Explain Britain's "rigid class structure" to me

In My Humble Opinion
1

In this article Britain’s “rigid class structure” is referenced as one reason teen pregnancy rates are higher in the UK than the rest of Europe. The pregnancy issues aside I was surprised re the assertion that the UK has a “rigid” class structure in 2009. I had supposed that these days there was a fair amount of class mobility in the UK, as in most industrialized nations, based on your wealth and related lifestyle choices (as in the US), but this is apparently not the case.

How does this rigid class structure manifest itself in 2009 in the lives of everyday citizens of the UK?

2

Interesting article, I have no idea what the answer is, but will be interested to hear what people have to say.

3

I don’t agree about the “rigid class structure”, but I think the key sentence is

For children from working-class families, where aspiration is considered middle class

conveying the idea that those in lower socioeconomic groups are actually averse to improving their lot, that such things are “not for them”. I couldn’t say, never have been in that group, but I don’t believe that there is a similar attitude from the other direction, whereby middle class people consider that poorer people should “stay in their place”. There may be other factors that tend to keep them poorer, but not I think any kind of class snobbery.

I mean, all countries have socioeconomic strata, don’t they? I’m not trying to belittle the plight of those at the bottom of the heap, I’m just sceptical that there is something more to it than that in Britain.

4

The class structure may be rigid, I’m not sure. It’s a big question. Certainly the boundaries are less obvious than they may have once been. The industrial base of the UK has contracted in employment terms and been replaced by service industries. Is a call centre employee working class in the same way a coal miner, or a steel worker was?

The number of people going to university in the UK has increased massively in the past 10 - 20 years - currently 40 odd percent of school leavers with a government target of 50%. No idea what it was in my parent’s generation, less than 10 maybe. You would think this has to have impacted significantly on class structure and demarcations.

So I’m not sure the UK is much different from other Western nations in its class system. I work with a couple of guys from India - if you want to talk rigid class structures then that’s a whole different league of regulation and hierachy.

5

I know nothing about it first-hand, but I have read that many working-class people in the UK see aspiration to move up as a betrayal of sorts–“What, we’re not good enough for you? We’re as good as anyone” sort of thing. Don’t know if that’s true, just throwing it out there for fuel.

6

I think that was probably true in the past, but these days the “working class” are as aspirational as the “middle class”. In the last couple of decades there has been a large increase of what is commonly called the “underclass”. These are people who haven’t worked for years, or even decades, (and for younger people often never). Some choose this lifestyle, many lack the opportunities and/or the abilities to work. This is the downside of Margaret Thatcher’s “economic miracle”.
For a young unmarried mother from this background, a baby gets her a house or flat and extra Social Security benefits. I’m not tarring every single mother with the same brush, but for some this is a lifestyle choice.

The only rigidity of the British class structure that I can see is at the very top and at the bottom.

7

There is a poverty trap that effetively keeps people poor, but too rich to work.

Sounds crazy?

In order to work, it has to be worthwhile and that means a reasonable improvment in circumstances. Many individuals caught up in this situation simply do not have the marketable skills and are also unable to gain the experience that would allow them to successfully apply for work that would improve their lot in life.

For example, single mother, needs to make a certain amount to pay rent, transport costs, pay poll tax, water tax, childcare and many other things.

Some of these costs are just not incurred when not working, others are state provided such as housing. In addition, being unemployed attracts benefits, not really enough to lead a brilliant lifestyle by any means, but even this is better than working all week and coming home with almost the same amount of money.

Once you have paid income tax, social security, prescriptions costs etc, you may well not be any better off at all because the only work you can get does not pay enough to jump out of that situation.

You could readily ask about personal pride in being self sufficient, but what has happened is that we now have a long term culture of state dependancy in certain areas, where there is little or no work, or competition from better qualified and more able people makes it all but impossible to get out of this condition.

I can think of one industry towns, such as mining towns and steel towns where the only way to find work is to leave, and this has hit towns larger than you might imagine. Liverpool has lost one third of its population since 1948, most of that in the last 25 years, from being the UKs 3rd city it now comes some way behind Leeds, Manchester Sheffield. Liverpool was hit particularly hard by the '80’s industrial shutdown.

It boils down to this, we have an underclass, those who cannot get out of their position becuase they have inadequate skills, there is no work nearby that pays enough to make it worthwhile and they have no prospect of moving out of that situation.

There is also a social divide between those who can do, and those who think that skills are merely something that they purchase, but do not need to have themselves.

