England's Upper Classes – A Dangerous Cult
bylinetimes.com
bylinetimes.com
"This country could do with a lot more Hannahs and far fewer Jacob Rees-Moggs."
The remaining Jacob Rees-Moggs of the UK stick out like sore thumbs and are almost caricatures. I also don't imagine many people are oblivious to the fact that the "aristocracy" (what does that even mean in a UK context nowadays?) made their living off of exploitation. Just as todays elite do but in softer ways (see Bezos).
Well - somewhat tangential to the article text if not to its title - consider this image[1].
The Prime Minister of the UK (seated at the right of the bottom row) just appointed the circled person stood in front of the door, to the "committee on standards in public life," one of whose tasks would be to ensure the propriety of corporate lobbying undertaken by the person stood next but one on his left, the ex-Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron, which has recently caused some disquiet[2]
The photo, notoriously, shows the members of a "private all-male dining club for Oxford University students. It is known for its wealthy members, grand banquets, and bad behaviour, including vandalism of restaurants and students' rooms. The club is known to select its members not only on the grounds of wealth and willingness to partake but also by means of education. Former pupils of public schools such as Eton, Harrow, Stowe School, Radley, Oundle, Shrewsbury, Sedbergh, Rugby, Westminster, Charterhouse, St. Paul's, and Winchester form the bulk of its membership."[3]
Britain's "todays elite" are the old elite.
1: https://www.thenational.scot/resources/images/12804107/
2: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/20/david-camer...
[1] https://www.facebook.com/14554658690/photos/a.10150355587333...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1zdaa7/david_mitchell...
The fact that they're not upper-upper doesn't change the fact that a public school education is a fast track to Oxbridge and to insider status.
But even with the fast track, the upper middle classes are motivated by anxiety and envy about not being upper upper enough. The original article almost highlights this, but doesn't quite hammer it home.
The class system is about aspiring to become the kind of person who has ancestral money and some huge houses. (Not just one huge house. That's the entry level.)
But the people with the ancestral money and huge houses are neither special nor interesting. They're groomed for confident self-interest and social polish, but they don't actually do much except cream money off the markets, order inferiors around, and breed.
Their self interest sets the tone for those lower down the tree who aspire to be like them. That's why they're so toxic. They're hostile to any kind of collectivity which erodes their "natural" privilege.
And they'd rather own a country which is falling apart than lose some status in a country with more social mobility which might challenge their self-perceived high status.
*Note for non-Brits: "public school" is the British way of saying "private school"[1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
The Wikipedia link I provided has the details.
When push comes to shove I wonder whether people who are anti public-schools would welcome this style of government - in a country where people are free to do what they want, people will spend a huge amount of money for their children to get advantage/opportunity.
How do you negate this? Should you negate this?
The public school track really isn't the advantage some (including the schools themselves) make it out to be; it's a well-known trope among the middle classes that a merely diligent straight-As student will have a much better chance applying from a state school than from a public school.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_school_(United_Kin...
You see the same effect with grammar schools (in the U.K.) or magnet high schools (in the Us) which feels a little more egalitarian, though of course the availability of such schools can vary a lot geographically (and a higher cost of living near good schools can push out poorer parents too.)
I don’t really know what the solution is. It seems unmeritocratic to expect universities to take only 7% independent school students (for one thing I would expect they make up slightly more than 7% of the university student body; for another this would probably have the undesired effect of having the 7% at Oxford and Cambridge mostly made up of the top public schools) but it also feels slightly unfair to only look at grades (indeed the universities do try to be more accessible and take into account the fact that some students have depressed grades due to poorer schools)
I think it slides right past the point without noticing it, for the reason you state. None of these people are running the UK.
I always find it irritating that politicians of all stripes who have gone out of their way to cultivate a particularly niche image are lazily described by the commenteriat as more "authentic" than those are quite happy to dress and speak like regular politicians and demonstrate their authenticity (or lack thereof) with the actual positions they hold
So, despite what random commenters on a tech forum (or their friends) might have to say, I think the simplest explanation is that he just is posh.
Obviously, he plays into his image (He doesn't exactly hide this fact). But that doesn't mean his image is false.
Nobody is pretending he was born poor, we're just noting that that person who had the same level of privileged background as dozens of other politicians probably isn't more "authentic" than them because they're not regarded as caricatures...
You don't have to tell me what you and previous commenters had stated, because it's still right there in the comments.
