Working class wannabes in the News

[Oileo]

It’s been reported in a few papers that ‘47 per cent of those in middle-class professional and managerial occupations identify as working class’ and 24 per cent of people doing middle-class jobs whose parents also did middle class jobs identified as working class too. The gist is that it’s now cool to pretend you rose to your position/ wealth on merit- rather than pretend to be posh.

It got me wondering (again!) about the class system. When do you change class?Can you easily in a generation? I had a middle-class job, yet I don’t know how I’d reply in that survey. I still personally feel a gulf between those who grew up wealth and a middle class background. Even in my 40s I have a bigger mortgage (no inheritance), my interests often don’t match (can’t play an instrument, I don’t know many ballets or plays in conversation for example, no ‘hobbies’ or skills outside education). I feel sometimes it’s obvious networking at work or in my dress (I wear hoop earrings, a number of colleagues over the years have made snide comments as a small example, but it’s more than that in presentation of yourself).

Part the reason for my fascination with class is that I don’t really fit as an immigrant. My parents were a cleaner and a security guard, but I/ they had access to a good education and the Soviet Union was a system that simply can’t be applied here. I have certainly earned here on merit money wise, but have also had better educational opportunities that many British working class. So I don’t really fit.

So
Yabu- your job defines your class
Yanbu-class is far more complex, and somebody may identify as working class if those are their roots.

If someone likes TV soaps, celebrity gossip, R2 or commercial radio hits and 'reality' TV, I tend to switch them off. Money has nothing to do with it. SIL and niece are those people. Nice enough, very kind and far from stupid but absolutely no interest in art or music or politics or books or ideas.

You’ve described my sister. She runs the business left to her when my dad retired. It’s high stress, sometimes long hours and takes a lot out of her. When she sits down at night to relax, she doesn’t want high brow documentaries or anything she has to think about, she wants brain candy that she can escape with and laugh at. She has no interest in politics beyond anything that impacts her business.

If you switched off from her you’d be missing out on one of the funniest, most interesting people I’ve known.

I have several degrees and a professional job but I come from a WC background. Growing up all the occupations I knew were the trades or working in a shop or call center, my parents didn’t have the knowledge or social connections to provide any input into my education or career choices. When I speak to my colleagues about how they spend the holidays with their primarily wealthy families, the difference is very clear and I am under no illusion I am MC.

I already see the difference in opportunities my children have and when they are older, I have friends in good jobs in various industries that will be able to give them insight and guidance depending on what the decide to do. The difference is clear as day to me.

I'd say income rather than job defines your class

Train drivers can earn £50k basis, and easily another £10k or so in overtime. So, maybe £60k which is twice the national average. Does that make them middle class?

@Movinghouseatlast I first bought hoop earrings here, not a big thing at all... other students wore them. It became a habit. 10-15 years later I’ve had a few women at work be snide. Eg ‘oh xxxx’s Mum wears those chav hoops... (pretend gasp). Oh sorry, I forgot you wear hoops’. I am being completely serious. I was bemused. It was moving to a new area

I think first generation middle class coming from working class parents are still identifiable to people who have been truly middle class for generations. But their children will be seen as middle class.
I know several truly upper middle class people who love trashy TV/ soaps but kids at boarding school and comping from that back ground themselves. I think it is essentially down to education and what your lifestyle was like during childhood.

If you work you are working class. If you don’t your not.

What about people who’s only income is benefits, perhaps through disability, or the long term unemployed who find it hard to get in to a job? What are they?

I once worked in a bar with the son of a Lord who will inherit his father’s millions and who lived in a mansion. Is he working class?

I think first generation middle class coming from working class parents are still identifiable to people who have been truly middle class for generations

You think? My best friend was solidly middle class. Her mum was astounded when my dad told her we had lived in council housing until I was 10.

Oooh I don't work, I'm a SAHM. Am I middle or upper class??

I suppose it depends how much time you spend with someone.

A bit like the post about Victoria Beckham being dropped to school in a Bentley.

I think you can be nouveau riche though AND middle class - the two are not mutually exclusive. I recall people I was at school with who lived the ultimate in NR lifestyles but parents were bonafide professionals too (albeit first-generation British).

