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.

[quote HeelsHandbagPerfumeCoffee]Uni participation rate in 50s was

Lol, @MrsKoala, great story.earnestly asking what country was your da from?

Salary doesn’t define class at all.

It’s all outdated anyway.

We know people in traditional “working class” jobs who earn a lot more and own their own large homes than us in our traditionally “middle class” professions who are just getting by because everyone seems to have a degree these days and competition is driving pay down in our sectors.

I know. I told my parents and they absolutely pissed themselves. The thing is we thought we were the same as them. Then things like that would happen and we’d go ‘ah yes, we’re a bit of a novelty here aren’t we’ I still remember teachers taking the piss because I was wearing a ‘designer’ tracksuit. My Mum was so proud to dress me in it but it made me such a target.

It reminds me a bit of the Alan Bennet story of how when he went to Oxford his parents were so proud and his Mum insisted on buying brand new luggage for him as they didn’t want him to look different, so he needed something brand new. When he arrived all the others had those old chests their great grandfathers had used with battered travel stickers etc. He felt so embarrassed and his parents couldn’t understand.

I’ve always thought the class system was a bit like the Durer engraving of a 2 men meeting, both bowing down but looking up to see how low the other is bowing to suss each other out. It’s got a title something like a man and a dog, both trying to work out which one is the dog. Sort of can I eat it, will it eat me 😂

There's a bit of books and covers to this isn't there...I know when I was growing up I saw it from both sides - kids at school assumed I was rich because I was clever, dressed nicely and talked 'posh'. I wasn't, we lived in a council house. At the same time I saw how teachers looked down on my parents once they knew they hadn't been to university and worked in unskilled rather than professional roles.

My dad worked in manual roles for over 40 years. He used to read in work breaks and often had the work manager expressing surprise that workers would choose to read let alone read Russian authors.

I can relate to the Alan Bennett story above...going to Cambridge was a massive deal for my family, I went with all new everything. Half my year came with no spares of anything, just bringing an old duvet from 'the linen cupboard' at home. I'd never met anyone with a linen cupboard!

Mealtimes were another one. I had been schooled by my dad since I was tiny about how to eat - sit up straight, elbows in while eating, no using fork like shovel/ pen like knife, pausing between mouthfuls, you name it. First dinner in Hall was an eye opener. Couldn't believe how my middle/ upper class fellow students were shovelling food in, but many of them had been boarders since 7 and apparently at boarding school no one tells you off for shovelling your peas! I remember in my first call home saying everyone was very nice, all quite rich and private school, and their table manners were terrible

I think it just shows that people don't understand what's meant by the class system, that's all!

some v illuminating recollections on the thread
I remember my mum remarking I’d gone all posh at uni Because my boyfriend was from Edinburgh.

I feel like your upbringing is almost more important than your current role or salary. I have a very MC life, but my background was very WC and so I don’t have that implicit understanding about how things are done, those connections, that knowledge about what signifiers of social status are apparently important, the expectation of inherited wealth, that I see in MC friends who had a MC upbringing. So I feel like a lucky WC person with a MC lifestyle.

I'm never really sure where I fit in.

Grandparents- solid working class. Left school at 14, manual jobs, lived in council houses all their lives.

Parents- brought up in said council houses, grammar schools after passing the 11 plus, didn't go to university straight from school but both got degrees during the course of my childhood (one as a mature student at a poly and one with the OU so not sure where that leaves the automatic MC if your parents went to uni thing), homeowners, money tight when I was young but they ended their careers in local government middle management and now fairly comfortable as pensioners.

Me - went to state comp in generally WC area, RG university straight from school. DH and I both work in same 'tradtional' profession, but certainly in my case in a specialism which is at the lower end of the income spectrum. Own our house, but in a very WC area. DC at state primary. Interests all over the place - love reading, theatre, visiting NT properties, keenly follow current affairs, broadsheets rather than tabloids etc but am just as partial to a bit of reality TV, celeb gossip and 'commercial pop radio' (as referred to up thread!).

