Social Classes in Britain - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages Besides the fortune that the people belonging to this class have inherited, they attribute their title to a number of other factors too. These include their education, their hobbies and their pastimes which includes the traditional sporting life involving hunting, shooting and fishing, as well as a great deal of horse riding for both leisure and as a competitive pursuit.
The people belonging to the class category are mostly agricultural, factory workers and mine workers. The Working Class includes those who sell their labour power, their capacity to work, in return for a wage or salary, and who work under the direction of the owners of the means of production and their agents. This category includes skilled, semi skilled and unskilled workers.
People in general seem quite uncomfortable when the issue of social class is raised. In order to deal with this discomfort a typical response to the subject is that "class no longer exists". This view isat the very highest levels of public life. People feel uncomfortable with the idea of class partly because it was developed by Karl Marx (1848), and Karl Marx and communism go together, also because they may feel inferior, that is not as good as other people.
Margaret Thatcher informed us "there is no such thing as society; just individuals and their families" and John Major told us "we are all classless now". (John Pateman, ISC10) And Tony Blair, soon after becoming Prime Minister, declared that one of the aims of his government was to "make everybody middle class". At the Labour Party conference, Tony Blair announced, "the class war is over." (Weekly Worker, 1999) All such statement coming from the government office people, those too the prime ministers, are sufficient call that class is still important in the Britain today like it has always been. This is plenty of evidence to suggest that the class system is alive and well. Indeed, most people believe that nothing has changed in Britain in terms of class.
Although frequently classes are segregated in terms of economic indicators like income, wealth and occupations, a class is also formed on the basis of behaviour, attitude and values. And this is another way the Britain society is stratified, in the sense of lifestyle. People forming these classes do so by demonstrating their way of living, wearing, eating and by their very being. People who do not own larger houses, bigger fridges, who do not go for vacations abroad every year or so, are striving today to push themselves into that upper class or upper middle class category one way or the other.
Although today everyone in Britain has social security instead of only ...Download file to see next pagesRead More