There’s a class war going on. So the Tories tell us. They treat it with distaste. But they rather seem to revel in doing so.
It’s all about one man, David Cameron. So the Tories tell us. It’s all about the disgraceful proposal from Labour that we should vote against Dave simply because he went to Eton.
Pause for breath.
Labour, let’s face it, make a pretty implausible bunch of class warriors these days. As Blair put it, they are all middle class now. Recently, the Tory press pilloried Harriet Harman as a class warrior when she dared to point out that Labour had failed to stem the rise in social inequality. Hardly a red revolution!
So who is it who really relishes the “class war” idea? Well, it’s those Tories, isn’t it? And why should they enjoy it so much? Because it’s a classic piece of political spin. The principle is that you don’t wait for your enemies to campaign on your weakest territory. You do that yourself, and seize the chance to choose the most favourable battlefield. You can then reshape the debate the way you want it – and hide your weaknesses behind a smokescreen of distortion and irrelevance.
So the Tories would prefer to hide the truth, which is that there is now only one class war party in Britain, and it’s theirs. They choose to keep quiet about the reality, which is that their party is owned by the filthy rich and exists for the primary purpose of making them richer. They don’t want to talk about the fact that over half the parliamentary Tories are ex-public school. They like to show Dave driving old fogies out of his parliamentary party – but hide it when he drives young fogies back in.
The first stage of their strategy is to take control of the language. Put words in your enemies’ mouths that sound old-fashioned (“humanitarian”), dogmatic (“egalitarian”), frightening (“death tax”), or best of all, mean-spirited and vindictive (“class war”). Don’t let them be associated with powerful words like fairness, justice, or freedom.
To present “class war” as a personal attack on Cameron is their masterstroke. It would, of course, be quite indefensible to suggest that one man should be debarred from leading a major party just because of his upper class origins. Did anyone actually say that? Well, no, but that doesn’t stop Tory spinmeisters from implying that they did. It’s a plausible untruth. Just wait for Labour to attack Dave, and then misrepresent the attack. Remark that Labour have only chosen to fight a class war (false) because they are in such a mess themselves. The “because” clause is true, of course, so the overall lie has the ring of truth.
And where are the Lib Dems in this “class war”? Shoulder to shoulder with the Tories, I fear. It happens all too often these days. The excuse, I suppose, is that for decades, we have ridiculed our opponents as clinging to an outdated class-based political system. So when the Tories talk disapprovingly of class war, it is the knee-jerk reaction of a moment to come out in agreement. But it is a bad mistake.
Labour are a busted flush. The public mood is that it is time for a change and that if we replace Gordon with Dave, then to coin a sad phrase, “things can only get better”. It is our job to disabuse the electorate of that notion. We won’t do it if we help the Tories with their deceitful “class war” language.
Remarkably, it is not political opponents, but journalists like Jonathan Freedland, who are most effectively challenging the Tories. As Freedland says, “If we’re not careful…. we will wonder why (Cameron) was not submitted to serious scrutiny before he was handed the keys to No 10. That job belongs, among others, to the press. It’s about time we started doing it.”
Well, Jonathan, you must wonder why on earth Labour and the Lib Dems have not beaten you to it. In Labour’s case, that can be put down to loss of morale. So why aren’t we taking the lead? We’re not going soft on the Tories, are we?
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47 Comments
isn’t it a fairly basic liberal principle that in a liberal world people’s class shouldn’t matter? That decades-long stance which you are pleased to call an “excuse” – what can that possible signify if not a principle? Why should we abandon our principles in order to reposition ourselves in relation to the Tories?
Mind you, I don’t think we’re tackling the Tories nearly as effectively as we could be. I just don’t think it’s got anything to do with class war or absence thereof.
By the way, has the party actually officially “come out in agreement” or mentioned any “shoulder-to-shoulder”ing? Or are those just turns of phrase?
This article makes absolutely no sense. It pretty much says ‘the Tories are waging an effective and clever campaign with their use of class.’ Then he says that we should attack them on class. Given that it makes Labour look stupid and asinine, why does the writer believe that we should engage in it, other than a rather bizarre desire to be ‘seen’ as anti-Tory? I might add that having a public-school-then-Oxbridge leader would make us look even sillier than Labour.
