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Different Class COVER STORY Different cl as s How social mobility got stuck By Danny Dorling The best place to look for rubbish written on class declined fairly steadily from the day she well known that Thatcher said her greatest social class is in the Daily Mail . When the was born to the day in 1979 when she became achievement was New Labour. By 2007, the BBCreleased itsGreat British Class Surveyin prime minister. However, since then, right incomes of the best-off 0.01 per cent were at April the Mail cited a pundit, the “author and through to her death, the importance of class 144 times the national mean average. That social commentator” Jill Kirby, willing to has soared. Those who won the highest re - top share fell slightly in the 2008 crash, but it claim that “there is plenty of social mobility – wards from her victory were among the rich - is thought to have bounced back since. eventhePrecariatcanescapemoreeasilythan est. It is worth looking first at who gained Class at the top of British society is frac - the working class of 50 years ago”. In fact, the most, before turning to the losers. tured. Under Thatcherism and New Labour, survey revealed nothing of the kind. The so- In1945,whenThatcherturned20,therich - the best-off 0.1 per cent benefited from a called Precariat, the lowest social class in the est 0.01 per cent people in Britain received greater proportionate increase in their wealth BBC’s research, is stuck at the bottom. 123 times the mean national average income. than the tiny slice at the very top. The annual Class matters and it matters most at the By the time she turned 40 in 1965 that had incomes of the 0.01 per cent soared to more top. The greatest number of social divisions halved to 62 times, and the year before she than 45 times the mean by 2007, but just occurs in the top 1 per cent of the population, cametopower,in1978,itwasatitsminimum: beneath them the top 1 per cent – the tier so, to understand class, you have to spend a just 28 times the average income. most commented on today – did even better. great deal of time looking at divisions among Britain in the 1970s was a very different Al fred Roberts, owner of two shops in Gran- the elite. Take the “grocer’s daughter” from world from the Britain of the 1940s. That- tham, received through his work and assets Grantham who the Tory party took as com - cher’s class hated it. The class above her, the about seven times the mean adult income in ing from the lower orders, because all her fa - one that she joined, loathed the changes even the year 1945. This fell to roughly six by the ther owned was two shops. To have a chance more, and the class above that put its money end of the 1945-50 Labour government but it of standing as a Tory MP she had to marry at where its anger was, funding think tanks, was restored temporarily on the re-election leastaclassaboveherself,andshestartedhigh. newspapers and young politicians to fight of the Tories in 1951, only to decline again un - Margaret Roberts was born in 1925 into the back. If they were very clever they funded the der their tenure and Labour’s. It wasn’t until best-off 10 per cent of families in Britain. By short-lived Social Democratic Party, because his daughter’s government, formed in 1979, the time she went to university her father, it was largely not by the gains of the right, but that the 1 per cent were not just restored but Alfred, had risen to be a member (if a lowly by the divisions between the left and centre, elevated to nine times the mean. one)ofthe1percent.Margaretjoinedaneven that the rise in inequality after 1978 became It can help to personalise class. To picture smaller proportion when she went “up” to possible. In most other European countries the richest 0.01 per cent of our society, think Oxford, and she married into the 0.1 per cent there was greater solidarity on the left. of newspaper proprietors such as the Barclay with Denis and his money. But the grandees By the time Thatcher left office in 1990 the brothers, those extremely wealthy individu - of her party were members of the 0.01 per annual incomes of the richest 0.01 per cent of als who invited Thatcher to live at the Ritz, cent, well above the Thatchers. society had climbed to 70 times the national their hotel in London, in the months before For Thatcher to become leader of the Con - mean, and the accelerating effect of her gov - she died. For the 0.1 per cent, think of people servatives, the party had to be in disarray. ernment’s actions multiplied that increase to such as Denis and Margaret Thatcher, and for This was true even though the importance of 99 times the national mean by 1997. It is also the 1 per cent think of Alfred Roberts. t 28 | NEW STATESMAN | 10-16 MAY 2013 D E D N E M A E G A M I . S E G A M I Y T T E G / T S O P E R U T C I P / T T I W E H S E L R A H C Tough at the top: the greatest number of social divisions occurs in the wealthiest 1 per cent of the British population 10-16 MAY 2013 | NEW STATESMAN | 29 t Social class does not depend on income BRITAIN’S UPPER CRUST alone; it is about relationships between peo - ple. The owner of two shops (the 1 per cent) doffs his cap to the duke (the 0.01 per cent) 160 and between them the businessman (the 0.1 Top 0.01% by income per cent) lobbies for a knighthood. Below all 140 Rest of top 0.1% three the clerks (9 per cent) carry out hum - Rest of top 1% drum duties and below all of them the 90 per Rest of top 10% 120 cent are repeatedly categorised and recate - e m gorised by social scientists whose surveys, o c n even if representative, usually do not give i 100 e enough detail to differentiate well between g a r the few at the top. e 80 v a n wo statistics will broadly suffice a e 60 to work out what class you are in: m f your household income and your o s e familywealth.Oftenyourpostcode l 40 p i t can reveal a great deal about these. l u TRather like those charts that plot your height M 20 against your weight and tell you if you are overweight, average, underweight or obese, 0 a chart could be produced to determine your 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 class (even though it is unlikely that social re - searchers could agree on a single chart as yet). Twin peaks: disparities in wealth from the start of Old Labour (1945) to the end of New Labour (2009) As people’s incomes rise when they get a job, are promoted, meet a better-paid partner mobility brought about by that would not be 33 per cent of the UK population suffers from andsoon, theytendto moveoutfrompoorer evident until most of these children reached multiple deprivation by the standards set by groups to those less poor – towards average, middle age, after the millennium. the public. It was 14 per cent in 1983.” modest, affluent and occasionally even to AsclassdivisionsinBritaindiminishedand The PSE report showed that as the rich be - wealthy partsofsociety.Thiswasthestory of the income and wealth gaps between people came richer in Britain, there was an increase Alfred Roberts. As their income rises, pru - narrowed, the only group that lost out was in the numbers of poorer people who had ra - dent folk save and usually their wealth as re - the richest 1 per cent. The share of national tional fears about money, who were shoddily flected in their standard of living also rises. income for the 9 per cent of people just below housed by the standard of their times, who 8 2 1 - 7 When incomes first fall, say, through illness them remained static between 1945 and lived in shame and who, at the extreme end 9 , 1 , 6 7 or redundancy, accrued wealth maintains its 1978, but for the 90 per cent of people below of the scale, could not afford to be properly 1 , A Y social class for a time, but eventually it falls them the share rose. The poor became both fed. That last rise has been very recent, but it T E I C back down the income/wealth chart towards absolutely and relatively better off until Mar - is part of the longer-term trend. This is why O S L poverty if nothing intervenes to stop it. garet Thatcher was elected. 1930s-type soup kitchens have returned to A C I T S In postwar Britain the intervention that Britai n’ s towns and cities. The statistics that I T A T curtailed poverty was the redistribution of follow are just a sample of the results of the S L Thebottomhalfof A Y income and wealth. When fewer people largest ever systematic study of poverty and O R E were allowed to hoard so much of the wealth social exclusion in Britain, highlighted in a H societyisworseoffthan T F and claim so much of the nation’s annual in - new special edition of Breadline Britain that O L A itwasin1983 N come, fewer could be poor.
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