ABB125
Established Member
Following on from this thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...on-not-traditional-labour-strongholds.241949/
Does the traditional 3-tier class system still exist in the UK? My understanding is that (based on the mid-20th century) this consists of:
Personally, I don't think this system exists any more. Essentially, there are "people who work" and "people who don't"; the former includes everyone from the fruit picker to the city banker (ie: most of the population); the latter is rather smaller and covers two extremes: those who don't work (for whatever reason, be it ill health, disability etc) and live on benefits, and those who don't need to work because they have other income sources (back to the traditional landed gentry etc).
However, I'm not sure this is a particularly good model either. (Possibly because, no matter how hard you try, it's not possible to neatly divide society into sections!)
Case point: Farmer Giles spends every day working hard on his farm, growing crops and raising livestock. He employs several workers, and his family help out as well. The farm, which is wholly owned by Farmer Giles (and his father before him, and his father etc) is 850 acres, which could fairly easily have a market value of £10 million as farmland (and considerably more as "development land"). Which traditional category does Farmer Giles fall into? What is he in modern terms?
An interesting topic, which I definitely have more to say about, but I'll leave it there for the moment! Any thoughts welcome.
Does the traditional 3-tier class system still exist in the UK? My understanding is that (based on the mid-20th century) this consists of:
- "Working class" - the "poor" people doing physical, unskilled (in certain people's opinion) work, such as dock workers, miners, builders etc
- "Middle class" - better paid, more skilled and not such physically-demanding work, such as teachers, local bank managers, corporate middle management etc
- "Upper class" - the wealthiest in society, who often don't actually do anything because they don't need to, such as "the landed gentry", company owners etc
Personally, I don't think this system exists any more. Essentially, there are "people who work" and "people who don't"; the former includes everyone from the fruit picker to the city banker (ie: most of the population); the latter is rather smaller and covers two extremes: those who don't work (for whatever reason, be it ill health, disability etc) and live on benefits, and those who don't need to work because they have other income sources (back to the traditional landed gentry etc).
However, I'm not sure this is a particularly good model either. (Possibly because, no matter how hard you try, it's not possible to neatly divide society into sections!)
Case point: Farmer Giles spends every day working hard on his farm, growing crops and raising livestock. He employs several workers, and his family help out as well. The farm, which is wholly owned by Farmer Giles (and his father before him, and his father etc) is 850 acres, which could fairly easily have a market value of £10 million as farmland (and considerably more as "development land"). Which traditional category does Farmer Giles fall into? What is he in modern terms?
An interesting topic, which I definitely have more to say about, but I'll leave it there for the moment! Any thoughts welcome.