> I keep on pointing it out, because people for some reason miss it: The person you know as Jacob Rees-Mogg is a schtick
> I'm reliably informed by a contemporary at Westminster Grammar that he "wasn't that posh" until later.
Now for some useless internet anecdotes.
I was actually at Oxford with Jacob's nephew. Very humble chap, very likeable, and very liberal in his conservatism. Was always quite reluctant to spill the beans on Jacob though, which is fair enough.
Also interestingly is the continued existence of people like Hannah in the article. My tutor, a professor at Christ Church (informally seen as one of the most 'aristocratic' colleges), was 'busted' for running a secret dining society populated by public schoolboys, a number of whom would be described as being upper class. This is despite him coming from a relatively modest background up in Hull, and never entirely managed to shirk his regional accent. He didn't even read for his undergraduate degree at Oxford, heaven forbid! (Great guy though). Now it all makes sense as to why he was so inquisitive about my schooling and family background during our first meeting.
My cousin, who was also at Christ Church, knew a couple of the Bullingdon chaps. Heckling members of the public in the King's Arms because they didn't live in a castle was one unbecoming episode, as was another member turning up to a college party in a KKK outfit. From my understanding, traditionally upper class societies like the Bullingdon are strongly falling out of fashion and becoming much more underground, because of the toxicity surrounding them. While I was there, the Bullingdon club were caught assembling on their usual steps in Canterbury Quad in their tails, to take their annual photograph. They were promptly kicked out of college and told that they couldn't assemble in Christ Church again. As a result of this toxicity, they've had to expand their social reach to more non-traditional gents, in order to keep the club alive. Now more than ever, simply being from a wealthy family, rather than an aristocratic one, seems to qualify.
As to the rest of your comment, I agree that Jacob Rees-Mogg is not normal. But that doesn't mean he's a phony.
I went to private school in the UK - there are loads of people like him.
>The remaining Jacob Rees-Moggs of the UK stick out like sore thumbs and are almost caricatures
Then why has he risen to the top? The common people are not just itching for a caricature of an aristocrat to lead them, he represents people that are similar to him.
Jacob has more of an advantage than his father because of Eton and because his father had climbed the greasy pole before him, but his background is exactly the type that "We came over with William the Conqueror" aristocrats look down on. He has more in common with Otto English's mother than he would probably like to admit. Just like her, he is a caricature of the British upper classes, not the real deal.
Plus, of course, he has risen to the top because the people in his constituency vote for him.
But the previous consituency (Wansdyke) that covered a similar area was Labour from 1997 and until 2010 (the Blair/Brown years), when it was abolished and replaced by North East Somerset, at which point Rees-Mogg won it for the Tories. Prior to 1997 it was historically Tory.
So, we might conclude that it's a moderate Tory seat that doesn't mind going Labour provided its moderate Labour and not Corbynite-type Labour. It's certainly not populated by bunch of dyed-in-the-wool intransigent Tories, so there's every chance Rees-Mogg might have lost if the constituency didn't like him.
Interesting, Rees-Mogg is an arch-Brexiteer but his constituency only very narrowly voted in favour of Brexit (51%), so perhaps they like him and not just the party. Although the Labour and Lib Dem opponents split the Remain vote 50/50, which certainly helped him.
doing a good job should be more important than how one appears, however people's tend not to be rational.
Catholics?
I doubt many people in North East Somerset considered this mans faith before voting for him.
About 115000 votes in total, from a UK voting population of about 47 million.
Sure, technically I suppose it is democracy, but it certainly doesn't feel like it.
There isn't a stable relationship between proportion of the vote won by a party and seats in parliament. Your point isn't really contradicting the parent.
The fact that prime ministers are answerable to parliament, and that parliament is sovereign, is IMHO the single best and most important feature of the British political system.
Contrast that with presidential systems, particularly that in the US in which the president fulfils the constitutional role of an elected George III circa 1790. Which for some reason Americans seem to think is somehow modern over 200 years later. If one of them goes off the rails you're stuck with them for years. Our leader of government serves at the discretion of our elected representatives and can be turfed out at any moment, which actually happens and isn't just a theoretical mechanism. An excellent arrangement.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_(Withdrawal)_...
Parliament can't directly negotiate treaties with foreign powers. It's just not possible, that's a function of the executive. Parliament can approve or disapprove of such treaties but can't determine what the executive wants to do. The same goes for the referendum and is why it was a stupid idea. No referendum can require parliament or the government to want to do something, or specify exactly and unambiguously how they should go about doing something they don't want to do.