My own indicator of class for British people (as an immigrant, I am not too attuned to serviettes vs napkins and sofas vs settees, or what corner of a particular village one's accent comes from) is that while working class people could be very well educated indeed in top schools, their knowledge will rarely extend to "useless" areas beyond the school-level curriculum. By "useless", I mean areas of knowledge that are not immediately necessary for one's job or hobbies, and of course this is very specific to every person. As an idiotic example - if a British person knows (roughly) when Napoleonic wars were fought, or can name more than three roman emperors, they are likely, in my experience, to be "middle class". But again, it is an empirical observation only from a foreigner bewildered by the local class system.

@emptydreamer

My own indicator of class for British people (as an immigrant, I am not too attuned to serviettes vs napkins and sofas vs settees, or what corner of a particular village one's accent comes from) is that while working class people could be very well educated indeed in top schools, their knowledge will rarely extend to "useless" areas beyond the school-level curriculum. By "useless", I mean areas of knowledge that are not immediately necessary for one's job or hobbies, and of course this is very specific to every person. As an idiotic example - if a British person knows (roughly) when Napoleonic wars were fought, or can name more than three roman emperors, they are likely, in my experience, to be "middle class". But again, it is an empirical observation only from a foreigner bewildered by the local class system.

My Dad loves history, geography and art. He could tell you those things (I am named after one of his favourite classical myths). He watches mainly bbc4 and SkyArts. We spend lots of time in galleries when possible. He most certainly is WC. But he is marked out as ‘the cultured’ one among his peers and it is unusual enough in his circles for it to be mentioned often.

[quote Oileo]@NavyFlask not everyone living there was Russian... I grew up in a neighbouring country with a cultural identity of its own. I wouldn’t for example being up the Irish Potato famine if you talked about emigrating...
It’s not as simple as history books say. You are thinking about White Russian. It’s only a tiny tiny part of the story.[/quote]
Poland, Lithuania, Hungary etc all had middle and upper classes, landed gentry, royals/emperors etc etc. I'm afraid I don't know about those further east, e.g. Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc. but certainly the "European" (for want of a better word) parts of the USSR have fairly similar set-ups historically, though geography meant many were on a far smaller scale than Britain or Poland, say. I also don't know about those that had previously been under the Ottoman empire- presumably it had been too long to revert back to their own systems of society, which would have been completely erased after that amount of time. (Not to mention irrelevant as they were, by their nature, mediaeval)

In fact, the very fact that a small subset of British society is named Bohemian would give a clue that much of European society/class structure was on similar lines.

It is down to the nature of Britain's isolation geographically that has maintained that class structure for longer than our European counterparts- it's a little tricky to keep up incursions when one has to cross the sea, whereas those little dukedoms, principalities, fiefdoms of the HRE could very easily and quickly be swallowed up by larger military powers.

Living in a country with multiple upheavals and switches between rulers/ what country you even lived in for many many generations back is wildly wildly different from the British Class system. That’s not hard to understand. Anyone you talk to, with knowledge of their grandparents has no memory of a stable class system. They remember border shifts and huge changes, rises, falls etc. Graveyards have different language across the road from each other that aren’t any of that many buildings in London. How can you say coming from that people should relate and understand the British class system? For example a Muslim family from the Crimea should just get it?

@MrsKoala

Of course, it is not without exceptions - just something I observed casually. And it is his hobby, I don't think that hobbies necessarily have a class stamp on them or there is necessarily a high-brow / low-brow divide.
What I meant is more, I don't know... passive knowledge? Where a person does not necessarily have an active interest in a particular area, but still can fish out enough indirect / collateral information from their memory to maintain a reasonable discussion about it. I am not explaining it well at all though.

My grandparents were born in the 19th Century (on one side) - I think you'll find there have been a fair few changes in Britain in the intervening period too!

There were many posters on the thread that said they came to Britain from former Soviet areas- surely some are from countries that hadn't been successively taken over within two generations?