Of course, there is a reasonable way to handle the issue of class and politics (which I think is one that can’t be ignored). That is, to say that we have nothing against any individual from a privileged background, but to point out the disproportionate strength of certain groups in politics, which is the result of our disappointing lack of social mobility. But I don’t think that’s what Mr. Allen has in mind.
We should not forget that the last Old Etonian to lead the Conservative Party to victory was Harold MacMillan in 1959. Heath, Thatcher, Major and Hague were all grammar school. (Duncan Smith attended a public school so minor that no-one can remember what it is.) Having an Old Etonian as leader does have the effect of highlighting the Conservative Party’s true purpose, and I am sure that it will cost them votes.
The difference between Westminster (attended by Messrs Clegg and Huhne) and Eton is that it is possible to get one’s children into the former simply by having enough money. To get one’s son into Eton, by contrast, it is necessary to be a member of the ruling elite (preferably with a title).
There is certainly nastiness and vindictiveness in the class debate, but it doesn’t just come from uppity plebs refusing to fall at the knees of their betters. It comes from vicious snobs like Nicholas Winterton who consider those who travel second-class a “different type of person”. Don’t be fooled. Cameron and his kind regard the rest of us as scum.
What Alix said. We should not be letting the Tories frame the argument.
Alix
isn’t it a fairly basic liberal principle that in a liberal world people’s class shouldn’t matter?
Yes, but it does, doesn’t it?
So what you seem to be saying is “something exists that we don’t like, so we’ll pretend it doesn’t exist and we will do absolutely nothing to solve the problem of its existence”.
Sheesh it’s just about the biggest problem this country faces – we were evening out wealth and opportunities, but since the days of Thatcher all that’s reversed and we are now just about the most unequal country in western Europe. And there are people in this party who obviously don’t give a damn about that.
I don’t want to be in a party like that. Who’s going to leave it, Alix and Jenny, you or me? I mean that seriously, I just could not work alongside people who have your attitude, and if working for the Liberal Democrats means I might be pushing people forward who don’t care or even acknowledge just how class holds back and damages the liberty of so many people in his country, I would rather not work for it.
Class is not the same as wealth/
Saying that we ought to strive towards it not mattering is entirely the opposite of saying we should ignore it.
Still, you know, nice straw men there.
Jennie
Class is not the same as wealth/
Saying that we ought to strive towards it not mattering is entirely the opposite of saying we should ignore it.
And “ignore it” is precisely what Alix is saying and you agree with her so strongly that you were moved to post and say you did.
David Allen is quite right – the extent to which the Tory Party is now the part of tiny elite – let’s call it by its proper name – the upper class – is astonishing. The extent to which these people dominate our society, to which only their interests are counted as really mattering, to which is their sons and daughters who are going into the jobs that run us, whether big business or politics, to which its their sons and daughters who form the commentariat, is frightening. Cameron is even saying it’s “modernising” to stop local Tory associations choosing one of their own to be MP (I mean PPC, but it’s in safe seats so you might as well say MP) and instead putting in one of his upper class cronies. And the commentariat agree with him – this is what they mean by “modernising” – giving more power to the likes of themselves, squeezing out all the ways that ordinary people used to get involved in politics.
But, from how you and Alix reacted to David pointing this out, it’s clear you want this problem to be ignored.
Both Alix and my reaction was to point out that David lambasts the Labour party or being stupid for doing something which he then suggests we do. Your continuing in a wilful misreading of that is not helping anybody.
Of course lack of social mobility matters, and of course the extent to which the wealthy have massive advantages matters. But acknowledging that does not mean we have to let the Tories set the agenda on what we should talk about.
Matthew, you know I don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. I talked about class on my blog recently, and you commented. My argument was that if we’re going to use these terms at all, we should tie them directly to wealth, otherwise they make no sense. You agreed, you said that in any sane society, David Cameron would be called upper-class and not middle-class. And we all blamed the Normans.
Still, in the real world, Cameron gets called middle class. That encapsulates perfectly why the language of class is completely useless as a signifier. The roots of wealth inequality do matter and for exactly the reasons you propose, but they’re not the same thing. I’d much rather talk about wealth and how economically unproductive it is and how to make it pay, and in the process take some of the burden off economically productive activity, than get lost in some dog-whistle argument about “class” where the terms mean completely different things to different people.
Class is based, amongst other things, not on wealth, but on inherited wealth.
