My grandfather happens to be perhaps the most intelligent man I know.  He’s the kind of guy that you can sit down and have a really profound and intelligent conversation with, and come away feeling as though you’ve learnt something.  Along with his high intelligence, he’s also one of the kindest people I know.  I don’t know of anybody who has a bad thing to say about him.  Even people who haven’t met him often state that they wish to have a damn good barny with him.  He’s just that sort of guy.
Yes, my grandfather is a dyed in the wool socialist/communist.  I suppose in certain respects, he’s the stereotypical old-school lefty: he has a firm hatred of capitalism and imperialism.  The thing is, he understands capitalism perfectly, and is able to see how it’s more or less screwing us over as much as it can.  I’ve inherited the majority of my political influence from him, so I suppose you could call them a little biased.  Nevertheless, I’m not as set in my ways as he is.  I’m vaguely prepared to tolerate religious folks.

Anyways, a few days ago, a discussion about class came up in the household.  It reminded me of a little argument my mother and father had some time last year, where my dad told my mum she was middle-class, which she disagreed with.  I, on the other hand agreed with my dad, for reasons I will come to in a moment.  So me being my usual self, I brought up the matter again:
“Mum, you’re middle-class”… An brief discussion ensued, whereupon my concepts of class were changed completely.

See, I had always understood that your class had to do with your living conditions and income: if you were working class, then you had a low income and were just able to keep your head above water. Most working class families were atheist and involved in some form of industry for income.  The middle-class had a moderate income and were living fairly well off, usually religious and the upper-class were just a bunch of rich bastards.
I always based my assumptions upon the three stereotypes I had encountered in my life; my mum’s family, my dad’s family and the Royal family.
When I was a baby, we lived with my mum’s family for a short time, and I was around them a lot.  My grandparents had three children and strong socialist leanings.  My grandfather was a sort of Bolshevik (not even sure if he was, so don’t quote me on that) who was expelled from Belgium after inciting workers to riot.  Of course, he did this because he was skint at the time and couldn’t afford the journey back, so he exploited the system in order to gain a trip home.  But I digress.  The   family was, and still is, atheist and couldn’t put up with religious types. The good old Rev. Don Spitz-Not-Swallows, who seems to love this blog (you do keep coming back, don’t you?), would have his hair turn sodding white if he could hear some of the conversation that went around the dinner table.
They didn’t have a great income; my grandmother was a social worker, she worked a lot in adult education (in other words, she was socially aware).  My grandad usually worked a couple of jobs at a time, did a lot of night shifts to ensure an income for his family.  I think he also worked with the trade unions before Thatcher destroyed the system.
My dad’s family, on the other hand, were something completely different.  I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m disrespecting them at all, especially not my grandmother.  I tell you, she has been a life-saver over the past five years.  Whenever we needed financial aid or just someone to talk to, she would come rushing to our help.  They just come from a whole different world to what I was used to.
The majority of the family is religious in some shape or form.  My aunts and uncles are doing well off for themselves and are homeowners. My dad has really only been the one who sort of broke the mold, so to speak.  But you gotta understand that going to my grandma’s was always something of a big thing for us; she had money that she could spare to buy luxuries (which isn’t really much, but felt like it at the time).
And then you have the Royal family. who don’t do anything but are still in the public goddamn eye.  I mean, I think we’re the only country in the western hemisphere still backwards enough to worship a set of rich toffs like fucking demigods.  They’re never out of the news, even for the most trivial of events.  To my understanding, we give them taxpayers money to live on, even though they don’t work.  I’m not a royalist, partly because of the way I was brought up, and partly because of sheer common sense.

So there are the three portraits I had of the different class structures, until my granddad told me this very important piece of political philosophy you should all pay attention to:

The vast majority of the world’s population is working class, because they work for a living.  The middle class are simply pig-ignorant working class, and the upper class aren’t worth our time.

People who consider themselves to be middle-class are fooling themselves; they’re the sort of people who call themselves ‘ex-pats’ rather than ‘immigrants’ when they emigrate to a different country.  There is no middle-class, just a bunch of morons with a deep-set sense of social insecurity and a superiority complex.
The working class image in Britain seems to have degenerated into a very quaint Carry-On movie’s view of society.  When you talk about the working class to a lot of people, their mind automatically flashes to images of the miner’s strikes and the Poll-tax riots; Daddy coming home from the factory covered in grime and soot, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and giving wife and the kiddies a firm thrashing when they step out of line. This is completely absurd; in reality the working class are simply you and I: people trying to make a living through life, working for their income.  Thatcher said that there was no such thing as society, but that’s the very essence of the working class.  We are mainstream society, be you a caphead, a rocker, a punk or even a sodding Tory.  If you work, you’re one of us.

So keep that in mind next time a debate about class starts up around the dinner table.

‘Till next time,
James