The British class system is in great shape

an article by Lisa Mckenzie (University of Durham) published in IPPR Progressive Review Volume 26 Issue 3 (Winter 2019)

Why we should embrace working class solidarity not the gentrification of class politics

The distinction between those that have middle‐class avenues to power, education, wealth, and culture, and those that don't, is stronger today than any time since the second world war. Relatively well‐paid and heavily unionised industries have been eroded from large parts of the North, the Midlands and coastal areas of the South. A decade of austerity budgets has severely impacted on working‐class people, with the deepest cuts falling on the poorest shoulders, including children and the disabled.

Meanwhile policy connected to housing has felt the consequences of house prices increasing year on year, benefiting those that own property. Simultaneously the private, for profit schooling sector has been lucrative with rising fees and ever‐better results – its students are still more likely than state educated students to be at Oxbridge and the Russell Group universities. These factors combine not to make class more complicated, as so often argued by politicians and academics, but rather more entrenched, more clearly delineated and more important than ever before.

Continue reading HTML

or if you prefer PDF (8pp)

Labels:
class_consciousness, working-class, poverty, austerity,

---