Class distinctions in modern britain

Great Britain has had a long history of social separation, class being an integral part of the British way of life. For instance, pubs always had a public bar and a lounge; railway carriages were divided into first, second and third class compartments.

However, classes have become more muddled in the last forty years and this fuzziness is still accelerating. In the first place, Great Britain has become more of a post-industrial nation where service workers have become the most common type of employment – currently, those engaged in the service sector account for no less than 50 per cent of the population. Secondly, the rise of Margaret Thatcher, the daughter of a Grantham grocer, to the post of Prime Minister, is seen by many as evidence that now anyone can rise to the top of social ladder, regardless of their social origin. Furthermore, her reforms which were delivered in the rhetoric of “empowerment of the people” have visibly shifted the rigid class boundaries. National Curriculum, introduced in 1988, ensures that all children in England and Wales receive a core course of study. Civil servants are now more than ever accountable to the people. Apart from that, a large number of political commentators insist that the Establishment (the monarchy, Church of England, Oxbridge and the BBC) no longer exists or at least does not have any say in modern society.

In fact, the railways now have only two classes – first and standard, and the stalls in a theatre are no longer the preserve of the aristocracy. Yet, it is still not clear whether this means that class has been blown off the face of Britain or the social structure is only changing. Anyway, despite all the recent talk about the “decline of class” in the UK, Britain remains a class-ridden society and stands for class distinctions and inherited privilege with the monarchy as a symbol. According to a recent wide-ranging poll, 90 per cent of Britons identify themselves with a particular class, and 53 per cent think that there still exists clear-cut social stratification in the country.

Actually, Britain's population is divided along strictly regimented class lines. To be more exact, the UK social structure is organized according to several cultural phenomena. Traditionally (unlike some other countries such as the USA), class in Britain is more a matter of background, values and lifestyle, including such important aspects as abode, accent, manners, style of dress and taste, rather than purely money. Thus, the upper class is associated with stately homes, aristocratic backgrounds and posh accents; the middle class – semi-detached houses, business suits (and bowler hats in the past), as well asaccents which are more provincial than RP; the working class – council flats, fish and chips and cockney (or other local accents).

There is a misconception common in the UK today, especially amongst journalists, that RP is allegedly disappearing. For example, younger members of the Royal Family are said to be speaking in a lower-class manner. And reputedly, public school pupils have begun to adopt fake cockney accent or Estuary English, in order to disguise their class origin (perhaps they aspire to the American image of a self-made person). Indeed, even the phonetician John Wells has written a paper called The Cockneyfication of RP? (1994).

A number of factors can account for this erroneous view. First, non-RP accents are now found in public situations from which they would have been excluded only a few decades ago. Non-RP accents are very much more common on the BBC than they were forty years ago. And telephone sales companies are now considering which regional accents will be most effective instead of automatically employing people who speak RP. It is therefore easy to gain an impression that there are fewer RP speakers around than formerly. However, a recent survey of recruitment managers of major corporations found that, although they knew it was wrong to discriminate against people because of their accent, they did. All this proves that accent still remains an unchanging aspect of British people’s class identity: pronunciation and even voice immediately give away their class position.

Another illustration of the stratified nature of British society is the workforce, characterized by division rather than by cohesiveness. Here, remuneration replicates social stratification. Factory workers receive wages, while predominantly middle-class managers – salary, whereas self-employed professionals such as doctors and lawyers – fees. Moreover, there are quite separate ladders of achievement in workplaces and it is almost impossible for people to cross from one to another. Thus, the Civil Service is divided into administrative, executive and clerical grades; industry – into management and shop floor; banks – into directors, managers, clerks, cashiers. These divisions may not be cast-iron in all cases, but very few people at the top of British industry have risen from the bottom.

Thereby, class may have become culturally and politically invisible but it is possible to divide British society into three broad classes – upper, middle and working – even though the nature and composition of each class have undergone change.

Britain’s traditional upper class – hereditary elite – is statistically very small and consists of the peerage, gentry, and landowners. These people used to be the wealthiest and most influential in the country having inherited title, property and position. Over the past century the aristocracy was gradually replaced by a new elite of “gentlemanly capitalists”. No longer a leisured class, the new upper class owns most of vast family businesses of Britain and has come to dominate the financial and political layer of British society. It is still a self-selecting, highly integrated elite, closed to outsiders. Though not so visible as the titled aristocracy that imposed standards and expected deference, representatives of the new upper class have never been more powerful. However, it is not their power and vast wealth so much as family background and education (typically public school and Oxbridge) that account for their exclusivity. That is the reason why this select social group must not be mixed up with the “new rich”.

Nouveau riche or business tycoons are people coming from poorer backgrounds who have truly gone from “rags to riches” having made money themselves, primarily in business, middle-class professions, or entertainment. They may retain the mannerisms of their original social group or may imitate the behaviour of the traditional upper class by, for instance, sending their children to public school or taking elocution lessons, but often in a way that is seen as tacky by the real upper class.