With the benefit of hindsight, it all worked out well for Johnson: he cowed the party, could renegotiate without much fear of the ultras, and could choose the circumstance of the next election to his best advantage.
The methods he chose to achieve this, though, greatly weakened parliamentary sovereignty.
Well of course I will. The system won't have changed, will it? I think you're actually accusing me of complaining just because I don't like Bojo. That's a really underhanded thing to do, and if you're going to say that, just say it straight like an adult. The rest of your comments are thoughtful and considered and part of an adult conversation; this passive-aggressive childishness really works against that.
I am somewhat in the minority on this, though.
Personally I think the characteristics of the local MP you actually vote for is not taken into sufficient consideration by most voters. That's the person that actually represents you, and actually gets to help chose the actual prime minister. Who they are as a person and their values does actually matter very much, yet most people who actually vote can't even name their local MP.
And I suppose that the article is suggesting that the middle classes define themselves in relation to the upper class. And that British society would be better off without this dynamic.
So it seems that the article highlights the working/middle class divide. More so really than the issues caused specifically by the upper classes (though they are mentioned).
It’s not even that, because the author has confused middle and upper in British terms. This is a moan about the British middle class.
What the author describes (the genealogies, the oneupmanship, the keeping up with the Buckets, the airs and graces) is upper middle class behaviour, aspiring to be part of the aristocracy.
The truth of the matter is that none of them ever had a hope - the aristocracy is a closed circle, and you don't even get in by marriage. Your children do, but you, no.
As a result of the incredibly close nature of the aristocratic circles in the UK, practically everybody knows everybody, and any outsider or imposter is usually very swiftly seen for what they are. That said, the close nature also fosters a relaxed social approach in general - you'll never meet people who F and blind as much as the old families. Feet up on the table after the hunt, crack out the cigars, pass the facking port, I'm dying here. You're constantly being judged - but not how you'd think. Nobody cares if you know your silver service (although it's a shibboleth, to be sure), nobody cares if you're well spoken or who you know, or where you schooled - all they typically care about is that you're not an arsehole, and that you're not going to try to nick the silverware or trade off their name.
Most of the time, in the UK, if you encounter an aristocrat, they'll look like they just clambered out of a hedgerow (because they probably did), and will be pleasant, amiable, and engaged in what you have to say - because they have absolutely nothing to lose by engaging with you, and you are possibly going to be an entertaining story over supper later.
I've hung out with enough aristo friends' families and enough friends' upper middle class families to know which I prefer - the middle class families are suffocating affairs with dinner gongs and rules around shoes and no swearing in the house. The aristos are... relaxed.
So. If anything, the upper middle classes are the dangerous cult, trying to impersonate the faded glory of a generally toothless propertied and titled class, and generally getting it utterly wrong. The aspirational class is the one that now stands on heads.
Also, virtually literally every aristo I know votes Lib Dem or Green. They've hated the tories since Thatcher, and countryside issues are of prime importance to most of them.
But personally find the whole class set up pretty unfortunate really (and its impact largely underestimated).
The "middle class" is quite a recent invention; it arrived with the Industrial Revolution, and is largely Victorian in origin. The growth of commerce prompted a demand for large numbers of clerical workers: people who wore suits and ties to work, and lived in their own homes in the suburbs. These were not aristocrats moving down the scale; these were aspirational working-class folk, who wanted to separate themselves from their background.
Most of us are now pretty-much middle-class. Regional accents have softened; we're all familiar with middle-class manners and customs; farming and manufacturing nowadays employ very few workers. Most of us are more-or-less clerical workers now.
The "Bucket" behaviour is something I haven't observed for decades. Those "airs and graces" are indeed a middle-class phenomenon, not upper class. The real aristocracy eat beans-on-toast, swear like troopers, watch rubbish on TV, and are often quite uncouth. And they don't care what others think about their accent or manners.
To me it feels like class still has a significant effect. In particular that:
* Upper class connections can affect funding decisions.
* Presenting as middle class, affect hiring and career progression.
It’s not all about wealth either. Not having Received Pronunciation (I.e. a non southern accent ). The manner in which you speak, dress, behave are all class signals that are picked up on.
From a career perspective it is apparent that certain doors are closed (or at least a lot more difficult to open ) because of class. I’ve had recruiters blatantly tell me that I didn’t go to the ‘correct’ university (Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial) so there was not much point in applying as I wouldn’t get through an initial HR screening process.