8

I talk from personal experience here, might not be true for all, but I notice class structure through the accents people speak. Lemmie explain…

In Manchester, there’s 4 types of groupings,

People who sound like they’re from the South East, however were born and bred in Manchester, we’ll put them at the top of the socioeconomic ladder.

Then there’s people who sound like they’re from Manchester, however have kind of a neutral accent, we’ll put them in the middle of the ladder.

Then you have people with a strong Mancunian accent, we’ll put them in the lower end of the ladder.

And lastly, we have the people with thick Mancunian accents, we’ll put them on the bottom of the ladder.

Seriously, I’ve only noticed it since I’ve been working in the city centre for the last couple of years, its quite subtle. It seems to me to be the more provincial you sound, the lower your prospects are. YMMV, but it’s pretty real to me. This is reflected in my workplace, for instance, most of our management is from the upperclass (Obviously) However if people from lower backgrounds want to move up, they usually adopt some hideous bland, unopinionated, unconfrontational front, with a habit of spin, however this could be the said of any office anywhere, might not apply here.

9

I’ve never been a student of “classism,” so this may be a naive question, but how is “middle” class not “working” class? If you’re rich enough that you don’t have to work, you’re not middle-class, are you?

10

I think “working” is a euphemism for “factory working” or “unskilled working.”

11

In the past (generally speaking) working class = “blue collar” This usually meant skilled or unskilled manual work.

Middle class = “white collar”. That is junior management, senior clerical work or jobs such as teachers and bank managers. Most self-employed shop keepers would also consider themselves middle-class

It’s not so easy to define now with the loss of many industrial jobs and the rise of the “service industry”. So is a call-centre worker “working class” or “middle class”? I don’t know.

12

“Working class” is another term which I don’t think is unique to Britain (I have often seen people use it on this board, for example). And yes, it meas roughly the same as “blue collar”.
But these things mean different things to different people. Ryan_Liam says of his management that it is “upper class, obviously”. But I think by “upper class” most British people would mean the remnants of the aristocracy, which is a rather insignificant part of British society these days. Senior managers, surgeons, people like that, would more likely be called “upper middle class”, which doesn’t mean much more than “gets paid a lot” or “has a prestigious job”.

13

IMO, Britain’s at a crossroads in terms of class. As almost everybody in the country now recognises the aristocracy as the useless buffoons that they are, we’re halfway through with the old ideas in terms of people being born into an immutable class, no matter how well they do in life, yet social clues (like speaking with a local accent, or shibboleths like what you call a toilet) are still widely used.

14

For me “working class” is a more familar term than “blue collar”. I think “blue collar” is a particularly American term.

15

I have lived in the UK for two and a half years. I am probably a middle-class person (although back in New Zealand, class isn’t ever really spoken of like that), and I have lived in a working-class area since moving to the UK.

That sentence, ‘For children from working-class families, where aspiration is considered middle class-,’ rings very true.

What I’ve experienced from those I’ve gotten to know around me is the sort of, ‘Oh, if you want something better, then clearly we’re not good enough for you’ pissyness if someone expresses a desire to improve themselves. There’s this underlying message that wanting more for yourself means rejecting the upbringing you’ve had, that it wasn’t good enough, and so there is this almost childlike reaction of, ‘Well, if you won’t play by my rules, then you can’t use my ball.’

I’m guessing, and I’m not great on history, it has developed through the years of the working class being managed by the middle class - the working class men go down the mines whilst the middle class managment work in offices - so there is a sense of having been oppressed by the middle class, and therefore to aspire to be middle class is to express a desire to suppress your own kind.

16

I think what differentiates the UK (well, England more than the rest of the UK) structure from the US is that money, while a common indicator of class, isn’t necessarily a definer. It’s kind of cultural.

For example, I’m solidly middle class. Couldn’t be more so if I tried. My upbringing and accent define me so. At times in my life I’ve been poorer than a churchmouse, but I would not ever be working, or underclass. I could be living on the street and eating out of a dumpster, and I’d still be middle class.

Yet, while comfortable, my family was not wealthy. My siblings and I were in state education, the same as the working class in the catchment for my school (and the working class kids beat up on me for being ‘posh’). But I was the kid who delivered newspapers and mowed the lawns and tennis courts of the wealthy middle class in my neighbourhood - the people who were definitely not upper class, but owned villas in Tuscany and holidayed in Mauritius, and drove BMWs and Mercs while my family drove a ratty second-hand Peugeot station wagon.