@emptydreamer

My own indicator of class for British people (as an immigrant, I am not too attuned to serviettes vs napkins and sofas vs settees, or what corner of a particular village one's accent comes from) is that while working class people could be very well educated indeed in top schools, their knowledge will rarely extend to "useless" areas beyond the school-level curriculum. By "useless", I mean areas of knowledge that are not immediately necessary for one's job or hobbies, and of course this is very specific to every person. As an idiotic example - if a British person knows (roughly) when Napoleonic wars were fought, or can name more than three roman emperors, they are likely, in my experience, to be "middle class". But again, it is an empirical observation only from a foreigner bewildered by the local class system.

I take it you haven't been the passenger of a black cab driver

If someone likes TV soaps, celebrity gossip, R2 or commercial radio hits and 'reality' TV, I tend to switch them off. Money has nothing to do with it. SIL and niece are those people. Nice enough, very kind and far from stupid but absolutely no interest in art or music or politics or books or ideas.

But as someone else has already pointed out, if you "switch off" people like this you're cutting off you're own nose to spite your face.

I'm interested in art/music/books/politics, but the idea that people who aren't interested in these topics are stupid or dull people is wilful ignorance and as the other poster rightly said you're missing out on so much if you classify people in this way.

Someone's cultural tastes are not a reliable indicator of their intelligence or openness, they are simply a mark of their education status. All this suggests is that you've fallen victim to a narrow and limited set of value judgements about what makes someone "interesting" which is basically defined by snobbery and demographics.

@Kamma89

A 40k salary doesn't make you middle class! I used to work for a local authority where many were on similar or higher wages in non managerial roles & were absolutely working class with some living in social housing. Yes it was a London Borough but the pay uplift wasn't that significant vs the rest of the country.

Grew up in social housing in London- noone I knew or my friend's parents would have had anything like a salary of £40k! I think it does make you middle class.

I would call myself middle class now (from working class parents) because of my lifestyle.. but I earn £30k (only recently promoted from £24k). Things are tight though, sure. But I definitely live a more middle class life compared to how I grew up.

The class thing is fascinating. I don't agree that Uk is the only country that still has a class system or that cares about it, I've lived in other European countries where theres definitely been an awareness and the locals "size up" people according to their class criteria. I also have family and friends living all over the world and they comment on the class systems in those countries and how the locals are about class.

USA seems mainly to go on money and how long a family has had money.

But worldwide and even in USA that's not the only indicator.

It's also parents and grandparents occupations, your own current occupation, education, accent/speech, property ownership, titles (where they exist, I know of a friend who lives in France who's been introduced to french people according to the title they'd have had if there'd not been a revolution! And that was hundreds of years ago!)

But yes it must be confusing to non Brits just as it would be and was to me the system in other countries

I agree it's hard to tell from just meeting someone unless there is a clear indicator like "may I introduce you to lord smith"

I confuse fuck out of people! Even the online questionnaires go "cannot compute" when trying to work out my class! 

I'm Glaswegian born to working class parents and grandparents (mum was a checkout girl dad was army squaddie as his dad a welder in the shipyard, other 3 grandparents working production line in factories)

I went to state schools and left at 16 with only 3 GCSEs

But over time I've improved my education, I was the first in the family to do a-levels let alone higher education! I now hold 2 degrees and hope to work for a masters in the next few years if i can manage it, (which to my 16 year old self would have seemed like chasing rainbows!) all the moving around means I have an odd accent that nobody can place, I've held a profession at one point in my working life and I've earned well at another point

But then I became ill and unable to work so that changed my circumstances but brought me into situations where certain people (who should have known better frankly) assumed because I was disabled and on benefits that meant I was lazy and thick!

So I don't know what class I truly belong in and tbh it shouldn't really matter...but in the real world sadly it does.

When people I am dealing with on various matters - from consumer to medical to financial etc - "realise" I'm well educated, they change their demeanour towards me and treat me better, all well and good for me but makes me think very poorly of them because that means they're treating others without that advantage much less well when if anything they should make more effort with them, they should certainly be acting more fairly!

Jason Manford As mentioned upthread, even aside from the show muddle class if you follow him on social media and radio etc speaks often on how different his kids upbringing is as a result of his success. He has some interesting insights on the subject as does John Bishop.