Yes, it feels to me like it has more of an affect than many people realize. It's become more obvious to me after leaving the UK and seeing how other societies operate.
My background is middle-class:
- I went to public school, as did my father and mother
- My father was a regular soldier, and scion of a family with money from commerce
- My mother was raised in Hong Kong, and spoke with a very posh-sounding colonial accent; but she was a teacher's daughter. My father was also well-spoken.
- I ended up with a public school accent. Living in Liverpool, I was often mocked.
I fetched up in London, and began to affect a mockney accent. It wasn't even proper mockney - it was the accent spoken by London hippies and drop-outs. I made no effort to acquire that accent; it just moved in. I'm pretty sure that anyone who was interested could observe the public-school accent shining through.
I've now shed that mockney accent, I'm glad to say; it disappeared the same way it arrived - with no effort on my part.
Along with a public-school accent, you acquire manners and customs. The combination of a noticeable public-school accent with the manners and customs, is attractive to prospective employers. Especially if they happen to share your accent, manners and customs. And public-school-educated people tend to be over-represented among employers.
I'm not an academic; I have no idea how poshness or connections affects funding decisions. I have never gained any advantage from either family or school connections. I suppose I might have been able to, had I been so inclined.
A public school education definitely makes it easier to get into a decent university, and so get a reputable degree; there is constant wringing-of-hands in government circles about how to address that imbalance in intake (it seems to me to be as plain as the nose on my face: stop giving huge tax-breaks to public schools, and spend a lot more money on state education).
My second wife was a farmer's daughter from Leicestershire. She spoke with a mild accent, except when she was in Leicestershire; then her accent became quite broad. She always felt inferior because of her accent (she was bright and accomplished, and her manners and customs were middle-class).
I pointed out to her that her father had been a landowner, and her mother was from a fairly wealthy family; that my family were landless; and so if anything, she was posher than me (but with a regional accent). My remarks made no difference - TTBOMK she still feels bad about her regional accent.
It's not obvious to me that Hannah deliberately acquired a posh accent; it may well have 'osmosed' in, just because she was hanging out with posh people. My sister went to private secondary school, but in downtown Liverpool. She acquired a scouse accent.
Some working-class people are impressed by a posh accent; they think it marks you as being more intelligent than they are. People pay more attention to speakers with Received Pronunciation, and give greater respect to their views. This actually causes me to hold back on expressing opinions; I'm ashamed to take advantage of that kind of unearned respect.
BTW: I've never known anyone who spoke with such an outrageous accent as Jacob Rees-Mogg. It's obvious to me that he exaggerates it for effect. His father certainly didn't speak with such horribly-contorted vowels. That is: he's a fake, and he gets away with it; he's trading on a poshness that he never really had.
Its more flexible and evolving that any simple definition gives it credit. Looking at language games is a classic for me.
FOr want of a better description there is a posh way of talking that is derived from the upper classes of the UK, it eveolves and changes but a few things remain constant: its not any better or more accurate than any other dialect in teh UK. it looks down and ridicules every other dialect. it has derogitory terms for everyone all over the world apart from rich people who keep a house in south east england.
THis is so outragously successful that i think every english speaking person on earth has an inbult tendancy to buy into this at som elevel to some extent - no matter how damaging it is to you personally.
It involves a long running story of ensuring that everything that has every been said in that accent is "correct". the BBC is never wrong.. the government always knows what its doing etc.. the UK has long running history of doing terrible things (like every state does to some extent) but the UK never takes reponsibility.. there is a vage thing of looking back over say 150 years and saying that was wrong what they did, but what is never done is following the direct connections through to the poswer structures today. e.g. afaik oxford today has income every year of interest on investments / money that it got from people essentially abusing the colonies. sure they say, those people were bad, but they dont accept that their position of power now directly correlates to that.
When you look at the advantages given to someone who went to eton then oxford and compare them to someoen with no degree or from a crappy uni then if they are appearing in the same league at work teh oxford person shoul dbe seen as a clown - you had every advantage in the book and you are still just average? instead the assumption is that this person is some kind of leader to be listened to. their history is somehow taken as an advantage, when its clearly not.
SImilarly effecting organsiational change with just a few of these upper class clowns around becomes a nightmare.. they are functionally incompitent but are sure because of how they speak and where they were ediucated that their instincts must be somehow correct. nott o mention that they have so many connections they can either side step to another similar role or can make your life hell for exposibng their corruption or incompitence.
