Class prejudice remains one of the biggest barriers in society today, and I should know – Susan Dalgety
Susan Dalgety, who found herself inspected like a farm animal at the age of ten, says social class remains a fundamental dividing line that still blights too many lives
Government ministers love setting up ‘units’ and ‘commissions’ where they can dump difficult issues, such as the cost of social care and widening access to higher education. They can then sit back for a few years, safe in the knowledge that they can look forward to a final report, a blueprint for action even, which will be published to a great fanfare, then promptly archived.
Earlier this week, Bridget Phillipson, the UK minister for women and equalities, announced the latest in a long line of government hiding places for problems too hard to handle: a new 'Class Unit' to “improve life chances for [the] working class”.
Phillipson, who often talks about her own working class background growing up in Tyne and Wear, was clear: “We have been squeamish about class for too long. From exam results to life expectancy, we must bear down on the entrenched inequalities that exist in our country.”
READ MORE: How party politics has allowed violence against women to soar in Scotland – Susan Dalgety
Any identity but class
Hardly revolutionary stuff from a Labour minister, whose party was formed more than a century ago to give working-class people a direct voice in parliament, but social class is more complex than it was when George Orwell observed that we were the most “class-ridden country in the world”.
Indeed, many commentators – invariably middle class – will argue that it is now impossible to define working class. Even John Prescott, who wore his working-class credentials with pride, once quipped “we are all middle class now”, but his throwaway remark was at the height of New Labour optimism when we all thought things could only get better.
Phillipson’s analysis is correct. We have been reluctant to talk about social class for far too long, and as a result our country is worse off. While middle-class progressive politicians have been busy promoting policies based on ‘identity’ (that is any identity but class), inequality has become even more entrenched in all areas of life, from housing to education, health to transport.
Where you are born, whether an urban housing scheme or a rented cottage in a small town, and your family circumstances, will largely determine the rest of your life, from your life expectancy to your career opportunities.
Not for nothing do middle-class parents scrimp and save to send their children to ‘independent’ schools or buy a home in the ‘best’ catchment area. They are buying future networks for their offspring, networks that young people from a council estate or rural community can never access, except occasionally by good luck or accident.
READ MORE: How Ancient Greeks' practice of silencing women is alive and well in Scotland today – Susan Dalgety
Lined up for inspection
A defining moment in my own life came one sunny summer morning when I was ten. My father was a farm labourer and our home was dependent on his job. It belonged, not to us, but to the farmer and his family. It was their property. Their birthright. That morning, the gate to our tied cottage opened and in strode the farmer’s wife and two companions.
“These are my friends from Cheshire. I have come to show them the lovely garden and your well-behaved children,” she told my mother, as we were lined up for inspection. “Such polite children,” they coo-ed, and then continued on their way. The incident haunts me still. At ten years old, I had been judged in the same way as any farm animal, and from that moment I became acutely aware of my social class.
Two decades living in one of Scotland’s largest housing estates confirmed my position in society. Today, I may enjoy that most middle class of occupations – a newspaper columnist – but my accent, my precarious finances, even my posture betray me. I am as working class now as I was when I was ten years old. And my sons, successful builders, are dismissed as “white van men” by a society that values mediocre degrees over hard-earned vocational skills.
All that life has to offer
Writing in a feminist newsletter this weekend, Edinburgh MP Tracy Gilbert – also from a working-class background – argues that young people are too often written off before they’ve had the chance to discover what they’re capable of. "I believe it's so important that young people, especially girls and those from working-class backgrounds, are exposed to all that life has to offer. We can't aspire to opportunities we've never been shown” she says.
Her personal route to power was via the long-defunct Youth Training Scheme (YTS) and the trade union movement, but for every Tracy Gilbert, there are thousands of women trapped in low-paid work. Their future was decided long before they reached voting age, just as their middle-class peers were groomed from nursery for a professional career with all the financial and social benefits that brings.
Phillipson’s ‘Class Unit’ may well prove to be another bureaucratic dead end, like the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) which it replaces. That body was set up by the previous Conservative government to “provide evidence to ministers on the barriers to opportunity”, but there is little evidence it achieved much, if anything.
But at least we now have a UK government that is willing to talk about class and recognises that, for far too long, the concerns of working-class communities have been sidelined in favour of a national conversation about individual ‘identity’.
However, a government unit on its own cannot affect change. Our country is in a mess: low productivity, unaffordable energy, expensive housing – a low-wage service economy with a frightened middle class at its core desperately trying to cling on to its privileged status. It will take a (peaceful) revolution to bridge the class divide that holds us all back. I won’t hold my breath.
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