There is a class-based middle/upper class taboo/blind spot on discussing the judicious positive redistribution of gifted and inherited wealth.
In a capitalist democracy it ought to be a human right to have not only Unversal Suffrage – votes for all (that count!) – but also Universal Inheritance – inheritance for all at 25, financed by flat 10% taxation on all GIVING and bequeathing of capital in tandem with and deductible from progressive taxation, starting at 10%, on cumulative lifetime RECEIVING of unearned capital..
Since many more people would benefit from that than would lose, it ought to be a vote winner if the middle/upper class-based media and politicians allowed it to be explained to those who would benefit. Those who would benefit are young adults throughout the country and their parents and grandparents who would be glad to see their children and grandchildren given a helping hand that they could not afford to provide themselves.
It seems that the Green Party these days is better than the Liberal Democrats at taking the inequality of ownership of capital seriously. The absorbtion of the SDP and its focus upon equality has somehow led to the Liberal Democrats being less concerned about inequality of ownership of capital – a crucial factor in class difference – than the LIberal Party, whose policy of British Universal Inheritance tackles it directly.
Liberals tend to suffer from fighting the Conservatives in the South and Labour in the North, so they never know where they stand on have/have-not issues, like what to do about inequality of wealth. So they have to find an issue that unites them. It used to be regionalisation. Nowadays it is the EU and the Euro, it seems.
If the Liberal Democrats followed the example of the Liberal Party on Universal Inheritance, they would have a clear policy on Opportunity for All and the reduction of inequality of wealth that would set them apart from both main parties. Labour are not all that keen on every one owning capital, and Conservatives are not all that keen on giving it to them.
Cameron is not “upper-class” in the strict sense of the word, because he is not part of a titled or non-titled landowning family. Cameron (like Harold MacMillan) is descended (on his father’s side) from impoverished Highland crofters who worked a few acres of stony soil and lived in windowless blackhouses with no running water. Cameron’s paternal ancestors made their money in commerce, not by coming from France and stealing the land from the people. The Camerons have, however, worked their way up into the upper echelons of society, and Cameron himself has married into a landowning family in order to cement his status.
Cameron does not fit the standard stereotype of an upper-class man. He wears smart, pristine clothing, not the creased collars and threadbare, fag-ash spattered suits characteristic of genuine nobs (eg, Nicholas Ridley). And look at his manicured appearance – the meticulously coiffed hair and the waxed chest. Not your classic aristocrat, who is more likely to have visible nose-hair and bad breath.
That is not to say that Cameron is anything other than a very dangerous man. He is. And we should beware of him.
“We should not be letting the Tories frame the argument.”
Precisely my point. The Tories would like to invent “class war” as a Labour party enterprise. In truth, they are the class war party, as we shall all find out to our cost if they win.
“David lambasts the Labour party or being stupid for doing something which he then suggests we do. Your continuing in a wilful misreading of that is not helping anybody.”
Oh no he doesn’t! It’s a bit rich to come out with a distortion like that, and then accuse someone else of “wilful misreading”!
I don’t think that we should be anywhere in this “class war”, for two reasons:
1) I don’t like the notion of a war within society to begin with. There are parties that advocate that kind of thing, and people who want a war know where they can go for it. I’d assume that the Lib Dems aren’t likely to be the party of choice for the warrior hordes.
2) Even if I take “class war” as a very loose metaphor, I don’t see anything in how it is used to suggest that it’s a useful concept for us. Let Labour and the Tories trade meaningless insults if they want. To suggest that there’s a class war and that we must choose a side – Labour or Tory! – is absurd and counter-productive, I’d have thought. Yes, Cameron needs to be questioned. The lack of social diversity at the core of Tory High Command is a legitimate topic for scrutiny. The bias in Tory policy towards protecting the interests of the already-wealthy over the trying-to-become-wealthy, the trying-to-live-comfortably and the trying-to-keep-a-roof-over-their-heads is of course something that we need to talk about, and the fact that the Tories don’t really understand the lives of ordinary people is very much part of their problem. But if we fall in to the “class war” narrative, we simply end up fighting in the same trenches that “progressives” have spend the last 50 years being, metaphorically speaking, blown to bits in.
