Underclass /
social security benefits and are housed in
social housing, such as
council estates. The term "underclass" is used to refer to those people who are "chronically unemployed", and in many instances have been for generations. The term was invented in the US in the late 20th century. Evidence could not be found through field research to support the notion of an ‘underclass’ with a separate sub-culture amongst the long-term unemployed, yet it has become a key word in the British lexicon due to the essays that the American New-Right sociologist
Charles Murray was invited to write in 1989 for
The Sunday Times. The educational special adviser, Charlie Taylor follows
Michael Gove in conceiving of an "educational underclass", and felt the majority of those involved in the
2011 England riots could be considered to be members. The BBC journalist Mark Easton felt that, in the justificatory responses he heard in the aftermath of those riots, it would be easy to concur with the politician
Iain Duncan Smith's 2008 theory of "an underclass" that exhibited "creeping expansion".
Working class Unskilled and semi-skilled working class Traditionally, these people would have worked as
manual labourers. They would typically have left school as soon as legally permissible and not have been able to take part in
higher education. Many would go on to work in semi-skilled and unskilled jobs in raw materials extraction/processing, in assembly and in machine shops of Britain's major
car factories,
steel mills,
coal mines,
foundries and
textile mills in the highly industrialised cities and pit towns and villages in the
West Midlands,
North of England,
South Wales and the
Scottish Lowlands. However, since the mid-1970s and early-1980s, some might contend that
de-industrialisation has shattered many of these communities, resulting, some might contend, in a complete deterioration in
quality of life and a reversal in rising
living standards for the
industrial working class. Many either dropped in status to the
working poor or fell into permanent reliance on
welfare dependence. Some dropped out altogether and joined the
black market economy, while a few managed, often through geographic fortune of other industries in the local area, to ascend to the
lower middle class. It has been argued that with the decline in manufacturing and increase in the service sector, lower-paid
office workers are effectively working-class.
Call centres in particular, have sprung up in former centres of industry. However, since the early-2000s, there has been a trend for many call centres to close down in the UK and outsource their jobs to
India and other jurisdictions, as part of cost-cutting measures. The
Mosaic 2010 groups where the proportion of residents in NRS social grade D was rated "high" in the 2010 Mosaic Index are "Residents with sufficient incomes in right-to-buy social housing" and "Families in low-rise social housing with high levels of benefit need". , built for the Victorian working classes During the post-war era,
white working-class Britons witnessed a big rise in their standard of living. As noted by
Denys Blakeway in 2008:"The white working-class have prospered hugely since the war. They have experienced unparalleled growth in disposable income and today they are now richer than their parents and grandparents could ever have imagined. There are shared values in white working-class culture but I think it is incredibly difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is that defines "white working-class" because a lot of them are shared by the middle class, such as football and the pub."
Skilled working class This class of people would be in skilled
industrial jobs or tradesmen, traditionally in the construction and manufacturing industry, but in recent decades showing entrepreneurial development as the stereotypical
white van man, or self-employed contractors. An example of what the BBC described as a "normal, working-class Boltonian" was
Fred Dibnah, a small-scale company director in the construction industry (and therefore also an example of the small employer class, rather than the routine class, in NS-SEC). A fictional example of a mid-century skilled working man, from the literary traditional of the
working-class novel, is Arthur Seaton, in the novel
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. A lathe operator at a bicycle factory, he regards his father's apparently subservient generation with contempt, and at the close of the novel (made explicit in the
film version) plans to buy his own home.
Middle class Lower middle class The British lower middle class, when described historically, primarily consisted of
office workers: when describing class segregation of housing in the Nottingham of 1901, clerks, bookkeepers, estate agents and teachers are described as having been lower middle class. Researchers today sometimes equate NRS social grade C1, "Supervisory, clerical and junior managerial, administrative and professional", with "lower middle class". In the nineteenth century, the middle and lower middle classes were able to live in suburbs due to the development of horse-drawn omnibuses and railways. One radical Liberal politician (
Charles Masterman), writing in 1909 used "the Middle Classes" and "the suburbans" synonymously. whether these were of a suburban, rural, city or small-town nature. Some researchers conceive of the lower middle class as consisting of those who work in lower-grade service-sector managerial jobs or semi-professions (the lower-grade service class in Oesch 2006) and small business owners. Prior to the expansion in higher education from the 1960s onwards, members of this class generally did not have a university education. Members of the lower middle class typically speak in local accents, although relatively mild. Votes in this area are split and minority parties will have a stronger proportion.
