Class

I've just done the BBC class test which could hardly be said to be in depth. We British would like to feel that we have moved on from rigid class boundaries & to some extent we have. But the mere fact we repeatedly focus on these sorts of things shows that we are still class ridden. While we still have a hereditary Monarchy & Aristocracy we will always be a hierarchical, class ridden society. But there is some mobility between the class boundaries.

While the rich get ever richer through inherited wealth there will always be a chasm between the rich and the poor. Perhaps everyone should be "working class" & assets above a certain level should be given to the needy, wherever they are. Or used for big global projects to protect the world we are destroying.

My father & mother had no choice but to leave school in their very early teens. My father had a limited reading age. My mother was intelligent & could probably have benefited from a good education. Both of them languished in the "working class". He was a lorry driver, then a furnace man in a copper smelting factory, ending up as a boiler man in a big department store. She worked in service, & in toy factory & a chocolate cake making factory. Their field of choice was narrow. We had lodgers to make ends meet.

My life & lifestyle is light years away from them and from my childhood because of my education & working life in a profession. Yet I still honour my roots. My beliefs about fairness & equality have been shaped by my father's strong Labour & trade union allegiance. My lifelong love of learning was derived from my mothers passionate belief that education was the key for girls as well as boys.

I left the working class behind. But you can take the girl out of the working class, but not the working class out of the woman. Not everyone can or should be the same. Everyone cannot be equal. But I would love to live in a society where everyone had equal opportunities. Where everyone could develop their full potential through their own efforts & wealth played no part in that possibility. Where everyone had access to the same high quality education & health care.

I don't think many countries have achieved that goal - except maybe the Scandinavians, who are closer than we are. Until we do, our society will be held back by the invisible dividing lines between people. Inequality will breed discontent & that discontent will fester away till something sparks off the anger of the disengaged & disempowered. It is in everyone's interest to put that right. Soon.