Personally anyone who i meet in a serious job ith an upper class accent has a lot to prove to me before i trust them even slightly, and to date i have only met a few worth listening to. and these have some obvious differences, e.g. they made some life choices significantly deviating from the classic good boy/girl story early in life.
Ive done no formal study but based on anecdata i would say that an idiot who went to a good uni with an upper class accent (or capacable of being perceived as that like Mogg) can expect significantly better salary. can make ludicrous selfish demands and it will be seen as them "working the system" and "being smart" rather than just being a selfhish shit bag. and can generally expect more promotion and higher profile oppourtunities.
None of this is the individuals fault and the solutions are complex.. but this is imho what its like.
For some time I've found it baffling that some people in Britain want to be consciously not like so, as to me it feels more disrespectful even to yourself than the others. (Okay, I'm making it more dramatic for the argument. I don't really care that much.) But then I had the theory that mine is the republican, egalitarian sensibility where cultural aspiration doesn't make you "posh" or feel like sucking up to your conquerors. Actually I've heard from people here that went to school with some of the remnants of old aristocracy and these seem to act pretty haughty and awful. The good thing is, we no longer have to really care. If I lived under British royalty, in a consciously class society where Norman aristocracy still holds 1/3 of land, it would be different.
My advice would be to maybe retry the Commonwealth, preferably with a land reform.
It's tough to attack them on their personalities when they have better ones than the majority of your own friends. Meeting them one is surprised by how not snooty and haughty they are. But hardly anyone actually meets them.
It's easy to attack on their personalities as most people will never meet and interact with them (or politicians either!).
Optics. it's easier to criticise an image of them than the reality of , for example: landowners, historical abuses, establishment inertia, oppression, invasion, colonisation, corruption, injustices etc.
I dug out pictures of her in front of her country estate with a cadre of Irish Blueshirts (the Irish Blackshirts). She had nothing in common with the fascists; she just enjoyed the strange reverence that the Irish suddenly gave her after independence. She was also friends with the Guiness family, who had their fair share of fascists too. I dated Nancy Mitford’s great-granddaughter for a while, and she gave me her Nazi memorabilia as a sick joke as my father is Jewish.
A memory of my great-grandmother is her describing my father as “a bit Spanish”. It is only today that i realised that was an Arctic’s anti-Semitic slur (since the Spanish became all to happy to accuse one another of being crypto Jews, and incidentally made ‘Spanish’ synonymous with Jewish).
If you respond with "I don't have a job" or "I just work at Walmart", then well, yeah, you've just made the conversation harder to keep going.
I doubt there are many people in the UK from the historically exploited classes who are blind to the history, even those who retain respect for the titles and funny accents.
Oh come on. You certainly can’t divine that from the article, and wanting to “fit in” is a perfectly reasonable, if very sad, explanation for her actions.
Robert Clive is a classic example, whose family is still auctioning off the loot he carried back home.
I'm not surprised that the article fails to mention this - it's taught in the West that colonialism in India was benign, that we welcomed it, that we need 'more colonialism'. Plenty of can-confirm-iam-indian folk will even attest to this (as has been the case in the 1000 y history of India's colonization).
Little wonder hate and discrimination against Hindus is so normalized and even seen as the 'righteous' thing to do.
It was certainly not taught/presented this way when I went to school, in the 1990s.
This article I thought was going to be about sacrificial rituals, Bilderberg meetings, freemasonry or drinking blood, however it fails to substantiate anything more than some anecdotal stories, snobbery and mythisms about the upper class which are well known in Britain.
The upper classes in the UK are super-rich (either in land or in paper assets), but they will always pale in comparison to the multinational companies that have grown in the modern world, be it in Finance, Media etc. These companies and organisations have the direct lines and ties with the UK government, not ol' Reginald Whitcomb (made-up stereotypical name) who has 20,000 acres in Hereford and a cattle ranch in Australia.
Sure there is the nepotism/cronyism angle but that occurs in all levels of society and is not inherently a rich/poor characteristic.
The fact that the author's mother was able to ingratiate herself with the upper classes deflates the article's argument; that social classes are immutable in Britain and the institutional/familial argument is weak too. There are many rags to riches, and vice versa stories in British society and the world as a whole.
Everyone puts on a "good" front when in the company of people who are socially/financially/intellectually better off to them. I do it myself in the tech scene.
tl;dr sure 100 years ago the upper classes had more clout, nowadays they are just a static part of British society with a small bit of power in relation to other global forces and companies.