The upper middle class in Britain is the social stratum, closest to the upper class in terms of wealth, family, education and other cultural aspects. It comprises very wealthy businessmen and higher professionals who generally come from educated backgrounds (barristers, doctors, army officers, academics, senior civil servants, as well as top managers from the City, sometimes dubbed “City Fat Cats”). They all have university qualifications, highly paid jobs and a considerable freedom within their job. Being a cut above other middle-class people, they certainly make up a distinct group which, however, is less easily defined – personal wealth and profession are not essential criteria. Actually, family background and understatement, in both behaviour and taste, are the defining characteristics of the upper middles. Although not of the landowning class, its members may well aspire to the characteristics of gentlemen.

The middle class in Britain is probably the most fragmented social group. Traditionally, British middle class was identified with bourgeois people from less educated backgrounds. Now, however, definition of the middle class revolves round the differences in employment or ownership. Accordingly, most middle-class people fall into the following three broad categories.

At the top are salaried professionals (known as “The Salatariat”), including university lecturers and school teachers, civil servants, as well as business executives working for companies as junior and middle management. Though they too have attended university (mostly a “red brick”) and have postgraduate or professional qualifications, they have rather modest salaries and a relative freedom over their job as compared with higher professionals of the upper middle class.

Within this broad category two smaller social groups clearly stand out. The first one – “Spiralist meritocracy” was identified by Jilly Cooper in her book Class as people from working-class or lower middle-class backgrounds who gained an education at grammar school and university and have subsequently obtained professional or managerial jobs within companies or government. These people are more likely to move geographically than the more local bourgeois middle class. They are less well-to-do and socially secure than the traditional salaried professionals and normally use a mixture of accents depending on their origin. “Mondeo Man” is usually described as a fairly prosperous person employed in the private sector in a salesman or entry level management position who drives a company car such as a Ford Mondeo. These people are likely to have limited education and cultural aspirations, but are keen to “move up in the world”.

The largest group in the middle class comprises routine white-collar workers living in less affluent suburbs. In the majority of cases they have a heavily supervised, nine-to-five job. These people usually have no university qualifications and use local accents, although relatively mild. A shibboleth for people from this group is the use of the word “pardon” rather than “sorry” or “say again” when they did not hear the other speaker (referred to as “Pardonia” by Kate Fox).

Finally, the other major group within the middle class is represented by self-employed people, owning and running local businesses. These are small businessmen, shopkeepers who normally work very long hours, earn less than a routine clerical worker, have no career prospects and must finance themselves their pensions. Yet they have more control over their working life.

Anyway, living standards of the lower middle-class people make at least part of them view themselves as members of the working class. On the other hand, a common assumption these days is that the working class which is at the bottom of the social ladder has also undergone a considerable change and is also stratified. Nowadays, apart from the traditional working class – people engaged in unskilled blue collar jobs with low incomes, there is another significant stratum – skilled industrial workers, in recent decades showing entrepreneurial development as the stereotypical “white van man”, or self-employed contractor.

In general, both lower middle-class employees and industrial workers use their jobs (and available loans) to improve the quality of their lives through house ownership and consumer goods. Aspiring to a higher social position, people of lower classes try to emulate the upper class’ tastes, lifestyles and preferences which trickle down to become the standard to follow, symbol of status and wealth. Consumerism has fully integrated into modern bourgeois culture with its focus on materialism, competition and individualism rather than spirituality and integrity. This has led to a climate in which “we are what we buy” and consequently caused further social fragmentation. As a result, “the one source of collective working-class unity today is the purchase of a weekly National Lottery ticket,” writes Michael Storry in his British Cultural Identities.

However, the advent of a consumer society promising a better life for all has failed so far to redress the existing social inequalities, for it does not eliminate the greatest division within the working class which is actually the gap between the employed and unemployed. The living standards of those in full-time jobs have improved, but the plight of the unemployed has worsened. Taking into account the fact that the work ethics is still very strong in the UK, loss of work to a person is really traumatic. This has brought about the development of an “underclass” which is excluded from the consumer society. These people will be living in inner-city council flats on low incomes or on social security.

Another social tendency is a growing number of working women. Contrary to the 1950s stereotype, the working-class woman of today is actually less home-centred than ever before, moreover she is often depicted as a single mother living on a council estate, often engaged in a so called “pink collar” job. However, for a number of reasons, including prejudice and “glass ceiling”, women often fail to gain promotion to posts of greater responsibility.

All things considered, social stratification of present-day Britain is a matter of background and lifestyle rather than tradition. In particular, education and work are the defining aspects of British social identity. Society labels people as “owned” by a particular school (an Eton graduate) or by industry (a Civil servant). The rhetorical question “How do you do?”, on being introduced to people, is very shortly followed by “What do you do?” and “Where did you go to school?”

(compiled from http://en.wikipedia.org)

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