British Class System

Recently heard a radio review of a play describing the roles as "Upper Middle Class". Do people still use these terms?, is there a "Lower Upper Class"?, how do you make the leap from one class to another?, money?, education?, style?, career?, speech

Recently heard a radio review of a play describing the roles as "Upper Middle Class". Do people still use these terms?

Yeah.

Very much so in the UK.

How do you leap classes? Youb can try marrying a prince. ;)

One thing is certain: class has nothing to do with money.

A pop singer or footballer who grew up in an inner-city slum (working class, a term that dates from the days when only the lower orders had to work since everyone else was independently wealthy), may have had very little education and still speaks with a very rough slum accent, but who has made millions, is not upper class.

On the other hand, there are members of the aristocracy, hereditary peers (earls and so on) who may have virtually no disposable income at all. They are the top of the upper class, but the 17th-century palaces they live in - uncomfortable and almost impossible to heat - belong to the earldom, not to themselves personally, so they can't sell them. The eldest son probably dreads the day he will inherit the family castle, when he would presumably much rather live in a modern suburban house. (This is why some of them open parts of their homes to the paying public.) They may be, in real day-to-day terms, actually a lot poorer than the average office worker, for example, but they are upper-class.

On the other hand, the parents of Kate Middleton, who made a heap of money by their own efforts, are not upper class, even though they most likely have far more disposable income - to do as they like with - than the parents of the late Princess Diana (her father was an earl). People in trade, like the Middletons, are traditionally never considered upper class, no matter how much money they have. In the past there was far more snobbishness about this sort of thing than there is now.

The British class system is very complicated. However, people are far more socially mobile than they were a few generations ago, when it was virtually impossible for anyone who came from a poor family, when poor really meant poor and there was no social security or safety net of any kind, to get a decent education and be able to pull themselves up from the very lowest level of society. It wasn't so long ago that the vast majority of children left school at 14 - which was the legal leaving age until after the Second World War, when it was raised to 15 - even if they and their parents desperately wanted them to continue at school, and even if they were very brainy and could get a free scholarship to help out, but the few shillings they could earn were necessary to help put food on the table.

The different classes eat different foods, call things by different names (although that's probably less true than it was, with TV and the Internet having a levelling effect), have different interests and hobbies, and so on. Nouveau riche (otherwise known as jumped-up working class) would never be mistaken for upper class, or upper-middle class. As a broad generalization, nouveau riche have plenty of money but no taste.

The British reviewer of a biography of Margaret Thatcher in a recent New York Review of /books observes that every new character is introduced with a footnote, invariably beginning by mentioning where the character went to scool (i.e. secondary school). As the reviewer notes, a biographer of a US president wouldn't think of bothering to tell the reader where a minor player went to high school.

I don't know if this says a lot about the importance of class in the two countries or just about the importance of school as a marker of it. But it's hard to imagine an American equivalent to Lord Soames's complaint after being dismissed by Thatcher: he said he would have sacked his gamekeeper with more courtesy than Thatcher had shown him.

This all sounds so insane to me - like a whole superfluous section of existence to waste brain power on - but then I live in a city where, when introduced to a person of the opposite sex, you need to swiftly scan a whole lot of visual clues to decide what kind of religious they are and therefore whether to offer them your hand to shake or not. Well that always seems kind of insane too, actually.

VinnyD, that's disingenuous. It's easy to imagine an American politician saying "I would have fired my gardener with more courtesy than that".

No, it isn't. I've got a pretty good imagination, but I can't imagine that.

class has nothing to do with money

It has a lot to do with money. That's why those Victorian novels are all obsessed with money. If you have the money, and adopt the behaviour, you can change class. If you don't have the money, eventually you can't keep up the behaviour and unless someone rich rescues you eventually you will be lost. But if you only have the money and don't get the behaviour right, like many football players, then you don't change class.

For example, there's a lot of cases in Trollope's novels of people who successfully take themselves into upper class circles through having lots of money in behaving in the right manner. In the Palliser novels, Madame Max Goesler is the widow of an exceedingly rich Jewish banker, who is treated as an equal by them all: a Duke asks her to marry him at one point; because she succeeds in behaving in the right manner. In "The Way We Live Now" Augustus Melmotte is a kind of Robert Maxwell/Conrad Black character who is trying to buy himself respectability, but fails because he doesn't quite get it right and, like Black/Maxwell, is ultimately trying to pay for his extreme extravagance with fraudulent activities.

The British reviewer of a biography of Margaret Thatcher in a recent New York Review of /books observes that every new character is introduced with a footnote, invariably beginning by mentioning where the character went to school (i.e. secondary school).

There's a very telling letter from Bent Flyvbjerg, a famous Danish business studies academic now at Oxford, in this week's Economist, making a point how Britain still has a long way to go to reach the level of classlessness of Scandinavia or the Netherlands. He addresses it "from a medieval high table in Oxford".

is there a "Lower Upper Class"?

That is not a term that is used. But the reality is that within the Upper Class, there are many sub-levels. It was all rather important to them back in the 19th century and rather less so today, but even today there will be some scenarios when it will be remembered that a baronet is a lot lower than an earl.

But if you only have the money and don't get the behaviour right, like many football players, then you don't change class.

My thought exactly when I recently saw David Beckham in a print ad for a fancy, traditional British car (Daimler or something).

VinnyD #7, if a US presidential candidate can say "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me", then surely anything is possible.

There is definitely a range of classes in the British upper class, Debrett's peerage is still published so everyone can figure out exactly, precisely, what status any member of the upper (ie artistocratic) class has relative to all the others.

It's the same in most organizations I've ever been in, there's some sort of classification system, although instead of Dukes, Earls and Barons there's President, Executive Director, Manager, Supervisor, Clerk.

iviehoff:
>That's why those Victorian novels are all obsessed with money.

