Words: Olivia Humphrey (She/Her)
If we entered a room filled with British archetypes, we’d quickly bump into the working-class hero – maybe a football player, or a boxer, exhibiting the physical prowess of a good, masculine lad. Scanning the room, your eyes might gaze over the allotment hippie, a Just Stop Oil tote in hand; an affluent elder gent, his salmon-coloured chops quivering because you just can’t say anything anymore; a greedy landlord boomer and avocado-toast millennial glaring at each other; and, of course, the insufferable ‘Mate, those are my savings, I’m just as broke as you are’, yuppie, his Pall Mall baccy and a Platinum credit card tucked out of sight.
These wide stereotypes are the sardonic lovechild of British humour and a long history of social division. Our class system is rooted in feudalism. Medieval Europe’s social order was built on birthright and land ownership, with a rigid hierarchy dominated by nobility. Unlike much of Europe, the UK didn’t experience the mass dispossession of the nobility’s estates after events like the French Revolution. Instead, the British aristocracy integrated with a new class of wealthy industrialists, who amassed new wealth from commerce and industry. The Industrial Revolution changed the game, creating the capitalist class: a new power group that sat at the top of the social ladder, while a growing labor class of factory workers solidified the class divide. Over time, factors like wealth, education, and occupation started to play a larger role in determining one’s place in society.
Yet, we still struggle to really define what class in the UK actually is. Class culture in the UK is undergoing a subtle, yet significant transformation, and our understanding of it grows increasingly transient. Is it your job, your salary, your education? Maybe it’s where you holiday, or your voting habits? At the very least, we can all agree that class status is far more complex than socioeconomic status. Things like accents or dialects, personal style, and sports teams connect us to different walks of life, which weave themselves into humour, social expectations, and the pressures you face. Class dictates what feels normal to us, and how we engage with the world. It is not a straightforward hierarchy, but a complex, deeply embedded cultural birthmark.
Crucially, class culture dictates who belongs. We have successfully attached measures of shame and pride to both wealth and poverty, and often, class indicators are used to determine who is working-class. Marx’s theory of the proletariat reflects and entrenches certain gendered parameters of ‘real’ work, distinguishing between ‘productive’ (manufacturing commodities) and ‘reproductive’ (cooking/cleaning/childcare). As far as he was concerned, only ‘productive’ workers qualified as true proletariats. This image of a masculine workforce glorifies a certain macho archetype – certainly, negative portrayals of the working class show the white Leave voter from Barnsley, furious at new arrivals ‘taking our jobs’. Conveniently, this outlook blames those fleeing war, poverty, and environmental catastrophe for widespread job insecurity, rather than austerity and deprivation. While this certainly isn’t the full picture of British working-class people, it’s an archetype that has been efficiently weaponised by far-right populist rhetoric, and Tories and Labour alike are hammering down eurocentric ideas of British identity.
However, this negative stereotyping doesn’t just overlook those who reject these values, but also Britain’s long history of working-class Black and Asian communities. These groups have been present in the UK for thousands of years, yet are rarely credited for their contributions to society. For example, in the aftermath of WW2, POC communities – particularly from the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia – played a crucial role in rebuilding the country, filling labour shortages and contributing to the NHS and public transport, all the while facing racism and discrimination. This treatment continues to be exhibited, as exemplified by last summer’s xenophobic and Islamophobic riots that spread like the plague down the country.
The unique cultural phenomenon of class in Britain persists so powerfully in modern times because these labels reinforce political division, even amongst groups who share similar material realities. Certain populist figures – cough cough, Rishi Sunak – maintain that rising social wealth, greater social mobility, and a shift toward individualism has made class divisions obsolete. However, this narrative is increasingly out of step with reality as – in many ways – the experience of class today is directly tied to the cost-of-living crisis. Since the 2008 financial crisis, growing inequality, wage stagnation, and inflation have challenged notions of social progress, while expanding education has not erased divisions, but instead helped forge new divides between the so-called “winners” and “losers” of globalisation. So, whilst our cultural landscape rampantly breeds social stereotypes and births litters of unelected elites panting over our political arenas, the myth of a classless Britain is perpetuated by the promise of social mobility in a false meritocracy.
As inequality deepens, how will class evolve in the coming years? Will we continue to reference the mid-20th century or look for a new model of identity? The pandemic, with its surge in worker activism, may have opened the door to a reimagined working class – one not bound by a singular stereotype, but defined by a collective spirit of community. As comedian and author Sue Townsend poignantly said, ‘I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar and Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor’.
At the end of the day, it’s clear that class is no longer fixed or resolute – it has become a far more intangible beast. Yet, it’s hard to imagine that the UK might ever break free from the class-defined way we perceive ourselves and others. For now, we continue to entrench ourselves in the culture, with every joking stereotype, fashion statement, and turn of phrase – all the while, our heads bumping against the class ceiling.
