There was a time during the 60’s where the times they were a-changing. The old order was being broken down by the baby boomers. Young working class kids creating conversations with millions of other young working- and middle-class kids through music, movies, and television. Universities opening up to families that would never have crossed the doors of such hallowed institutions, but who were now welcome to the new, red brick colleges springing up across the United Kingdom.
London was the playground of the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, David Bailey and Terrence Donavan, Michael Caine, and Judy Geeson, all with working class backgrounds and often from the sticks. They were consigning the bowler hat to the bin. Have a look at the Beatles on the roof of Abbey Road and you can see the generation gap, with old men in pin stripes and young women in mini dresses.
The class system was collapsing. Or so it seemed. Wealthy young men were buying up country houses. George Harrison moved into Friars Park, earning the opprobrium of the fading upper class. How could that sort of young man own such a house?
It was a social revolution, and it was seeing the demise of the class system. The core of British society, the management plan, the rules and regulations for society were being broken up, people would be given equal opportunities. The idea that everyone would know their place for birth would be a thing of the past. Working, middle and upper class, most clearly articulated by Ronnie Corbett, Ronnie Barker and John Cleese on the David Frost Show, with all the attendant clarity of position, dating back hundreds of years would be fondly remembered, with a wry smile.
Except that it didn’t happen.
Fast forward to 2021 and we are now more hide bound by class than ever. A system that has a monarch, head of the country, who’s very existence gives credence to the idea of superiority by birth. Hereditary peers who can sit in governance of us, the mere people, whose titles, and wealth can date back as far as 1483. Who own huge acreages of the country, including Northern Ireland, that you and I will never see.
Life peers who are appointed to decide what is good for us are given as examples of moving forward, but who among them is not lauded for being a lord and doesn’t get a seat at any full restaurant if they ask. Titles and medals are divvied out three times a year to those that the government deems worthy, carrying names that are seeped in the system.
And a government, elected by democratic vote that has 60% of the selected Cabinet having attended public schools when only 6% of the population are so educated. Where Eton, one school, provided 61 Ministers in the Thatcher and Major governments.
Why?
Britain is a democracy. There are debates around if it is the best system, but that it is is not in question. People get to vote for their choice of candidate. They choose to elect people with public school educations disproportionately.
Again why?
I think they love it. I think they love the class system that enables them to know their place. Certainly, they love the monarchy. Any mention of removing the Royals is met with howls of protest from people of all classes. That is an emotional and Freudian response, the matriarch, the woman who has been there all my lifetime as the mother figure, based on here hereditary rights and nothing else.
The flirtation with moving on from the class system in the 6os has been dumped. The Establishment is back in charge, with Oxbridge ruling the roost in politics, the media, banking, all the areas that impact on our political and social lives.
In 2021 the class system is still alive and well. The middle class has grown, the working class is less identifiable with the demise of manufacturing and mining, but the upper class still dominates, with titles being allocated by wealth and influence.
But the responsibility lies not with the public-school chappies, and the peers, it lies with the voter. People who will not challenge their own thinking. Who are convinced that Downton Abbey was a documentary, despite the servant class being totally treated like, well, servants. Who will not even allow themselves to think about being a subject and not a citizen. In the 21st Century they cling on to 15th Century concepts and pat themselves on the back for being British, and exceptional for it.
It’s why Boris Johnson’s persona of the amiable fool is accepted. From PG Woodhouse to Evelyn Waugh right up to Ian McKewan, British literature parades this character as decent and worth a laugh, with everything turning out in the end.
We are stuck with it, in the UK. In NI Unionists strive to maintain a relationship with this system when we are well down the pecking order simply for being born here, the exact opposite of privilege.
The class system, here to stay, not gone tomorrow.
Thinking about Things... 
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