Terence Blacker: We need more class consciousness, not less
Notebook
Terence Blacker
The writer and broadcaster Terence Blacker contributes a twice-weekly column on a wide range of social, cultural and environmental issues. He is the author of four novels, of prize-winning fiction for children, and has written a highly praised biography of the brilliant reprobate Willie Donaldson.
Friday 10 February 2012
Latest in Terence Blacker
Opinion blogs
The Iraq Canard
The anti-war Blair rage is subsiding. The proof is that Lord Sumption’s lecture at the London ...
Victory over the “foreign court”
Jack Straw and David Davis have a joint article in the Telegraph today, urging the Government to ign...
Why do some men consider the street as a female meat market?
Pronouncements on sexual inequality in the UK are normally met with an eye roll by my generation. As...
Related articles
That old favourite, the British class system, is due for yet another anguished examination. A couple of years ago, it was Lord Prescott who was being followed by a camera crew to Royal Ascot and Eton for a BBC series called The Class System and Me. Now another own-bootstraps-pulling life peer, Lord Bragg, is to present what one assumes will be a rather more thoughtful and less egocentric effort, called On Class and Culture. Yet another northerner, Alan Milburn, has reported to the Government on the issue of social mobility.
It is tempting to be depressed by this unchanging obsession with class. In 1976, Melvyn Bragg pondered the subject in a TV discussion programme with Richard Hoggart, author of The Uses of Literacy, and considered how class, as presented on television, had changed since the 1950s. Reviewing the programme, Clive James detected progress – in the media, at least. After all, here were Bragg and Hoggart chatting away, without the help of a plummy-voiced BBC man. "Despite their lowly origins, they showed no sign of unease," James wrote approvingly.
Hoggart had taken a tougher line, arguing that "the reality of class has hardly changed", and, for all the pronouncements to the contrary from Thatcher, Major, Blair and others, his words ring depressingly true in 2012.
The accents of TV and radio presenters may have changed, and social snobbery may have become no more than an indicator of stupidity and insecurity, but the same division of opportunity – cruel and unquestioned – remains.
Talking to a group of bright sixth-formers at a state school on Tyneside, Alan Milburn asked what they hoped to do in life. Their ambitions were exceedingly modest. When Milburn mentioned the law, the City, medicine or the media, they looked at him as if he came from another planet.
"Birth, not worth, has become more and more a key determinant of people's life chances," Milburn said, and the figures back him up. Seven per cent of British children go to independent schools, according to a 2011 Panorama programme, and yet more than half of our senior doctors were privately educated, six out of 10 barristers, three out of four City finance directors.
The latest Bragg investigation is well timed. Astonishingly, British lives are still shaped by background. We need to be more class conscious, not less. The easy illusion that we have become less hidebound because we can laugh at Downton Abbey or Boris Johnson conceals the fact that our divided, class-ridden society continues to waste talent and squander lives.
The real village busy bodies
The sex life of the English does not have a great international reputation. It tends to be portrayed as pervy, drunken, or – worst of all – cosy. Our erotic image will not have been helped bynews of a boom in swingers clubs in rural villages. The phenomenon has been highlighted by a row over a busy establishment in the New Forest village of Calmore.
There has, of course, been the inevitable Conservative councillor huffing and puffing with excited disapproval. The opposition seems odd. At a time when villages are losing their social centres, these clubs represent an unzipped form of localism. Like step-dancing and dogging, swinging keeps alive traditions which make the countryside such an interesting place.
- 1 Robert Fisk: The going price of getting away with murder... would $33m be enough?
- 2 Ian Birrell: Geldof's obsession with aid hurt Africa. But now trade is healing the scars
- 3 Hardeep Singh Kohli: For me, it is all about 'Gregory's Girl', a record of first love
- 4 DJ Taylor: How to spot a leftie – an idiot's guide
- 5 Patrick Cockburn: I fear this terrible massacre will be the beginning of a long civil war in Syria
- 6 Leading article: Ten questions for Jeremy Hunt
- 7 The Daily Cartoon
- 8 Dita Von Teese: What's underneath all that corsetry and red lipstick?
- 9 Leading article: Questions for Mr Blair to address
- 10 Leading article: Russia must act now to halt Assad's slaughter
- 1 Robert Fisk: The going price of getting away with murder... would $33m be enough?
- 2 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 3 Hardcore, hard-wired: How the prevalence of porn is changing our everyday lives
- 4 Principled Skinner rises above the fray
- 5 Fat? Really? Olympic hope laughs off official’s jibe – but others aren’t amused
- 6 News International 'tried to blackmail select committee'
- 7 'Hello mum, this is going to be hard for you to read ...'
- 8 Postgraduate students are being used as 'slave labour'
- 9 Coke reveals its secret: It may need to carry a cancer warning
- 10 French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters
Experience the Heineken Hub
Get free wi-fi and exclusive i content while you enjoy a tasty pint of Heineken at participating pubs.
Can you imagine a career in teaching?
Be inspired to teach - let real teachers show you how rewarding the job can be.
Playing a game-changing role during the Games
Cisco is providing the solutions for London 2012's complex IT needs.
Enter the latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Business videos from commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.



Comments