The Tories are talking disapprovingly of “class war” – and benefiting from doing so – because every ham-fisted Labour attack on them ends up coming across as a belated effort to stir some mythical tribal instinct in the “Labour heartlands” rather than a genuine attempt to point out Tory weaknesses or engage with the real problems of the country. For goodness’ sake, let’s leave them to get on with it rather than join in. Don’t we have better things to say and do?
Matthew, surely you *must* see that there is a difference between saying “framing the election as a class war is a sure way to get public sympathy on the side of the odious Cameron” and “Sod the poor, let’s bring Maggie back?”
Jennie
Both Alix and my reaction was to point out that David lambasts the Labour party or being stupid for doing something which he then suggests we do. Your continuing in a wilful misreading of that is not helping anybody.
Well, David seems to think what I understand him to say is closer to what he understands he’s saying that what you understand him as saying.
David is pointing is that one way the Tories defend policies designed to defend the tiny rich elite who fund them and who provide most of their top people is to throw back the term “it’s class warfare” if you criticise them for that.
It’s a classic technique – look at how their propaganda newssheets do it, use the term “attack on middle England” for policies that actually benefit all but the top 10% or sometimes the top 1% of society. David is saying we shouldn’t let them get away with it, and I think he is right. Our country has become very much less equal in wealth and opportunity since 1979 – yet people like you, Jennie, and Alix, are clearly saying we should not talk about that because that’s “class warfare” and we don’t agree with that sort of thing.
Saying someone like Cameron is not “upper class” is part of that. What a very clever technique this is, make out someone from the top 1% of wealth and privilge in society is just “middle class”, so the woman who works behind the counter in a high street bank branch thinks “he’s just like me” and lets him and his type get away with ripping off her and her type.
The term “upper class” to mean people with aristocratic titles may have made sense back in the 19th century when that’s where the wealth still was. In today’s economic system, it quite obviously makes sense to use it to mean the City financiers and that sort. If a milionaire who went to the country’s most exclusive private school is not “upper class” thenm the term “upper class” is a ridiculously misleading one.
To me, what you and Alix are saying is like saying we should not attack the BNP for being racist because that’s “race warfare”.
Public School / Oxbridge man joins Tories: dog bites man
Public School / Oxbridge man joins Lib Dems: man bites dog
That, really, is the essence of this. Remember – someone who many in the party regard as its finest post war leader, Jo Grimond, was educated at Eton and Balliol.
Attacking Cameron for his background is fruitless. Attacking for seeking to entrench the priveleged position he was born into is not.
One of the problems that I have with class is that I cannot work out what class I am.
My parents grew up in rented rooms in inner London. Both left school (and remained) without qualifications: my mother at 14, my father at 12 (disrupted by WWII). They started off married life in a couple of rented rooms, sharing a bathroom.
My Dad worked hard and bought a semi. I went to grammar school and became the first (and until recently only) member of my family to get a degree. I became a professional and married another professional.
What class am I and what class is my daughter? And does it matter?
I think the problem here is that the original article is actually not very clear as to what we should actually *do* as a party. Of course I want the party to call out any claims by Cameron that anyone who opposes his version of politics is a class warrior. But there are two problems.
Firstly, most Tories are not part of this elite that everyone keeps talking about – even in the Shadow Cabinet, Cameron and Chums are outnumbered by people from unexceptional (although not necessarily ‘normal’) backgrounds. As such, Matthew Huntbach’s apparaisal, although correct in many ways, is something of a simplification. There are many strands in the Tory Party, from the last fragments of landed privilege to the middle-class professional to the grammar-school-boy-made-good, and if anything Cameron’s posho wing is less rabidly right wing than most of the rest of the party. The public will see it as a distortion to say ‘the Cameroons are upper class and as such are in the claws of the money power’ when they see someone like William Hague backing the same policies all the more ferociously.
Secondly, how exactly you would wage such a campaign? I hope that David Allen wasn’t saying that we should copy what Labour did at Crewe and Nantwich, because that was absolutely disastrous. Labour looked extremely petty, as if they had nothing to say (which they didn’t). As I’ve already said, Nick Clegg went to Westminster and Cambridge – I don’t say that as if it’s a bad thing, but he’ll look extremely silly calling Cameron a toff, won’t he? Point to Tory policies and show how unfair they are by all means – and the attack on the Tory IHT policy has shown this approach to be quite fruitful – but bashing the Tories as a money-driven elite will just backfire.