Think I must be muddle class...

Did your parents go to university and have a private pension? No? You’re probably still working class no matter how rich you are now.

Dh is over 60. When he was a child, it was perfectly likely that your bank manager, a man you might reasonably expect to see at the opera, would not have a degree. His granddad was a moderately well-known actor and his other granddad was head chef at one of the top restaurants in Paris. They both owned property. And certainly had private pensions. Working class they were not. But neither had a degree.

Dh now does a job

To me, this is all confusing because it suggests that all members of a family will do the same.

My dc spent a lot of time, including all their holidays, together with their cousins. Same milieu, read the same bedtime stories, part of the same dinner table conversations.

Half the parents had degrees, the other half didn't. One parent with a degree did manual work on building sites, one parent without a degree ran a white-collar business, another was an officer in the merchant navy. So what are these children, who have all got the same childhood memories and the same cultural background. Is it really their parents that decide all that?

Cory- if you watch Bridgerton you will see that those roles we’re very much seen as working class- especially acting.

I have no idea what class I am in?

Grew up poor, dad electrician, mum a sahm who took temporary cleaning jobs for extra cash here and there. Hiding from bailiffs, no money for meals for all of us.

Now, my dad is still an electrician but doing very well so really quite wealthy. Married a woman who lives in a council house which they still live in (but my dad has frankly wasted tens of thousands doing up). My mum was living in a pokey caravan as couldn't afford housing at first. Just managed to buy a cheap house up north outright and now lives there but is retired.

DH is a high ranking emergency services worker, coming from a family of high ranking emergency services workers. I work in a public job on a not too bad salary. We earn a reasonable amount, but not enough for a big 4 bed house down here for example.

So, does this make me WC or MC?

Cory- if you watch Bridgerton you will see that those roles we’re very much seen as working class- especially acting.

Errr...dh may not be a spring chicken but his granddad was NOT working during the period Bridgerton is set in.

Even 75 years ago they were not middle class professions. They would perhaps have been seen as ‘bohemian’ but not middle class. Being a chef today isn’t seen as middle class- even in a posh restaurant, never mind in the 50s.

Being a chef today isn’t seen as middle class- even in a posh restaurant, never mind in the 50s.

Not working class either. I'd say, looking at the area he lived in, the people he associated with/married/careers chosen for his sons etc very much lower to middle middle class.

They were men who wore bowlers rather than flat caps.

Aspirational could be the word.

Kate Middleton is a royal now but you only need to look at the old Daily Mail articles to see how class was still relevant- I particularly remember an article about her mother chewing gum with accompanying pictures.

You may be right about aspirational, MissMarks.

However, I think there is a tendency to think of middle class in the 20th century as the upper and middle middle class only. As George Orwell points out, there was also a very large group of lower middle class, who considered themselves middle class and who were considered middle class by others. White collar workers who would not only have been horrified by hearing themselves described as working class but who would not have been described as working class by anybody at the time.

Kate Middleton is a royal now but you only need to look at the old Daily Mail articles to see how class was still relevant- I particularly remember an article about her mother chewing gum with accompanying pictures.

And if she had been the daughter of an earl, this story would have been framed on MN as "isn't it typical of the upper classes that they are not uptight about social rules because they feel so secure in their position, they are such genuine people, unlike those middle class types who just try to hard".

Working class originally but ended up at an RG uni in the 90s. Went through private school in an assisted place so was surrounded by middle class for some time. Have to say this has left a disconnect between local upbringing and educational surroundings. .

I think class is linked (although not exclusively) to education. RG unis at the time attracted the middle class and I constantly felt a little insecure amongst them. I tended to hide my upbringing from certain students.

The problem with class is it allows some to look down on others and this as present both at school and university (and to some extent the workplace).

I think class amongst the young can be a means to socially group....really saw this at uni.