When I wur a lad, 40 year ago, in t’ north of t’Kent (where
we didn’t speak like that) “class” was a concept that was often bandied arahnd
and abaht (which is far more like wot we used ter speak like). Upper class
people owned Sevenoaks, Middle Class people owned shops or were accountants,
while most of the rest of us were working class. Then there was the Isle of
Sheppey. I won’t quite say we all knew our place and were glad of it, because
the 60s had already started to alter society’s perceptions of the class
structure in the UK
(or at least England.
Goodness knows what they thought in West Lothian). But
it was still the general case and it existed.
But as the years moved along, and Thatcher in particular did
her best to disrupt the norms that had kept English society in place since
feudal times, all those lines get very, very smudged. Home ownership was no
longer the preserve of the middle class – the upper class owned OTHER people’s
homes of course anyway – as every Tom, Dick or Harry bought their council house
and Wimpey gave up cooking burgers and instead built multiple estates of
identikit Cornflake boxes to sell to the empowered working classes. A last
bastion of middle class preserve was removed almost in one fell swoop. Ironic,
then, that names such as “Tom, “Dick” or “Harry” (in particular!) should become
very much “middle class” names today…
The grocer’s daughter moved aside for the music hall
performer’s son who continued the path of turning sons of the sod into property
owning tycoons. The City’s Big bang blew open the ingrained old boy network
that was “The City” and wide boys from far and … well… wide streamed in to fill
their Gucci and BMW 3 series’ boots with lots of luvverly moolah. Not to
mention multiply boost the sales of red braces overnight.
Then came Blair. And any pretences that some may have held
to the old class structure disappeared totally. Fifty per cent of the
population were to gain degrees; if ever there was a middle class preserve this
was it. It soon became apparent though that there was a reason why 50% of the
population didn’t go to university – because they weren’t clever enough! And
still weren’t clever enough to study Law, or 19th century French
Literature, or Chemistry – so “Lady Gaa-Gaa Studies” at Louth University (née
Louth College of Art and Humanities), burgeoning opportunities in “Health and
Sports Recreation” at Loughborough University (which had always been a
university of course and always offered sport related studies, but was now
actually heard of outside of Leicestershire) and multiple Media Studies courses
sprung up to take the influx of 18 year olds that couldn’t get a job, couldn’t
get the dole so had to go to uni instead.
And so the old fashioned class structure died. And a good
thing too we may feel. Except… this last month we have been reminded by the
popular meejah that the class structure does exist still in the UK
in the 21st century. Or it does if you are talking about Tory
members of parliament. With Andrew Mitchell and Plebgate, and now George
Osbourne and “1st Class train ticket gate” (doesn’t quite roll off
the tongue that one) it appears that the upper classes still rule over us – but
now embarrassingly so. But aside from Conservative party members making pubic
misdemeanours – and let’s face it that is hardly news anyway, from Profumo to
Parkinson – where DOES the class structure in the UK
stand in 2012? There are the historically rich, bemoaning the costs of living
in houses the size of Daventree. There are the nouveau middle classes bemoaning
the lack of decent schooling in Wessex
having reached financial nirvana through Wayne
having landed a big one in Dubai in
the mid 1990s. And there are the working classes… much of whom arguably are no
longer actually working but – if you believe the Daily Wail – living off the
benefit state. So these are hardly representative of the historical meanings of
the class system so what has replaced it?
Today the system seems to have moved its boundaries from a
horizontal plane to a vertical one and the old distinctions seem redundant. “Anyone”
can own a house – and “Anyone” can become homeless. “Anyone” can run their own
business and “Anyone” can be out of work totally. “Anyone” can find riches
galore and “Anyone” can lose them.We seem now to have a situation of old money, new money and
no money. Allied to social pretensions…
of Celebrity, Snobbery and horror at what we have become.
Maybe to put it another way, what we have in 2012 is …
The Chavs and The Chav-nots?
(c) Ian Diddams 2012
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