Middle class The middle class in Britain often consists of people with
tertiary education and may have been educated at either
state or
private schools. Typical jobs include:
accountants,
architects,
solicitors,
surveyors,
social workers,
teachers,
managers, specialist IT workers,
engineers, bankers,
doctors,
nurses and
civil servants. The middle class, at least in the 19th Century, had a more secure income than the working class and accumulated unspent income which they could channel into investments. Members of the middle class are often politically and socially engaged (a Mori poll in 2005 found 70% of grades AB voted at the
2005 general election compared to 54% of grades DE). Education is greatly valued by the middle classes: they will make every effort to ensure their children get offered a place at university; they may send their children to a
private school, employ a home tutor for out of school hours so their child learns at a faster rate, or go to great lengths to get their children enrolled into good state or selective grammar schools; such as moving house into the catchment area. They also value culture and make up a significant proportion of the book-buying and theatre-going public. They typically read
broadsheet newspapers rather than
tabloids. The only Mosaic 2010 geodemographic type where the proportion of residents in NRS social grade B was rated as "high" in the 2010 index was "People living in brand new residential developments".
Jilly Cooper is a self-described "upper middle-class" writer who wrote an extended humour sketch imagining the lives of different types of people drawing on prejudiced tropes and biases relating to social class, which she called "Class, A view from Middle England".
Upper middle class . The public school is traditionally one of the key institutions of the upper middle class in Britain. The upper middle class in Britain broadly consists of people who were born into families which have traditionally possessed high incomes, although this group is defined more by family background than by job or income. Although RP is not exclusive to any social class, some members of this stratum, in England, traditionally used
General British Pronunciation natively. The upper middle class are traditionally educated at
private schools, preferably one of the "major" or "minor" "
public schools" which themselves often have pedigrees going back for hundreds of years and charge fees of as much as £44,000 per year per pupil (as of 2022). A minority of upper-middle-class families may also have ancestry that directly connects them to the upper classes. Armorial bearings in the form of an escutcheon may denote such past status. A lesser status historically directly relevant to the upper middle class is that of squire or lord of the manor; however, these property rights are no longer prevalent. Although such categorisations are not precise, popular contemporary examples of upper-middle-class people may include
Boris Johnson,
Catherine, Princess of Wales,
David Cameron,
Theresa May and
Matthew Pinsent (athlete).
Upper class , family seat of the
Duke of Bedford The
British "upper class" is a very small proportion of the population and consists of the
peerage,
gentry and hereditary landowners, among others. Peers are those in possession of a hereditary title (a
dukedom, a
marquessate, an
earldom, a
viscountcy, or a
barony), whereas Gentry are those descended from peers but who themselves do not hold a title. A
baronetcy, despite being a hereditary title, does not confer peerage to its holder, though its holders are considered the highest level of minor nobility. Those in possession or right to a coat of arms are typically at least members of the upper middle class. Traditionally, upper class children were brought up at home by a
nanny for the first few years of their lives, and then home schooled by private
tutors. From the late-nineteenth century, it became increasingly popular for upper-class families to mimic the middle classes in sending their children to privately run
public schools, which had been predominantly founded to serve the educational needs of the middle class. Nowadays, when children are old enough, they may attend a
prep school or pre-preparatory school. Moving into
secondary education, it is still commonplace for upper-class children to attend a privately run public school, although it is not unheard of for certain families to send their children to
state schools. Continuing education goals can vary from family to family; it may, in part, be based on the educational history of the family. In the past, both the
British Army and
Royal Navy have been the institutions of choice. Equally, the
clergy, as well as academia, particularly within the
arts and
humanities divisions of Britain's oldest and most prestigious
universities (
Oxbridge), have been traditional career paths amongst the
upper class - indeed until 1840 the majority of Oxbridge graduates were destined for ordination. ==Sociolinguistics of Great Britain==