“We continue to “mind the gap”. The subject has not lost its power to provoke and wound and illuminate. We still talk quite a bit about it in various ways: journalistic-facetious, or pretend-anthropological, or even old-fashioned snobbish. But that does not mean that we are at all comfortable with the subject. On the contrary, we are often decidedly uneasy when it is brought up, and we do not care for it when the question of class is described as “Britain’s dirty little secret”. We tend to be especially resentful when the Americans or the French describe Britain as uniquely class-divided.” (page 105)
“We are often told that deference has disappeared from modern Britain. Yet the adulation of the rich and famous is surely as fulsome as ever. In hotels, restaurants and aircraft – the sites of modern luxury – the new upper crust is fawned on as egregiously as old money in its Edwardian heyday. All that has changed is that the composition of the upper class has changed, as it has done roughly once a century since the Norman Conquest…..what has almost disappeared is deference towards the lower classes. Throughout the two world wars and the decades following both of them, the lower classes were widely revered for their courage in battle and their stoicism in peace. Values such as solidarity, thrift, cleanliness and self-discipline were regularly identified as characteristic of them. That is no longer the case.” (page 107)
Mind the Gap, by Ferdinand Mount 2003. Definitely food for thought, and despite the title, is not a plea for some sort of mushy egalitarianism. I thought about this book while reading the comment threads here bemoaning the rise of the middle class football fan as some supposed frightful imposition on a working man’s game. We still bother about class, it seems.
I can see how Americans or Australians can get off with pretending that they have no class distinctions: their distinctions are subtler than ours and so we, kidding ourselves that it’s we who are always subtle, can overlook them. But compared to France, or to Germany – pull the other one.
Class is as much how you view yourself, as to how others view you. Place alters that.
With my serious hat on for a moment, I have mentioned my being Welsh on many occasion, usually for comic effect. But the difference between the Welsh and the English is something that the English cant quite discern.
The Welsh have No Class!
Ask A welsh High Court Judge, hospital consultant, a lawyer or a teacher what class they are, and they’ll tell you working class. You’ll get the same answer from the shopkeepers , civil servants and the three real miners left now reduced to selling tickets for the Big Pit.
We all know now what cutlery to use and which wine to order but the solidarity is still there.
Class is a very English thing. A formulised etiquette.Above the salt, below the salt, pass the port etc . The worst insult in Wales used to be “Dont be so ENGLISH!”
Dearieme:
It all depends on what you mean by class. If you’re talking about wealth distribution that’s certainly true. I never considered wealthier people to be a differnt class, though. They really don’t get more priviliges than anyone else here in the states. In fact, pretty much everyone in the US considers himself “middle class”, from people who make almost nothing to people who could be objectively considered wealthy. Unless you’re Bill Gates, there’s always someone with more than you.
Certainly we don’t have families that consider themselves somehow superior based on their bloodline. Or maybe they do, but then we call them “crazy”.
If you’re talking about celebrity… that’s a different story. It would be hard to equate Hollywood starlets with 17th century French aristocracy. Nobody I know considers Hollywood types better, they’re just more public.
And I thought the worst insult was to be called a ‘Welsher!’
Oh, excuse me, we do have the fifth Duke of Cleveland. But I think he’s the only one.
Only if you deal with Ladbrokes my friend!
Besides, the word Welsh is anglo-saxon english for
Forigner!
Fucking cheek!! given that the whole Island spoke Cymri and Latin before the english turned up.
Class is a matter of attitude. Old money doesn’t flaunt itself – indeed it would be considered brash and vulgar to turn up to a point-to-point in a *new* Jaguar or Range-Rover, or attend a function wearing a new suit. The comment made by Alan Clark about Michael Heseltine – that “he had to buy his own furniture” – still rings true.
And so it cascades down the social strate – my housekeeper would die of shame if caught shopping in Aldi, LIDL or Morrisons.
I don’t think there is anything subtle about class in Australia, although it is perfectly real. It is much more crudely about money than in the UK, and (in Sydney at least) it is much more crudely about where you live. (Compared to Sydneysiders, Londoners are uninterested in real estate). Listening to people from Sydney’s North Shore and people from the Eastern Suburbs bitch about one another (and about people from other parts of Sydney) is simultaneously hilarious and deeply depressing. Social and class status in Sydney used to be all about how close you could get to Kerry Packer, in both physical and emotional terms (with the question of whether you were on Lady (Mary) Fairfax’s Christmas card list mattering too). Now that he is dead things are being rearranged slightly.
“Where do you shop?”
“Fortnum’s & Harrods. Why? Is there anywhere else?”
………hardly ‘class’. Real ‘class’ is shopping at Lidl. I do it all the time.
But what do being rich and famous have to do with class?
I’ve often thought that the notion of “class” is so vague and virtually meaningless in fact that it should be abandoned. The moment you try to agree with somebody on a definition of who is, or is not, working class or middle class, you’ll see what I mean. Even the term “working class” is, strictly speaking, a nonsense. A multi-millionaire bond dealer works very hard, perhaps four times as long as a part-time janitor, but which one is working class?
As for the relative classlessness of America, I’d say it’s a total myth. Americans do not use the term “working class” much, but no respectable politician ever ranges himself against the middle class, in a way that three shags does every day. Even putting aside the way class in America interrelates with race, American expressions like “white trash” or “trailor park people” have, in their violent contempt for a large part of humanity, no real equivalents in England.
