End Elitist Britain: A Working-Class Woman’s Manifesto
When you think of England, what comes to mind? Is it mustached men in top hats and coattails? Is it drinking tea and eating scones? Is it a culture that ignores the majority of its citizens while spending endless time and money on the top 10 percent? Chances are, it is not the latter, but, as a working-class, Northern woman, that is the reality I have been living. For centuries, the U.K. has enjoyed a reputation as one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world, but in recent years, our outdated systems and thoroughly divided society, both in terms of race and social class, has pushed us down the rankings, so that the only thing big and impressive about our tiny island is the privileged personalities of those who run it.
For a developed country, there is a surprisingly high amount of people in the U.K. that live in poverty. Relative to the median wage of 2019-2020, 22 percent of people in the country were living in poverty. This is an embarrassing amount, considering the U.K. is a member of G7, which is made up of the “world’s most influential and open societies” and “advanced economies.” If our society is so open, and our economy so advanced, where is it that the money is going as the bottom 22 percent certainly aren’t seeing it.
The answer, it would seem, is that the money in the country is portioned out unequally. The richest fifth of the country has 40 percent of the income with an average of £69,126 per annum, whereas the poorest fifth has only 8 percent, with an average of £12,798. The wealth distribution is even worse than that of income, since the richest 10 percent hold 44 percent of all wealth, and the poorest 50 percent hold only 9 percent.
“Surely,” you may say, “that cannot be the end of it. There is much more to life and equality than money. What about education and opportunities for work? There must be ways for the poor to get richer.”
Unfortunately, that’s not the reality for most. No matter how many times the fat cats – someone who is wealthy and has a lot of influence – in the Houses of Parliament claim there is no class system in the U.K., it is uncommon for those born into a working-class family to raise themselves into the middle or higher class. One reason for this is the country’s education system. In order to become successful in the U.K., it is almost essential to have attended a fee-paying school. In a report published by the Social Mobility Commission in 2019, it was revealed that, in that year, 65 percent of senior judges, 59 percent of permanent civil service secretaries, 52 percent of diplomats, 52 percent of junior ministers, 49 percent of the armed forces, 45 percent of public body chairs, 44 percent of newspaper columnists, 43 percent of the 100 most influential news editors and broadcasters, and 43 percent of the men’s cricket team were privately educated. This is all despite the fact that only 7 percent of the population attended fee-paying schools. These figures show the disparity between employability in the U.K. Essentially they say that those who attend a fee-paying school find themselves in better-paying jobs that generally have more advanced career prospects.
A still from the “Class Sketch” featured on The Frost Report in 1966, starring John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett. It satirized the class system in Britain.
The document that revealed all these statistics claims that the key for bridging the gap between the rich and poor in these influential positions is for “the country’s most successful educational institutions” to “open their doors to those beyond a privileged few.” In reality, I believe this would prove ineffective. Instead of bringing those from an often called ‘lower’ class to the top of the pyramid, policy should be focused on equality. For the country to truly be equal, private schools should potentially be abolished, limited, or regulated in a nature that stops a high number of state school students from dropping off. To admit that private schools and some specific state schools are better than other educational institutions in the country is to admit that the British education system is inadequate.
As you can surmise, it’s difficult to be proud of the country I find myself residing in when the government fails to take any effective steps to close the wealth gap and refuses to recognize the substantial impact the working class imprints on the country. For a successful future, a leader that isn’t at the core of the rich and powerful is likely to be the only way that the wealth disparity gap and class culture are alleviated.