Class does matter, but the Liberal Party always used to (forgive me if I’m wrong) say that they had solutions for the nation that stood outside the clash of capital and labour. One can believe in the importance of social divisions (as I do) and the need to address it in politics without attacks on an ‘upper class’ which at best leaves a significant slice of the electorate cold and at the worst seems like ridiculous posturing.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not advocating we fight a class war. I do not want to call Cameron a toff. I merely write to point out that it is the Tories who are using class war rhetoric, and that it is humbug. I write to argue that the Tory party exists first and foremost to help rich people get richer, and that we should not be letting them get away with it. Am I still too confusing for so many of you?
Alix asks me to justify my comment that we all too often stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the Tories. The answer comes from her own post and from all the other posts on this thread which echo the Tories in deprecating “class war”. To agree with the Tories on this is rather like agreeing with the BNP that Britain has an overpopulation problem. That is to say, it is supporting a viewpoint that might seem superficially rational, but actually comes associated with a nasty little hidden agenda, which it would be naive (or worse) to overlook.
“Our country has become very much less equal in wealth and opportunity since 1979 – yet people like you, Jennie, and Alix, are clearly saying we should not talk about that because that’s “class warfare” and we don’t agree with that sort of thing.”
But, Matthew, you know I want to talk about equality of opportunity and wealth because I’ve just talked about it in my previous comment. And my previous comment also referred to a blog post I wrote about this subject, which you read and engaged with. You know that the statement I’ve just quoted from you above isn’t true.
I don’t get this. I don’t get why you’re pretending I haven’t said the things you know I’ve said, that you can see I’ve said. Why are you doing it?
David, my question was more about the party’s official position. Thank you for clarifying that those particular phrases do not, so far as we can tell, reflect any deliberate official positioning by the party.
I would be interested to know what you make of Rob Knight’s points.
Right, having made my basic point as simply as possible, let me now have a go at something less simple. I do seem to have touched on a rather raw nerve here, don’t I? This party does not much like talking about class, these days. Perhaps we should ask ourselves why.
Back in Jo Grimond’s time, we made great play of being the “classless” party. At best, we had a very valid campaign against the baleful effects of social segregation, injustice, and industrial strife. At worst, we looked a little bloodless, out of touch with the real world, and crucially unwilling to recognise that if you want justice, you sometimes have to fight for it. As politics became increasingly a middle-class pastime, we gradually phased out referring to ourselves as “classless”. However, the idea of classlessness did not sit too badly with our position at the political centre. In those days, our policies to reduce poverty and inequality were of course far to the “right” of the Old Labour Party, which, in theory at any rate, aspired to absolute equality.
Things are different now. Faced with (for example) Lord Mandelson and his “intensely relaxed” attitude to wealth and riches, we have to accept that our position on the political spectrum has shifted. Granted, it was Labour who decided to move the chairs around, not ourselves. That does not alter the fact that the chairs have moved. There have been two consequences. First, with the two major parties now pulling in the same direction, social inequality has increased and is continuing to increase, while millionaires become ever more dominant in controlling public life. Secondly, our party has become the best hope for those who want to see this reversed (unless we would like to dip out and let the Greens do it?). So how are we tackling this?
Bloodlessly, I fear. On the one hand, we do have a redistributive policy – but we advertise it simply as a tax cut, almost as if we are too afraid of what people might think of us if we openly admitted we actually believe that poverty is a bad thing. On the one hand, we do occasionally have a bad word to say for the Fred Goodwins of this world – but we sound a lot milder than the average man in the street, and we generally pass up the opportunity to make (perfectly reasonable) political capital by doing something really effective to get rid of the “fat cats”.
“In a liberal world, people’s class shouldn’t matter.”
Well, in the real world, class does matter. I hope we will not do our best to prove that the liberal world does not exist!
Working to diminish the harmful effects of class, social segregation and inequality, absolutely fine. Pretending that class can be ignored, not fine!
Matthew wrote:
“The term “upper class” to mean people with aristocratic titles may have made sense back in the 19th century when that’s where the wealth still was.”
