a working class hero is something to be...?

[eFestivals]

There was a programme on TV last night about class - a rather silly programme hosted by Frank Skinner.

The thing that jumped out at me was this fact ....

In 1991, 67% of the population described themselves as working class.

In 2011, 23% of the population describe themselves as working class.

(I might have got the percentages of those slightly incorrect from memory, but they're about what the programme said).

So .... has everyone stopped working?

Or is everyone kidding themselves that they're something that they're not?

It reminds me of this...

[Wooderson]

Middle class in Ireland is enormous. I'd be firmly in the middle of the middle class meself. Don't see it as too surprised to think that what was traditionally working classes have moved "north" in the last 40 years here at least.

[eFestivals]

Middle class in Ireland is enormous. I'd be firmly in the middle of the middle class meself. Don't see it as too surprised to think that what was traditionally working classes have moved "north" in the last 40 years here at least.

Middle class? Really?

What's that based on then? That you wear a shirt and tie to work and don't ever wear a flat cap?

That seems to be about the only basis for most of the people in the UK who nowadays like to regard themselves as middle class.

What those people don't seem to realise is that slogging away at a call centre screen is simply today's version of slogging away at a coal face or whatever. The working conditions might be nicer but that person is still a wage slave.

[eFestivals]

no-one seems to know what the classes are any more...

suits me.

while they might not be able to define what makes anyone of a certain class, they're all sure enough to state what they believe their own class to be.

I don't see that as any class progression (including the demise of class), I see that as a re-enforcement of it, by such people believing themselves as better than those who they might regard as working class.

[fred quimby]

It is around perceptions and aspirations. People might want to be middle class and so put them selves there. Also I think the perceptions of what the classes are have changed due to , as you say, jobs being different

[Wooderson]

Neil is the ABC1 structure outdated? Think it still applies over here - on the census for example. Key difference is in qualifications and manual vs non-manual labour. Might need to be updated I spose.

Interestingly we don't have an "official" upper class per se in Ireland. Dunno whether thats necessarily true though.

Anyway in terms of stats -

Middle Class / ABC1 / 39% of Irish population made up of:

A Professionals, very senior managers in business or commerce or top-level civil servants.

B Middle management executives in large organizations, with appropriate qualifications. Principal officers in local government and civil service, top management or owners of small business concerns, education and service establishments.

C1 Junior management, owners of small establishments, and all other non-manual positions.

Working Class / C2DE / 51% of Irish population made up of:

C2 All skilled manual workers, and those manual workers with responsibility for other people.

D All semi-skilled and unskilled workers, apprentices and trainees to skilled workers.

E All those entirely dependent on the state, long term, through sickness, unemployment, old age or other reasons. Those unemployed for a period exceeding six months, casual workers and those without regular income.

[eFestivals]

Technically I am middle class due to my university education and profession.

I'd definitely disagree that having attended Uni makes someone middle class, at least nowadays for someone of your generation.

In a time when < 10% went to Uni I can see how that affects things. But in an age when it's become just about a default part of everyone's education it comes to means little more than saying you've attended infant school.

And while running your own business would give someone scope to be middle class, it doesn't by default in historical terms.

[Wooderson]

Farmers are the remaining 10% for the record folks. Theyre an "F" on the scale.

[eFestivals]

Neil is the ABC1 structure outdated? Think it still applies over here - on the census for example. Key difference is in qualifications and manual vs non-manual labour. Might need to be updated I spose.

Interestingly we don't have an "official" upper class per se in Ireland. Dunno whether thats necessarily true though.

Anyway in terms of stats -

Middle Class / ABC1 / 39% of Irish population made up of:

A Professionals, very senior managers in business or commerce or top-level civil servants.

B Middle management executives in large organizations, with appropriate qualifications. Principal officers in local government and civil service, top management or owners of small business concerns, education and service establishments.

C1 Junior management, owners of small establishments, and all other non-manual positions.

Working Class / C2DE / 51% of Irish population made up of:

C2 All skilled manual workers, and those manual workers with responsibility for other people.

D All semi-skilled and unskilled workers, apprentices and trainees to skilled workers.

E All those entirely dependent on the state, long term, through sickness, unemployment, old age or other reasons. Those unemployed for a period exceeding six months, casual workers and those without regular income.

I'd say it is outdated. Calling people 'middle class' simply because they don't get their hands dirty when working ("all other non-manual positions") is a ridiculous idea in a time when most of the jobs that exist nowadays don't involve getting your hands dirty.

On the basis of that categorisation, a shelf stacker in Tescos classes as middle class - yet it's a job that's nothing greater than (for a standard old example) a coal miner.

[The Nal]

What those people don't seem to realise is that slogging away at a call centre screen is simply today's version of slogging away at a coal face or whatever. The working conditions might be nicer but that person is still a wage slave.

Edited December 15, 2011 by The Nal

[Wooderson]

I think if theres no monarchy/royalty in a country the debate surrounding class becomes muddy and imprecise. Without a clear indication of who is at the top of the tree as Nal says the lines between notions of class are blurred and ambiguous.

I know youre no royalist Neil. Not trying to hijack/scupper the arguement chief.

[Wooderson]

Haha Nal. I grew up in a nice area and now I live in a bit of a kip. Exactly chief.

[eFestivals]

The old rules of class prove you wrong... University education makes you cast iron middle class...

Change the rules if you want but thats very much changing the facts to suit your argument...