But it's not only about money in the novels. The idea of a respectable young man from a "good family" marrying a kitchenmaid is not only absurd, it's unthinkable. The classes were living on different planets as far as social mixing was concerned. But when on the last page the kitchenmaid is discovered to be the long-lost daughter of an earl, everyone is delighted, they get married and live happily ever after. So where does money come into that? It's "blood", in other words descent.

satchie:
>It's the same in most organizations I've ever been in, there's some sort of classification system, although instead of Dukes, Earls and Barons there's President, Executive Director, Manager, Supervisor, Clerk.

But a clerk can be promoted to supervisor, then to manager... and may end up as the president of the corporation one day. Barons are not promoted to earls. These fine gradations are either a matter of descent, you are a baron because you are the eldest son of a baron (something that's been in the family since the time of Charles II because your ancestor polished the king's shoes), and your eldest son will be a baron in his turn, or it's an honour that is granted by the monarch for merit, because of your achievements - a great scientific breakthrough perhaps - but that isn't hereditary.

But it's not only about money in the novels. The idea of a respectable young man from a "good family" marrying a kitchenmaid is not only absurd, it's unthinkable.

Indeed, but since it is so unthinkable it's rarely even mentioned. But marrying someone with no money is close to unthinkable. Thus, more often, they are balancing up whether they should marry someone of "good family" but no money, or someone from a manufacturer's family (or retailer, merchant, financier, etc) who has money. Indeed the wealthy daughters of manufacturers are particularly attractive to the impecunious sons of people of "good family" as they can help restore the finances of such a family without so obviously affecting the breeding, while allowing said manufacturer to get himself accepted by the proper social circles; wealthy daughters of good family tend to be in short supply. Of course , in Dickens or Trollope, the impecunious person of good family often then comes into money due to some secret arrangement, and it is all happy ever after, and they don't have to marry the manufacturer. Or, as you say, the chambermaid is the secret daughter of a lord.

Iviehoff: It has always seemed to me that women might sometimes be able to jump classes (particularly by marriage as their new status married to a higher class person might confer acceptability) but men probably not (or certainly it would always be very difficult because everyone wants to know where they came from and, having found out, would then not "accept" them as part of the higher class).I don't think money helps, really. Mrs T never really made it into upper middle because she was constantly referred to as a grocer's daughter from Grantham.

I'm not British, but wasn't Sir Denis Thatcher upper middle class? (School: Mill Hill.) And if so, doesn't that mean that either Lady Thatcher did make it into the upper middle classes or that you're wrong that women can join the class they marry into?

What class is Sir Mark Thatcher (Harrow)?

I would say that Mrs T even entered the upper classes, consorting with the powerful people of the planet, and patrician both in manner and speech. It doesn't matter how many times we were reminded she was a grocer's daughter from Grantham: she went to Oxford and became a lawyer, married a wealthy man, and quickly acquired the manners of the upper middle classes she had entered.

There was a lot of upward social mobility in mid-century Britain because of the selective grammar schools. My father, the son of a fitter in the industrial NW, like Mrs T, got into the local grammar school, then Manchester University and was well on his way to joining the educated middle classes, which he thoroughly embraced in nearly every aspect of his life.

What class is Sir Mark Thatcher (Harrow)?

He is a baronet, a hereditary title, albeit the most junior. His wife is the sister of a viscountess. He has serious money. Is there any doubt as to the answer to that question?

Having a criminal conviction for supporting an attempted coup; being suspected of being linked to corrupt Middle Eastern defence deals; showing amusing incompetence like getting lost in the Sahara desert in a car rally; spending most of his time hanging around bland resorts like Marbella: these things are not inconsistent with his upper class status. Indeed they are just the sort of stuff the upper classes have always got away with precisely because of their money and connections.

I thought I had read that now there was more intergenerational social mobility in the UK than in the US, but it appears I was wrong. It's nearly a tie, but the US, Italy, and the UK, in that order, are at the top (or bottom) of the table among developed countries.

iviehoff: I think I said that women can SOMETIMES move class by marriage. Yes, I agree, Denis Thatcher was probably upper middle but I don't think Mrs T ever was regarded as such really. Who you mix with and how much money you have and even if you have a title doesn't count (that can depend also on what sort of title - for instance, the crop of labour peers recently made are not regarded in the same light as hereditary peers). Lots of us float about in social situations with other classes but that doesn't mean that we are accepted as a member of that class. I well recall working for an elderly knighted scientist who recalled Margaret Thatcher from Oxford days and hated her and regarded her as a very inferior person (and, he said, not a clever student though that may have been sour grapes as he had such a great down on her). Alan Sugar - loads of dosh and a title - still regarded as working class, I believe.

And, what school you go to is also irrelevant because money can get you into any school.

There will always be people who seek to belittle the objective achievements and behaviours of others by saying "look who their parents were".

The son of a footballer sent to Eton can indeed succeed in learning how to be upper middle class. Mrs Thatcher did indeed succeed in becoming a patrician aristocrat in her manner of life, her attitudes, and her social status. The fact that some people hated her and belittled her as "only a grocer's daughter" says more about them than about her.

I should clarify that Mrs T is no hero of mine.

Edited by: iviehoff

I recently came across "lower upper middle class" in George Orwell's book "The Road to Wigan Pier". Really makes me wonder how low, middle or up that class is.

Orangutan, we need your help in this thread, on the question of whether Malaysians and Indonesians when speaking or writing Malay or Indonesian ever refer to the language as simply "Bahasa". (Rahter than "Bahasa Malaysia", "Bahasa Melayu", or "Bahasa Indonesia".)

Apparently Kate now speaks posher than Will.

OK, just given my two cents to that, VinnyD.