The Guardian event Class Wars, earlier this week, considered what class means and whether it still matters, with journalists Owen Jones, Rachel Johnson and Lynsey Hanley joined by the academic Prof Mike Savage.
After the event, Guardian members Hamad Khan, 23; Fiona Hill, 50; Gabriel Barnett, 17; Eric Hill,74; Laurence Moss, 53; and Phoebe Moss, 19; discussed what class means to them.
A person’s class can change – and education plays a big part in that
Fiona Hill: My dad was a coal miner in County Durham. I have worked hard and emigrated to the US, and I think of myself as working class but I’m probably not any more.
Laurence Moss: I’m working class in origin but I would probably say I am now middle class. It feels a bit false to describe myself as working class, although I still think there is a lot of that in me.
Eric Hill: I’m middle class – I’m a retired school teacher and musician. But my father was a welder, my mother worked at a factory. I’m more inclined to define class by what your parents did and your education. I have worked as a teacher in state and public schools and they are poles apart.
The grammar school system was the state’s attempt to help people like me compete on a level playing field but it creates quite a conflict – my brother didn’t pass, for example, while I was shown that there was another world through education..
Class still matters because it affects people’s life chances
Hamad Khan: There is a massive imbalance between people who are from wealthy backgrounds, and have private education and who go to top universities, and those who don’t. If you have a more advantaged background, that pushes you towards a more positive career path in life.
LM: I failed the 11-plus and went to a secondary modern school. It is something that deeply affects you for your whole life. A teacher told us that boys from this school become lab technicians. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a lab technician – but that was seen as the summit of what was possible to achieve.
Class matters a lot because it still affects people’s life chances. I ended up going to Oxford. So, at 18, I was thrust into a world where most people were from extremely wealthy and privileged backgrounds and that was difficult. But the thing that concerns me is that it still seems to be very much the same situation today.
Phoebe Moss (Laurence’s daughter): I see myself as middle class because I was brought up with both my parents having not traditionally working class jobs and I have been to private school. When it comes to helping with university work, I can ask my parents, and, in terms of resources, we have so many books and newspapers at home. Not everyone has that, so I think it really does matter.
Gabriel Barnett: Class does matter because it determines your outcome. Education plays a lot into it as well - whether you’re privately educated or state educated, like I am. Private schools are still better than state schools. It is quite wrong and I think more people should be going to state schools. People my age aren’t really too aware of social class. I think they should be.
Education can reinforce advantage as well as promote social mobility
FH: I got a PhD from Harvard and a few years later, there was a girl from Sunderland who hadn’t got into Oxford or Cambridge, even though she’d got perfect A-levels. Harvard asked me to come and recruit her because I was recruited out of university by Harvard - they were trying to show that people could make it. I’m not sure if that is an opportunity I would have got in this country.
I applied to Oxford in the 80s and was invited to an interview. It was like a scene from Billy Elliot: people were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life.
EH: Class can give you an inbuilt confidence – you are born to command. With private schools that’s what people pay for and the more well known the school, the greater that sense is.“
The relationship between home ownership and class is changing
PM: I’m so worried about owning a house when I’m older. I want to live in London and I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to afford it. A middle-class friend said she wanted to live in Dalston. I thought: “Are you just assuming that you’re going to get a job and your parents are going to pay?’
HK: I’m fantastically worried but I’ve accepted the fact that I’m probably going to be houseless for quite a while before I own my own place. The rise in house prices has the potential to change our perception of class and home ownership because you have to be pretty well off to afford a nice house.
FH: Well, that’s true in London and the south of England. But where I grew up, the average house price is about £90,000.
PM: I don’t want to leave London because the jobs and opportunities are here but I don’t know if I’m going to have an option.
EH: It could be that a way out is to make more employment outside of London.
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As told to Kevin Rawlinson