The assertion that the USA has no class system is truly hilarious. Has Eric never wondered why GWB doen’t talk about his High School?
Perry, I think the issue here is how the word “class” is used by Mount. I think he is using it in the non-Marxian sense of describing sets of people who have, in his view, certain similar characteristics, traits and resources that make it possible to define them as members of a class. I personally don’t go along with all of Mount’s analysis, but he does say a lot of good and wise things about the unintended bad consequences of the Welfare State and Fabian socialist condescension towards the masses.
I was trying to be subtle in using “class distinction”. I think that England does suffer from “class consciousness” but whenever I try to elaborate, everyone takes offence or looks uncomfortable.
I’ve lived in 3 countries and spent a lot of time in 2 others and they all have social distinctions, a phrase I prefer to class. RAB and Eric need to take a harder look at the people around them. People everywhere will put themselves into different groups & exclude those they do not consider “one of us”.
Eric, if you really believe that rich Americans don’t have privileges then please explain how the Kennedys keep getting away with their crimes!
Elaine, had you spent a bit more time in the UK,
you would know that the CLASS we are talking about is a peculiarly British thing. Social difference? but of course! Every country has that.
But like I said, in Wales the difference between people was much tighter, given the fact that everyone knew everybody else, and their histories and secrets.Small places are very self policing you know.
Respect was reserved, not for a mythical set of moves and non moves– U and non U if you like, that the English have developed, but for a Teacher or a preacher or a man of learning. That man of learning by the way could be a hill farmer just as easily as an atomic scientist. See how many Welsh Hill farmers have won a Chair at the Eisteddfods.
Some folk are richer than others and always will be, but in places like Wales it is best not to rub others noses in it, or as I said , you will be accused of acting “Too English”
I am quite class conscious, taking such unfashionable views that there is a ‘worthy’ working class whose value are worthy of some respect (and who have been morphing into a petty bourgeoisies before our eyes for more than 20 years now) and a ‘worthless’ working class (the Chavocracy) who deserve nothing more than a spray of Mace(tm) in the face and a kick in the bollocks from the plod when they misbehave at other people’s expense. However in this post-industrial age the term ‘working class’ is rather misleading when a coal miner can easily have a two car family and take holidays in the Costa Brava. Certainly the old lumpen proletariat is an endangered species.
Such notions are why I regard David Cameron’s appeal to be understanding to ‘hoodies’ as beyond parody. I would just love Cameron to be frog-marched down to any one of several hundred town centres at chucking out time on a Friday night and just left there, once a week for the rest of his life, so that he can get some idea of what he is talking about.
I also agree that what PJ says is correct regarding American expressions like ‘white trash’ or ‘trailer park trash’ have no direct equivalents in England, but the term ‘chav’ is not a million miles away.
What is very telling about Ferdinand Mount’s book is how he demonstrates the ways in which well-meaning but unthinking reformers helped shaft some of the independence and self-reliance of the masses during the 20th century and in the case of David Lloyd George, Nye Bevan and the Fabians, did so quite deliberately.
There is no such thing as class in the US. There is only how much money you have, and how well known you are.
An actor from a penniless family became one of their best loved presidents. Charitable foundations are chaired by porn stars instead of princesses. Ex-WWF wrestlers and Bodybuilders are respected state governors.
Those sort of things would never happen in England.
Those sort of things would never happen in England.
Sweeping statement. Disraeli, John Major, Ramsay McDonald, Nye Bevan, Lloyd George, even Maggie, came from relatively humble backgrounds, so the idea that English society is closed to ambition is nonsense.
Britain is still a pretty fluid and dynamic society in many ways.
US expressions “trailer trash,” “white trash” should also be viewed in the context of how a large segment of the popular culture has gone very Bubba, much to the chagrin and mystification of Hollywood. NASCAR, Jeff Foxworthy “You Might Be a Redneck,” Larry the Cable Guy, Blue Collar Comedy Tour, country music, hunting, fishing, ATVs, big bass boats, etc. So the flipside of a sneering use of the term “trailer trash” is the proud use of “Trailer Park Princess.” You see it screened in silver glitter on tight pink babydoll T shirts on young women.
I live in Mayberry, truly, and there isn’t much of a middle class compared to most American cities/towns, but there’s a clear upper group and everyone else. However, there is an intensely democratic, egalitarian, and respectful feeling of equal-in-dignity spirit among all. The upper group don’t think they’re any better than anyone else, and everyone else doesn’t think so either. Perhaps this spirit is easier to pull off in a small town where no one is a stranger. (A stranger is someone you just haven’t talked to yet.) Everyone knows everybody’s family history and knows there’s no reason to be proud…everyone has the same problems, downfalls, every once in a while. The upper group are just the ones who got it good right now.
English class consciousness is so pervasive, they don’t even perceive it. Can a fish “feel” water? It makes me uncomfortable.
Of course class exists…a really good but not recent book on the subject is Paul Fussell’s Class. I think that’s where I realized I was nonconformist enough to qualify as Class X. Also, my humble state university alma mater rates on the top class list of choice universities. (My guess, probably all those extra suburban-Chicagoans who couldn’t get into an Illinois university.) Go Iowa Hawkeyes! LOL