Wrong. In 2010, big landowners own more than a third of Britain’s farmland and suck up most of the agricultural subsidy (yes, they are still living off the people, something they have always done). Many of these landowners (and most of the largest) have aristocratic titles, and many are linked through marriage. A surprisingly large number of those intelligent and energetic enough to follow careers work in banking (check Burke’s Peerage if you don’t believe me). Why has Britain never had land reform? Why do the Police refuse to enforce the ban on hunting with hounds? Why are politicians terrified of theCountryside Alliance? And you say these people have lost their influence?
I certainly don’t hold that Cameron is not upper-class because I am a secret Tory propagandist, I do so because I believe we need to understand the power structures in this country correctly if we are serious about tackling inequalities in power and wealth. Lumping together everyone who is rich and calling them “upper-class” won’t do.
Cameron belongs to the next rung down from the aristocracy. He isn’t upper-class, he is upper middle-class. He is a scion of an old commercial family that has worked its way up into the upper echelons of society. But he isn’t part of the paramount caste, though it children might get there by virtue of their mother, who actually is upper-class.
We can rightly call Baby Jams Goldsmith “upper-class”, not becuase he went to Eton or because his father was a multi-millionaire, but because his mother is a niece of the Duke of Norfolk. He is a Fitzalan-Howard, one of the most powerful families in Britain.
On Rob Knight’s points: Well, most of them I entirely agree with. Read my first paragraph from my 11.44 post and you’ll see that. The phrase “class war” needs to be hung around the necks of its originators in the Tory Party, not around ours!
I would only cavil a little at Rob’s comment that “every ham-fisted Labour attack on (the Tories) ends up coming across as a belated effort to stir some mythical tribal instinct in the “Labour heartlands” rather than a genuine attempt to point out Tory weaknesses or engage with the real problems of the country.” Well, every Labour attack gets painted that way by the Tory press. There is sometimes truth in the charge, sometimes not. We should not give succour to the Tories when they try to dodge criticism with comments about tribal instincts and the like. It’s demonisation politics, the Right are very good at it, and they will use it against us if we’re not careful!
David, I think the problem here is the conflation of two partly-separate things – inequality of wealth, and ‘class’.
Now, I accept that these two are linked in many ways. David Cameron has never in his life had to say the phrase “I can’t come out tonight, I’m skint until my Giro arrives”. He quite possibly doesn’t know a single person who has ever lived on a council estate. This is a real and serious point – there are aspects of the lives of millions of people in this country of which our prospective future leader is completely ignorant.
However, that point, while true, is simply not an effective point to bring up in campaigning – it just looks like you’re ‘having a go at him just because he’s a bit posh’ – or can be made to look that way by the Conservatives.
Inequality of *wealth*, on the other hand, *is* something it’s effective to bring up. If you say to people “It’s wrong for bankers to have bonuses of millions while other people are losing their homes” or whatever, then pretty much *everyone* responds to that.
Attacking the Tories on the basis of *class* looks like bullying. Attacking them for their *wealth* (or for the fact that their policies will benefit only the enormously wealthy) looks far more reasonable.
” First, with the two major parties now pulling in the same direction, social inequality has increased …”
With the three major parties now all pulling in the same direction …
No – with the four …
No – amongst the parties …
Amongst the parties are such diverse elements as …
“This party does not much like talking about class, these days. Perhaps we should ask ourselves why.”
It’s because you see the language of class as synonymous with the language of wealth. I don’t. That’s about the size of it, as far as I can see. The language of class, to me and I suspect others, suggest the kind of automatic tribalism and judgement of individuals on the basis of their background alone which I am glad the liberals have always kept out of. Whether we like those associations or not, whether they’re rational or not, they exist.
But also, my objections are practical. Everything useful that the language of class has to say about wealth accumulation and opportunity can be said simply in terms of wealth and opportunity – and often significantly better, as Matthew’s example of David Cameron makes clear. What use is a set of political labels that dub a man of Cameron’s wealth as “middle class”? I mean, that same set of labels allows Cameron to say that his millionaires’ tax cut is for the “middle class”.* Is it any wonder I don’t want to see us adopting and giving credence to that language?
* This point is made by Matthew above, and seeing as he is repeating a point I made in the blog post I wrote, I am all the more surprised at his insistence that I seek to ignore the issue.
“Read my first paragraph from my 11.44 post and you’ll see that. The phrase “class war” needs to be hung around the necks of its originators in the Tory Party, not around ours!”
