British class system

Ah - it can't only be me who was brought up in the 'underclass' surely?

My mother dinned it into all eight of her children that if we didn't work hard we'd 'end up in a factory' (her own job when she left school aged 14). However, with limited educational opportunities we were always going to struggle to get good jobs unless we got lucky. And fortunately we did.

The system was stacked against us, but by as much luck as good judgement and hard work we all of us found our way out of the underclass. My sister and I were in a position to help the younger sisters get better jobs, two brothers went into the forces and a third learned a trade.

The females in my family all married middle class men, all had careers until retirement and all have financial security. On paper two of my sisters are multi-millionaires with some of the lifestyle trappings (a boat, properties, expensive cars, businesses etc.), but they actually identify with their 'working class' roots, as do my brothers who are financially secure, but don't have such affluent lifestyles.

I am middle class, yet I identify so closely with people in poverty that I have spent my whole working life trying to help adults and children to improve their lives whilst being active in trying to influence the system that is still stacked against so many!

I have friends from all walks of life and I see the distinct advantages that being born into a particular class has brought to some of my friends. I also see the struggle of people who are trying to do the best they can, but have all the disadvantages wrought from an accident of birth.

There is a series being repeated on BBC4 just now, and it is on iPlayer - The Victorian Slum.

It's one of those 'reality' history programmes where people supposedly live the lives of people in the past, in this case poor people in Bethnal Green in the 19th century.

It links with this thread by showing how it is impossible for some people to work their way out of the dreadful conditions they are in, as they earn so little above the very basics (ie rent and minimal food) that there is never going to be enough to save anything. Even if they did manage to save, all it takes is a child to be sick, an adult to have an accident or prices to rise for them to fall straight back down again.

There is no safety net other than the workhouse, and no employment rights, so the people are ruthlessly exploited. Sometimes they have to exploit one another or risk being turned out of their lodgings for non-payment of rent.

When I hear people complain about 'scroungers' and wanting everything to be means tested, making it impossible for those at the bottom to save anything without risking it being clawed back when they need it most, I wonder if they would really like to see a return to days like these.

I caught a snatch of the Start the Week prog this morning PippaZ and you are right. There was a very interesting Professor Mariana Muzzucato, who had written an interesting book on capitalism A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism.

Something has to change that’s for sure, and perhaps the Pandemic will be the spur that is needed. I rarely join in these discussions on GN because they usually tend to become we did ok and we were poor and if people worked a bit harder and were more determined, not as lazy, had fewer kids... and so on. Always the individual never the system.

An illustration of PippaZ is the handling of mine & factory closures where whole communities, dependent on one industry, were devastated. They were hard working " working class" who lost their livlihoods at a time of high unemployment.
Governments knew what the impact would be but, as far as I can recall, there was no big effort to invest or actively provide new opportunities in a community.

Interesting post Doodledog. While I was reading it there was a description of the content of Start the Week (9 a.m R4). It seems to be about the broken contract between Government and the people. Post war, people were told that if we (or our parents) worked hard we could be rich and if not rich, have a decent standard of living. This was actually proved true at the time because of the way the government invested in the country and the individual. Most people, post war, were better off than they expected to be.

This is no longer true. "Deep global trends, automation, massive inflation in asset prices, insecure work, have shattered that ideal, long before the financial crash and the pandemic worsened inequality. The consequences of this broken social contract are so profound they almost don't bear thinking about".

And not thinking about them or making an effort to gain the relative knowledge is what we get from all those who complain that they worked hard to get where they are or that all those receiving benefits from our national insurance system are drug addicts, lazy and wicked.

They base their conclusions on a great lack of self-education about what is actually happening. I imagine that the current lack of believable structure is due to this broken contract between the have's and the have-it-taken-off-yous. When you look at the approaching of failed state status for this country I am not sure where a class system based on an unattractive belief that a person is inherently better than others has any value whatsoever.

That was a very interesting post Doods. We never bought our kids cars but my kids buy our grandchildren cars, albeit fairly cheap ones. The grandkids put in a bit that they have earned at weekend jobs etc whilst at school. Two of my grandchildren have bought houses, one is in her mid 20s and the other one is just 19. They will be saddled with big mortgages though but seems the norm these days. It is so much harder for them these days though. We never got any help from parents at all once we left school at 18 but we were able to obtain a mortgage fairly easily in those days. We didn’t have to save much at all, almost zero deposits. Class doesn’t enter it here in that sense, no one even thinks of it. We are a country of migrants from all over the world so it would be hard to kind of pin it down.

Assuming that people less well of than oneself are lazy and not making an effort is part of the class system!

I agree, and also think that the lack of social mobility we keep hearing about only really affects the upper working/lower middle classes. These are the people who benefited from things like free education in the 60s and 70s.

Poorer people had to think about contributing to the family via 'board' money, and this was enough to stop a lot of families from encouraging their children (particularly daughters) from going to university. It was the families of skilled workers and lower admin workers who were able to educate their children because of grants and an expansion in places. They now expect their own children to automatically go to university, and to continue the family's trajectory, yet the very expansion that benefited them has decreased the scarcity value of degrees, and thus the elite status that they used to provide.

Meanwhile, families who for generations have been in the professions will continue to be ok - they just swap school fees for university ones, and buy their kids a car with the difference. It's less that fortunes of the former group have reversed, than that there was a temporary window during which they got a better deal.