You can look at things in that way, or you can look at them in the other just-as-justifiable way - that the rules haven't changed to match the changes in society.

The basic idea from old of 'working class' is a person who is a wage slave. I believe that that principle still holds true, and makes most people working class.

In the past, someone who went to Uni was unlikely to be a wage slave (for all of their life, at least), because by being one of less than 10% with a degree the 'higher' working options were open to them.

The same is not true in an age where around 50% go to uni and a good number of the rest have a higher qualification than standard compulsory schooling offers.

If you apply old ideas to modern society then few fall into the 'working class' category. But if you update those old ideas to reflect how society has updated - for example, the coal face being replaced by the face of a computer screen for a call centre operator - then around the same number remain 'working class'.

My take on things is that people choose to stick to the old ideas because it allows them to not only think of themself as having progressed within society beyond what their parents managed (tho their position within society shows that they haven't, only their level of material possessions have changed), while also allowing them to look down on others and feel superior (even tho their unchanged place within society shows they've no basis for doing so).

[captain futility]

grammar school, university educated

semi-skilled manual labourer

class?

it's more to do with lifestyle choices, ideologies and aspirations

[The Nal]

Haha Nal. I grew up in a nice area and now I live in a bit of a kip. Exactly chief.

[eFestivals]

I think if theres no monarchy/royalty in a country the debate surrounding class becomes muddy and imprecise. Without a clear indication of who is at the top of the tree as Nal says the lines between notions of class are blurred and ambiguous.

I know youre no royalist Neil. Not trying to hijack/scupper the arguement chief.

From my perspective (which of course is as likely to be set by the UK's culture as yours is by Ireland's), the (ethnic) Irish wouldn't traditionally and generally have a class any higher than working class - because the higher classes would have been imported and imposed from England (this is simply the historical fact of occupation).

So it's possibly the case that the ideas of class you might have had have been lost to other ideas of the English being bastards to you thru time.

[Wooderson]

From my perspective (which of course is as likely to be set by the UK's culture as yours is by Ireland's), the (ethnic) Irish wouldn't traditionally and generally have a class any higher than working class - because the higher classes would have been imported and imposed from England (this is simply the historical fact of occupation).

So it's possibly the case that the ideas of class you might have had have been lost to other ideas of the English being bastards to you thru time.

[The Nal]

The groups we use in Our society are largely driven by income than anything else

[eFestivals]

The groups we use in Our society are largely driven by income than anything else

which would surely put any household that has an income that's lower than the country's average (about £37k currently I think) as working class?

The stats I quoted at the start get to show that people aren't working from income then.

[Purple Monkey]

If you work in order to live, to put food on the table, to make ends meet, you are working class.

Working class does not mean "poor" or "uneducated" to me. It means you work to survive.

That's way more than 23%.

Edited December 15, 2011 by Purple Monkey

[eFestivals]

What about bling bling chavs then? They can earn as much money as they like but they'll always be working class in peoples minds.

there's a wonderful phrase that was once used in the House of Commons around this idea - "Camberley man". As someone who has lived in and around Camberley* for much of my life I get this completely.

(* Camberley, Surrey. A large part of the population are well-paid London commuters, with the prosperity of the rest coming from those good earners)

What 'Camberley man' was said to illustrate was the idea of loads of money but very little class. Just as poor aristocrat is still able to be upper class, someone with money is not automatically elevated into a higher class.

[fred quimby]

If you work in order to live, to put food on the table, to make ends meet, you are working class.

Working class does not mean "poor" or "uneducated" to me. It means you work to survive.

That's way more than 23%.

[The Nal]

there's a wonderful phrase that was once used in the House of Commons around this idea - "Camberley man". As someone who has lived in and around Camberley* for much of my life I get this completely.

(* Camberley, Surrey. A large part of the population are well-paid London commuters, with the prosperity of the rest coming from those good earners)

What 'Camberley man' was said to illustrate was the idea of loads of money but very little class. Just as poor aristocrat is still able to be upper class, someone with money is not automatically elevated into a higher class.

[russycarps]

isnt class just about inherited wealth and birth right?

If you start off poor you can never reach the higher echelons. The upper classes are a closed shop you can only get into by chance at birth.

A self made billionaire that started from nothing can never be upper class, unless they get knighted by the queen or something.

We really need peter dow to educate us on this matter.

[eFestivals]

OK. So how does one go from working to middle class then?

Class distinctions have always been unclear from some angles - for example, the 'new money' people of the 19th century (generally industrialists) were not considered to be upper class even tho their income alone might say to some that they should be.

In the case of 'Camberley man', many of the manual-worker builder/plumber/whatever types will be earning far far more than many established middle class types - again, showing that income alone doesn't dictate a person's class.

From one angle I'd say that a person can't elevate their own class level (by themselves, but they can marry into a higher class), but they are able to ensure that their children do - but it's not guaranteed.

About the best I could get to would be to say that class comes down to both income and attitude, and is to a large extent something that a person is born into.

But it's not exclusively something a person is born into. For example, someone born on a council estate could become (say) a solicitor, and by the end of their life might have become everything that would be expected of a traditional (small 'c') conservative solicitor type, by having adopted all of the attributes of what is expected from a traditional (small 'c') conservative solicitor type.

Whatever it is, I don't think it's dictated solely by income.

I guess it's because there's never been hard and fast strictly-applied definitions that the ideas of class are fluid enough for what are clearly 'just workers' to nowadays consider themselves as something better than 'working class'.