Ok, good, because I agree with every word of the first para in your 11.44 post. What I don’t see is how that leads to this:
“The answer comes from her own post and from all the other posts on this thread which echo the Tories in deprecating “class war”. To agree with the Tories on this is rather like agreeing with the BNP that Britain has an overpopulation problem. That is to say, it is supporting a viewpoint that might seem superficially rational, but actually comes associated with a nasty little hidden agenda, which it would be naive (or worse) to overlook.”
Y’see, from this it sounds like you’re suggesting that whatever the Tories say, we should disagree with them just to make it clear that we’re not “shoulder to shoulder” with them, no matter how irrational this may cause us to be. What would they have to say before you’d be prepared to hear a Liberal Democrat say the same thing without taking it as “agreement with the Tories”? Sky is blue and grass is green?
“Sesenco”
Good read your common sense. Class is related to the inheritance, rather than the creation, of wealth
Perhaps Gordon Brown has something up his sleeve with “A future fair for all”, having messed up on “Opportunity for All” in the past! I certainly hope so. “Stand up for the many not the few” would be a good description of British Universal Inheritance.
If LibDems are serious about tackling inequalities of wealth, whether previously inherited or newly created in one generation, handed down to the next generation, why are they not thinking of a positive redistribution of inheritance in each new generation?
Because of the middle/upper class academic, media and political taboo/blind spot on discussing the redistribution of inherited wealth?
“If LibDems are serious about tackling inequalities of wealth, whether previously inherited or newly created in one generation, handed down to the next generation, why are they not thinking of a positive redistribution of inheritance in each new generation?”
Couldn’t agree more. Hence the LVT obsession in these parts.
Sesenco
Cameron belongs to the next rung down from the aristocracy. He isn’t upper-class, he is upper middle-class. He is a scion of an old commercial family that has worked its way up into the upper echelons of society. But he isn’t part of the paramount caste, though it children might get there by virtue of their mother, who actually is upper-class.
This is extremely silly. Someone who is in the top 1% in wealth and influence is just NOT in the middle. He is most definitely upper. While, yes, I am aware of such fine gradations at the top, to the point of knowing that the Queen isn’t QUITE in the top-most bracket, I think this restriction of “upper” is a way of disguising where the significant boundary lies. The Tory trick is to use “middle” when it suits them to mean right at the top but confuse those who really are in the midle into thiking it means them.
“Alix”
I’m glad you agree but can’t see what LVT – with the advantages that I understand – has got to do with a positive redistribuion of inherited wealth in each new generation.
I’m tallking about every British-born UK citizen receiving receiving a basic minimum British Universal Inheritance of £10,000 (too small, I know) on their 25th birthday, financed by taxes on giving and receiving capital gifts and inheritance. Popular capitalism instead of unfettered dynastic capitalism.
Dane Clouston
Liberals tend to suffer from fighting the Conservatives in the South and Labour in the North, so they never know where they stand on have/have-not issues, like what to do about inequality of wealth.
This is sloppy talk of the sort we often get from ignorant members of the commentariat. These people are too thick to understand our electoral system, so they think that just because the Tories win 100% of the votes in some counties, everyone who lives in that county is a Tory and thinks like a Tory.
There are a lot of very poor people in the south, people who have no voice. We can be the ones who give them that voice. That was what drew me into the party as someone who grew up on a Sussex council estate. I can ASSURE anyone who thinks otherwise that just because it was a Tory seat didn’t mean the way to win my vote was to adopt Tory policies.
Matthew:
(1) Does the Queen seek out the company of bankers and industrialists, or people whose ancestors were feudal barons?
(2) Do bankers and industrialists insist that their children marry the children of other bankers and industrialists?
(3) Do bankers and industrialists claim that their status is a birthright?
(4) Do bankers and industrialists claim that they are genetically distinct from the rest of the community?
My point being that “upper” and “upper-middle” are actually quite different, and we shouldn’t confuse the two. Are you saying that not classifying upper-middle as upper lets the upper-middle off the hook, so we should pretend that they are upper?
Andrew Hickey, Alix,
You argue that we should be talking about wealth rather than class. Well, when we’re on the offensive, when we’re defining our own policies, I couldn’t agree more. We have no business going after people with plummy accents. We have every reason to look hard at people with high personal wealth, and ask whether they should pay a fairer share of the tax burden, and (e.g. Murdoch, Ashcroft) should lose some of the excessive personal power that Labour and the Tories fall over each other to grant to them.
