Social Class in the UK
If you're looking for an interesting little article to accompany what your textbook says about social class cleavages in the UK, this one's a good candidate.Together with some economic statistics from something like the CIA World Factbook, this article can illustrate, especially for American students, some aspects of the class divide in Britain.
The photograph that defined the class divide
By 1937 Eton and Harrow had been playing each other at cricket for 132 years. Their annual match was, and remains, probably the oldest regular fixture in a game that has the richest and longest traditions of any team sport played with a ball. It lasted two days and attracted big crowds…
Male spectators wore toppers and tails, and women their summer hats and frocks. The Harrovians and Etonians themselves came in their most formal outfits – "Sunday dress" as Harrow called it…
On the morning of Friday 9 July 1937, Peter Wagner and Thomas Dyson stood dressed in this way outside Lord's. They were Harrow pupils, aged 14 and 15, and this was the opening day of the match… Local boys, porters for the day, unloaded wicker hampers from spectators' cars and carried them into the stands…
The Eton-Harrow match declined as a social occasion in the years after [World War II]. Hardly anyone goes now apart from the pupils, some very reluctantly, and the dress code is "smart casual": if a photographer wanted to re-create Sime's picture, he might be faced with five boys dressed much the same, in jeans and brand names. Giving a superficial impression of equality, the picture would be even more of a lie than before…
As I was writing this piece, the government's National Equality Panel suggested that Britain's widening divide between the rich and the poor "may imply that it is impossible to create a cohesive society"…
Nearly 70 years have passed since Picture Post protested at exactly this state of affairs. What picture accompanied the Daily Telegraph's report in January 2010? Sime's, of course; the same as Picture Post had published in January 1941. There they were again: Wagner, Dyson, Salmon, Catlin and Young, doomed for ever to represent our continuing social tragedy.
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.
Find out What You Need to Know
Labels: civil society, cleavages, political culture, UK
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:07 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home