Also, there are fewer jobs in factories, mines and so on, so those who would once have taken them are now working in call centres, retail and hospitality - the precariat - but because this is not traditionally manual work, they often define as middle class, even though they do not have the same protections and life choices as the more established middle class.

In reality, it is these protections and choices which define middle class status. Paid sick leave, decent pensions, professional body protection, insurances and the ability to save for a 'rainy day' make all the difference when it comes to social mobility, as does an understanding of what is available when it comes to making career choices and decisions.

Assuming that it is a lack of ambition that stops people from being more mobile is far too simplistic, and yes, a classic side-effect of a class system that is justified by a false assumption that we live in a meritocracy. It's one thing to retrain when your sector is floundering if your parents can give you a leg up, and quite another if you have to keep supporting yourself and your family throughout. It's much easier to get onto the housing ladder if your parents have made a lot of money on a house (usually because of the postcode lottery that has existed since the 70s) than if they also rent and have no spare cash, and so on. To then claim that you have managed by hard work is very unfair, if not disingenuous.

That sort of assumption is generated and encouraged by the billionaire proprietors of the gutter press

M0nica I felt that you illustrated the class system well in your comment

"It would be much better if more time was spent telling them they can succeed if they make the effort."

It suggested that those living in areas of deprivation made an active choice to be there and were lazy rather than having limited choices and huge barriers to overcome.

In the 50s/60s it was much easier to find work, add to your education, save for a mortgage. So what I or others could or did do is irrelevant in today's world.

e.g. As a student my HE fees and accommodation were paid for, I found temporary work in the holidays easily and the rent on my first home was a relatively small percentage of my earnings. Life was very different. No gig economy or rents higher than mortgages.

For the first time in a long while young adults are more likely to be less well off than their parents.

Assuming that people less well of than oneself are lazy and not making an effort is part of the class system!

I think the lines between classes are more blurred than they were years ago.

Lots of people are what I would call working class but with middle class aspirations. I do not say this to be unkind but it is how I see it.

No

No it's to do with finding a way to level the playing field is very difficult. Pupil premium was a good start but should have been much more research on the most effective way to allocate the money

No. it's due mostly to the abolition of the funding for poor children in secondary education, the education maintenanace allowance and grants for further ed.
I had support throughout my secondary education to help with uniform,books etc. Then a full grant when I went to teacher training college.

NO

trisher

M0nica I think people in deprived areas often do not succeed because everyone keeps telling them that they won't. It would be much better if more time was spent telling them they can succeed if they make the effort.
I'd love to know who these people are. Having spent a large proportion of my teaching career in some of the most deprived areas I only ever heard encouragement and support offered to children there. Of course if you haven't enough to eat, your famly life is chaotic and debt ridden and your parents have drug or alcohol problems you start from a much lower level of self-belief and confidence than those born into privilege.

There are a lot of posts about individual famly members who have risen in the class system, and of course their are successes. But the general trend is no longer of working class progress, we are now stuck, the gap between the richest and the poorest is widening and few rise up the scale.

I am thinking about trisher’s last paragraph here (couldn’t work out how to quote that alone).

Do any of you think that the current lack of working class progress is anything to do with the fact that we no longer have grammar schools?

Perhaps we should start to question inheritance rights.

From the point of view of the older generation it is reasonable to say "I have worked hard and paid taxes so why should my wealth not go to my children?"

OK

But is it reasonable for the next generation just to expect, as of right, wealth which they never earned?

I don’t follow your logic in one respect Granny23. If said Honest worker is successful in whatever they do, do they only remain in that category if they give their earning above the average to others who are les fortunate - if they don’t does that mean their children as beneficiaries become Skivers/parasites?

Good post Trisher. Some people just don't understand.

Food for thought indeed Granny23

I have not heard that theory before Granny23 but it is certainly food for thought.

I have long thought that people can be divided into a mere two categories =

1) Honest workers: which is all who earn their place in society by honest toil be that as a labourer, a lawyer. a tradesman/woman, a musician, a writer, an artisan, a director, a teacher a medic. etc. Anyone who works to supply goods or services at a fair price to those who need same. + people who give of their time freely as volunteers to help those less fortunate.

2) Skivers/parasites, which applies to all who live off their own or their fore bearers ill gotten gains, those who live off the profits of crime, people who rob, blackmail or scam others, fraudsters e.g benefit cheats (but not those who genuinely qualify for benefit support).

M0nica I think people in deprived areas often do not succeed because everyone keeps telling them that they won't. It would be much better if more time was spent telling them they can succeed if they make the effort.
I'd love to know who these people are. Having spent a large proportion of my teaching career in some of the most deprived areas I only ever heard encouragement and support offered to children there. Of course if you haven't enough to eat, your famly life is chaotic and debt ridden and your parents have drug or alcohol problems you start from a much lower level of self-belief and confidence than those born into privilege.

There are a lot of posts about individual famly members who have risen in the class system, and of course their are successes. But the general trend is no longer of working class progress, we are now stuck, the gap between the richest and the poorest is widening and few rise up the scale.

Yeah, Dragonella. I don't agree with any one system of classification. There are lots although broadly speaking, I think the premise is the same.

Anyone heard of the sociological term, 'skidder'? A person that is downwardly mobile. Opposite of a social climber I guess.

Manners Maketh Man, my old dad used to say. Nothing to do with how much or what a person possesses.

This is the only time I tend to curl my lip, otherwise I can accept anyone at all. No manners--not worth knowing.

sorry seem to have lost the first verse ..oops