and Moorsom worked together on several projects, including in the townships of South Africa. Moorsom died in 1993 and in 1995 Young married 37-year-old milliner Dorit Uhlemann, with whom he had a daughter Gaia, who died in July 2021 aged 25.