@thepeopleversuswork see I disagree I think duchess of Cambridge is and always will be upper middle class, marriage even to a royal doesn't change that

Victoria beckham even though now extremely wealthy and famous is still working class as is David. Money doesn't equal class in the Uk

@LakieLady I gotta say I used to frequent Croydon in my early 20's and loved it there but I didn't live there so maybe rose tinted glasses?

In Wales and Scotland no one I knew would go out of their way to describe themselves as a class, especially middle class

Ohhh I could introduce you to a few! Inc relatives of mine very much in denial of their working class backgrounds to the point they lie or fudge about where they grew up!

People who did the latter would get an eye roll and called a 'big I am'.

They do get this - doesn't stop them!

@Jumpalicious There are a lot of posh even titled people that are relatively poor, quite a few are asset rich and cash poor like my friend, you'd not know how posh he was by meeting him but one of oldest and longest held titles in the country (longer than some royal family) huge "pile" as the family home but he has to work quite hard to keep money coming in for the upkeep of the place, I think within a generation or 2 unless something dramatically changes for them it'll have to be sold. But he's quite "normal" when you meet him it is quite amusing when new people the penny drops, reminds me of the character in 4 weddings played by James fleet, he's totally nonchalant about it all it's other people get a bit weirded out when they learn of his circumstances.

I'm more than relieved that there isn't a 'class system' in Ireland

I'm of Irish descent with plenty family and several friends who are Irish and that's so not been my observation at all! It's more nuanced with slightly different signifiers but it's definitely there! I had 2 Irish lecturers at uni who did not get along at all and class difference was definitely a factor

That you mix with a wide range of people - as do I - doesn't change the fact

@feelingquitehopeful then how come there are class systems in countries that haven't had royalty for hundreds of years or never had royal families?

FWIW I'm a republican too but I don't think that would remove the class system not by a long way

@Helmetbymidnight I agree there are a number of posh celebrities who make out they're working class and "dragged themselves up" unfortunately for them it's so easy these days to google them and discover they went to dragon and then Eton etc worse than wc people pretending to be posh in my opinion

@WTAFIhavelosttheferret but equally there are places with large working class populations and ALSO many free art galleries and museums - glasgow for one. I dragged dd around pretty much all of them when she was little as an all day family bus ticket was quite cheap and it got us out the dingy flat in the school holidays and they always had great free kids events on

I've lived all over Uk and most places have SOMETHING like this I know because I too was dragged to almost every sodding one  chill and watch tv? Nope we're off to the local war museum (being army based there was ALWAYS some kind of war museum)

I actually think that not many people like to acknowledge luck , or fortune or privilege because its somehow insinuating they dont work hard

So true! Pisses me off when a poster on mn asserts they can be financially irresponsible if they choose because they earn well and "worked hard" to do so but are critical of a poor mner going through a rough time DARING to do something as extravagant as buy a £5 bottle of wine! Or get a McDonald's!

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow I agree that uni grants enabling many to go to uni that wouldn't have been able to before and since skews things. Oddly I was disqualified as on paper parents earned too much (dad had done well in army) BUT I couldn't go as the money wasn't actually there as alcy dad was drinking it all!

There will be generational differences

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow my dad is 70, so would have been university age in 1968. Only 4% of school leavers went to uni in the early 1960s apparently - annoyingly I can’t find any figures for the late 60s, but by the end of the 1970s it was 14%:

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jun/24/has-university-life-changed-student-experience-past-present-parents-vox-pops

I agree @LilMidge01, £40k is a very good salary!

I suppose I'm just somewhat tired of 'people' (well, the media, or the media masquerading as 'people') going on about the British class system as if it's some unique institution, responsible for all inequality, everywhere. As previous posters have pointed out, it's the English class system really, because I'm fairly sure most aspects of Welsh society, Irish society, and to a lesser extent Scottish society but only because it's so far to go and no-one can be bothered to travel that far have been suppressed, rooted out, crushed, mocked, and derided by the English over the past many hundred years.

Essentially every nation has societal structures, along with inequalities. People in Britain either know what class they are or they don't care. Many, many just don't care any more, which is presumably why media types have to keep harking on about it, because some people just don't care that they are lower down the stratification of society, and must be re-educated! And show deference, of course. In perpetuity.