Wednesday 23 March 2011

What about the workers

Do we still have workers?

When I say workers I mean those cloth capped, overall wearing, union card carrying, Player’s cigarette smoking workers that used to walk along my street, on their way to the factory at six in the morning when I was a boy.

According to that most ubiquitous of things; a new survey, seventy-one percent of Britons now regard themselves as middle class. Only a generation ago (that must be me then, or am I at two generations now?) it was around twenty-five percent and the other fifty percent or so considered themselves workers, or working class as we all called it back then.

These days only twenty-four percent of people describe themselves as working class and nobody at all describes themselves as upper class. Don’t worry, there are a few snobs still around, seven percent consider themselves to be upper-middle class (those will be the ones that went to public school then, mainly politicians I expect), twenty-one percent are lower-middle class and forty-four percent call themselves middle class – right in the middle of the middle or ‘stuck in the middle with you’ as Stealer’s Wheel once put it. Sorry, there’s no connection.

What a muddle the middle seems to be in.

If the well-known class sketch was shown today, Ronnie Barker would stand almost alone (despite the song saying the opposite) in his middle class ground, John Cleese would stiffly deny his own existence and poor Ronnie Corbett would become even smaller as his tiny, fading, working class voice would whisper: ‘I know my place.’

‘I know my place’. Well, we all used to.

So who are these new middle classes?

When I was a boy the working class man was everywhere and proud of it, it was the doctors, lawyers, teachers, bank managers and clergy who were the middle class. Shopkeepers and business people were suspect, as were general office staff and farmers; no matter how many acres they owned. If you worked in the council offices or were a district nurse you probably just edged yourself into middle classdom, but in the main the workers were everywhere; united and standing, never divided or falling.

Class seemed to be more prevalent back then, differences greater, but maybe it was just an illusion and we were all middle class all along despite the red flag flying high at the end of every labour party conference.

It never felt that way at school though, most of the other boy’s parents had a teasmade, some even had real maids, we just had a kettle and it wasn’t even electric.

Apparently when asked to bring along a symbol of their middle classness, a lot of people brought along their cafetières – well, that’s easy then. I wonder if the lower-middle class buy theirs from Argos, the middle-middle class from John Lewis and the upper-middle class from Fortnum and Mason?

So if we have all become middle class, even the plumbers (no surprise there really, they can all afford to drive BMW’s), the bakers who are all craft bakers now (what were they before then) and the lorry drivers whose cabs would put a four star hotel to shame, just who will man the barricades when the revolution comes?

If there is ever a revolution in this country I guess that’ll it’ll have to be led by the middle classes:

“What do we want?”

“Gradual change.”

“When do we want it?”

“Some time in the foreseeable future at a time convenient to all parties, preferably at the weekend before pilates.”

I think the cry of ‘what about the workers?’ has gone. These days those of us that do work (I’m not one of them currently) all have laptops, cars, flat screen TV’s, foreign holidays and expectations that the workers of two generations ago simply didn’t have. We’ve become middle class by a steady process of the acquisition of things, perhaps a little more education, but the feeling of where our root stock is from has almost vanished.

Even so and despite almost all of us considering ourselves middle class, Britain is the most unequal nation amongst the developed countries after the US and Singapore.

How can that be? I don’t know. What I do know is that if the revolution ever comes it will be caused by the have-nots rising up against the haves. Perhaps it isn’t so very far away after all.

10 comments:

  1. One of the best pieces you've written on your Blogs...in my small, humble opnion!...Especially loved:

    “What do we want?”

    “Gradual change.”

    “When do we want it?”

    The 'Meme' has changed in that people don't want to feel 'Working Class' anymore. Just look at those people from various differnet counties, with strong accents who work in London for a while...They morph and have 'that' accent...that, false, tail ended tone of voice that drives me mad!

    Me? I'm working class..Left School at 16 to earn a wage, learn a skill (Engineering) and be self sufficient...Of course, it was different then, the Banks wern't driving the 'need to go to Uni'..they didn't have their claws in yet.

    Having gigged for 10 years in Workingmens Clubs for 10 years, you see a different side to life, a differnet type of people, but I identify more with them, than the false 'middle class' up to their eye balls in debt and crap they don't need!

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  2. Thanks Jamie - that means a lot. I know what you mean. My dad worked for many years on the line making cars, he was even shop steward for a while. My background was very working class and I was the whole first in the family to go off to Uni. Somewhere along the road I stopped thinking about my roots and got on with it, I've never forgot who I am though - although sometimes I feel like Ken Barlow in that first episode of Coronation Street.

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  3. Nice (tugs forelock and has another bout of middle-class liberal angst).

    Incidentally one couple interviewed on Breakfast TV yesterday described themselves as "working class" which didn't quite gel with the lifestyle they were projecting. I wonder if its meaning has changed to just mean someone who is actually "working"...? M.

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  4. ...I was also reminded of that old "Spitting Image" sketch about 'A Very British Revolution' - "What do we want?" "Revolution!" "When do we want it?" "After EastEnders and before Inspector Morse!" M.

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  5. I love John Lewis and everything in it and everything it stands for therefore I must be middle class.

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  6. Class has a different meaning for everyone who is asked as you know. If you have to sell your labor are you not working class?
    The drift in meaning in the last few decades hasn't hurt the wheels of consumerism. The notion of mobility was not sold on the basis of education in the eighties as it was in the fifties and sixties. It was sold on the acquisition of goods and loadsamoney. That is why everyone with a flat screen thinks they are middle class.

    There used to be those who didn't need to work and those who did. This is still the case. Maybe those who work but don't need to are the true middle class?

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  7. Brilliant points Ian.

    If you work and don't need to then you are either sad, stupid, or doing something you enjoy and believe in.

    God grant that we all do that some day soon.

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  8. Paul Eddison commented on Facebook:
    Nice post Andy, I think the classes today are divided into 'under class' never worked and not likely to, the rump or 'middle class', and the landed gentry (very few still around - most need the National Trust to continue the upkeep of the mansion. Is class a profession? an attitude or a bank balance?

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  9. A pretension Paul.

    We are all going to dust in time. I know some very good people who will never work in anything that is acceptable to the middle-classes and some absolutely horrible people who do nothing else but work and are honoured by them. Perhaps middle class is really being able to have a relationship with anybody. I hope so, because I don't have a liking for those idiots in charge. They are shallow and insignificant.

    By the way. Thanks for the comment, it means a lot when people read me and I move them to say something.

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  10. Kevin Parrott commented on Facebook:
    I often read you, but don't comment. Well...... I have actually commented directly on the blog, then it asks me to select something I didn't quite understand with regards Google. Just recently I worked out that if I selected 'anonymous', my comment was posted. However, I've re-realised I can comment directly here. The class structure has changed. In 1956 by the stroke of a pen, we ceased being third class & became second class overnight, when British Railways decided to abolish the third class. Things were better when it was more defined, because people had aspirations to move up. The class structure began to crumble with the abolition of the Grammar Schools, and homogenization was introduced. For example, SIR Cliff Richard, SIR Elton John, SIR Mick Jagger. Harold Wilson & Tony Blair are to blame, they are the great homogenizers.

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