Then there was the only truly upper-class person I’ve ever known. His mother was the granddaughter of an earl, his farther a former ambassador. His lifestyle was unbelievably far removed from mine, with full-time gardeners at the country pile, occasional servants for dinner parties, serving pheasant he’d shot on the Scottish moors the week before.

This is not to say there isn’t movement - my father’s parents were solidly working class, miners from Newcastle, but were educated and aspirational, and produced my high-achieving father, who couldn’t be anything other than middle class. My mother’s parents were from ‘posher’ stock - her father was from the landed gentry, and her mother was part of the nouveau pauvre, descending from colonial governors with aristocratic leanings. I guess I’m a product of that collision. But that movement does really seem to be intergenerational, rather than individually aspirational.

That said, pretty much everyone I know now, from whichever class, is very tolerant and egalitarian about the issue. I only know one or two top-down snobs, and maybe a few more bottom-up snobs. I think maybe this is what has changed over the years. My upper class friend I knew from our state school - his parents thought it was better for him to get educated with the vast majority. He had middle class and working class friends. I had him as a friend, and working class friends. We all hung out together, and yet we were all identifiable as to “where we’d come from”.

17

That’s a fairly worthless article that’s linked to in the OP. If you’re going to figure out what the cause of teen pregnancy is, you need to look at more than one country. Picking one country (the U.K. in this case), one statistic (teen pregnancy in this case), and one possible cause (the supposed rigidity of class structure, which I’m not even convinced of) and deciding that the statistic in that country derives from that cause is a pretty standard sort of bad argument. Start by looking at teen pregancy around the world:

If you’re going to figure out what causes teen pregnancy, you’re going to have to see if that cause correlates to teen pregnancy around the world. Just within Europe, Hungary has a higher teen pregnancy rate than the U.K. Do they have a more rigid class structure? The U.S. has a higher teen pregnancy rate. Does the U.S. have a more rigid class stucture? The rate is very low in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Belgium? Do they all have loose class structures? The teen pregnancy rate in Iceland is almost as high as in the U.K. Do they have almost as rigid a class structure? Look at the teen pregnancy rates around the world. Does it really correlate with any one factor like the rigidity of class structure?

I don’t know what factors influence the teen pregnancy rate. I suspect that it’s a number of different factors, but I don’t claim to know that myself. Really, astro, you need to quit taking editorials and opinion pieces so seriously. Any article which talks about one country, one supposed causation factor, and one statistic is hardly even worth reading, let alone taking seriously.

18

As Wendall Wagner points out this is an opinion piece in a paper with a very definite agenda and the proposition - that teenage pregnancy rates are “a class issue” - is not really backed up with evidence (cries of “cite” from various Dopers:D), but the OP, on what the author means by “a rigid class structure”, is a good point.

I suspect that the author is making a point about the limited social mobility (the likelihood of being better off than your parents) in Britain (low and falling) as compared to other western European countries, more than about the “class structure” itself. Add this to the perception of an under class (multiple generations without jobs and living on benefits) and the idea that teenage pregnancy can seem a desirable outcome is not unreasonable - even if backed up only by anacdotal evidence.

19

This is dramatically different from how I’ve ever heard it. When I was growing up, “middle class” referred to the amount of money you made (or had), not to the type of job. If you could afford a nice house in the 'burbs, two cars, and nice clothes, you were middle class, whether you made that money working in an office, an art studio, or a workshop. There are tool and die guys who are as blue-collar as it gets that make considerably more than bank tellers or elementary teachers, but we’ve always viewed them as middle class.

The idea of having no money and still being middle class boggles me.

20

It shouldn’t. What makes the Middle Class the Middle Class is not precisely education but habits of mind and self-management. People from that class, even in a bad situation, tend to bounce back. Likewise, even a huge income doesn’t neccessarily make a lower-class person into a higher-class person. Much of the time, they’ll just waste their money and wind up at the bottom of the heap unless somebody else handles it for them. Witness a lot of Hollywood stars and pro athletes from lower-class backgrounds.

There’s a difference between Europe and America on this, although it’s hardly total. In Europe, class is what you’re born with (although a few professions are almost automatically upper- or upper-middle class). In America, class is primarily who you are or choose to be by attitude. It’s a subtle difference, but important one, and varies a bit by country to country. Class in, say, China is also a huge issue.