How can you change Britain without understanding class?

The Labour movement column

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

The British seem uniquely capable of combining an obsession with class with denial about its consequences. Ever since David Cameron sought to deflect attention from his own background by plaintively crying, “it’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re going,” we’ve had the standard hand-wringing about class in Britain that one gets from time to time.

Class war? How utterly retro. Didn’t that go out with the mining industry? All those sideburns and moustaches – that’s where class-based politics gets you. We’ve all got Sky Plus now. What could be more meritocratic than that? If that’s not enough, there’s always an X-Factor audition to lift you up. It’s all about self-belief, you see. Believe and you will achieve. Marvellous.

Even commentators on the left have simply taken David Cameron’s crie de coeur at face value. No, no, no, we are not saying that just because you’re posh (in the traditional Sophie Ellis-Bextor sense of the word, rather than the Spice Girls sense) that you can’t be for justice. Gosh, John Maynard Keynes was an Old Etonian, William Beveridge went to Charterhouse (what do you call those? Chartists? Chartreuses? Chaps?) Clement Attlee was a Haileybury old boy. Some of the biggest socialist and liberal reformers of the twentieth century were products of the upper echelons of the British class-ridden education system. Nye Bevan left school at 13. He did alright too.

All of this is completely irrelevant. The argument is empty. Just because people from privileged backgrounds do great things, even inspirational things, doesn’t mean that class is not an issue. It is, and if we allow this petty media trivialisation of class to avert our gaze from its importance in modern British society then we’re fools.

Our attitudes are drifting back to the pre-welfare state era where we castigate the poor for their own poverty. Part of the reason for this is that we have failed to have an honest conversation about class and its consequences in the UK.

To retort David Cameron’s ‘it’s not where you come from’ sentiment, it absolutely is actually. Class matters. It doesn’t determine achievement but it heavily influences it. Nye Bevan and William Beveridge both achieved immense amounts for this nation. The difference is that not many of Nye Bevan’s school contemporaries would have had any life other than that of a coal miner to look forward to. That is how class functions.

Let me be clear, I do not care that David Cameron went to Eton, that George Osborne went St Paul’s and the Shadow Cabinet went to all sorts of public schools that are no longer listed on www.conservatives.com. Those attacks are useful as an occasional political dig, but no more.

The Prime Minister’s linkage of David Cameron’s schooling with his preference for tax policies that benefit the better off was well crafted; but the substantive point was the one that was policy-based. That is why the Crewe and Nantwich attacks fell flat: they lacked bite.

The expected super-windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses in today’s Pre-Budget Report feels like a necessary political and moral catharsis. I hope that the remainder of the City have their Chiristmas cards to the Royal Bank of Scotland Board on hold. Can there ever have been a more inept attempt to play politics than their ‘back us or sack us’ challenge last week?

But motivation for this move can not be ‘class war.’ It is about reciprocity and fairness. We saved you, now it is only right that you make a contribution that can be put to some socially useful purpose – reducing youth unemployment, say.

If Labour does attempt a re-heated version of ‘class warfare’ then it will be foolish (and here I disagree with Laurie Penny’s otherwise excellent piece on LabourList yesterday.) There has been a lot of excitement about a narrowing of the Conservatives’ poll lead. However, class-based politics will ultimately benefit the Tories. Labour’s base will become more solid (and that is one big reason for the poll narrowing) but it will prevent the party reaching into the type of vote that is less concerned with class as a political motivator. As an occasional tactic to make substantive points it’s OK-ish. But as a strategy, it’s disastrous.

So the politics of class are mixed. The reality of class isn’t. It is very real and consequential. Social mobility in Britain has remained pretty flat for the last four decades – at least for men (see slide 31 here).

Class plays itself out in all sorts of complex feedback loops. Lacking the capability to fulfil your social, financial, and psychological needs can lead to severe distress. This can have physical and mental consequences which in turn diminish your capability further.

That struggle can become a vicious circle, as the Young Foundation’s very important ‘Sink or Swim‘ report, which was published on Monday, emphasises and meeting needs – not only resource needs – becomes critical. Most people bounce back but a significant number do not. By thinking about the consequences of class divisions we can ensure a greater spread of opportunity, capability and resilience.

Class hatred, class warfare, class politics and the rest are from another political era. And good, because I no more want to judge David Cameron by his background than I do anyone else. But when he denies that that background is important in the game of life, they are the words of someone who doesn’t really get it. That’s nothing to do with Eton. That’s his failure of understanding and imagination. In the end, that is of far greater concern and it doesn’t bode well for his ‘big society’.