But we aren’t always, indeed we aren’t often, defining the terms of debate. We didn’t talk about class war, the Tories did. We could only respond. Many of us did respond. And far too many of us did so in a way that supported – whether by design or just by accident – a dishonest and duplicitous campaign by the Tories to smear their opponents and hide their own determination to fight for the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
Alix,
“it sounds like you’re suggesting that whatever the Tories say, we should disagree with them”
Please will you stop rewriting my words, and other people’s words, by spinning them so that they appear to say something they didn’t quite say when they were said by their actual author. If you want to express an opinion, call it your own, please!
Sesenco
Your claim is that there is some small group of people who are rather inbred, have some peculiar habits, and still exert some power in our society, derved from their descent from the old titled land-owners. Yes.
However, your claim that these are the “upper class” and everyone else is “middle class” is ridiculous. Are people who run the big banks, the big industries, who have bonuses that would enable them to buy a mansion every year of their lives, who run our newspapers and our television, just “middle”, so not really much different from me in their power and wealth? Are their powers insignificant in our lives compared to those of Lord so-and-so?
My point is that we should use terms which more correctly reflect life as it is now. Life as it is now has people who aren’t old-fashioned aristocrats but have the sort of power and influence that up till the 19th century only the aristocrats had. Someone who has a bonus that would enable them to buy a mansion every year, or the power to throw hundreds of people out of work, most definitely IS way at the top of society and so should be termed “upper class”. So the term should be extended to cover them, rather than used in the way you suggest which no longer makes sense in terms of what “upper” and “midfdle” mean as general English language terms.
I would suggest “upper middle” should be restricted to people whose earning are enough to pay a mortgage for a big house, who maybe run a branch office of some corporation, second rank civil servants, the middle ranks of the legal profession and so on. People who have some influence over a largish number of their fellow human beings, but whose lifestyle still has some approximation to those who are in the “middle”.
Alix
Y’see, from this it sounds like you’re suggesting that whatever the Tories say, we should disagree with them just to make it clear that we’re not “shoulder to shoulder” with them, no matter how irrational this may cause us to be. What would they have to say before you’d be prepared to hear a Liberal Democrat say the same thing without taking it as “agreement with the Tories”?
I see neither David nor myself saying anything like that. David seems to be saying something perfectly coherent and it is not that. I no longer see you making any clear point at all.
I see what I am saying here as much the same sort of thing I said in your blog, which you seemed to agree with. In fact I thought maybe you were some different Alix until you mentioned it yourself, as you seemed to be saying something completey different here to what you said there. In fact David seems to be saying something that isn’t that far removed from what you were saying in your blog that I commented in response to.
Matthew Huntbach,
You picked up my comment: “Liberals tend to suffer from fighting the Conservatives in the South and Labour in the North, so they never know where they stand on have / have-not issues”
If you had said that this is a generalisation to which there are exceptions, I would of course have agreed with you. But what you did say was “This is sloppy talk we often get from ignorant members of the commentariat”. Really? You seem to imply that I am such an “ignorant member of the commentariat”. So far as I am concerned it is a generalisation which grew in my mind as I attended Liberal Party Assemblies over many years.
Left wing policies were more likely to be adopted at Blackpool Assemblies; right wing policies were more likely to be adopted at Brighton Assemblies.
You went on to say “These people are too thick to understand our electoral system, so they think that just because the Tories win 100% of the votes in some counties (why counties?), everyone who lives in that county is a Tory and thinks like a Tory”. What an extraordinary remark! Rather condescending and insulting and would-be superior remark about people who make comments with which you do not agree! Truly a strange remark! An insult instead of argument, it seems to me.
You say “There are a lot of poor people in the south, people who have no voice” Indeed there are! Did I say that there were not?
You say “We can be the ones who give them that voice”. Yes, you could, but not while you are an EU-fanatic party. People wanted a referendum on Lisbon. You denied it to them.
You say “I can ASSURE anyone who thinks otherwise that just because it was a Tory seat didn’t mean the way to win my vote was to adopt Tory policies”. I do not think otherwise.
Did you know, as you handed out your strange comments, that I stood for Parliament three times in the 1970s in the formerly safe Conservative seat of Newbury on a platform of “A far fairer country WITHOUT nationalisation”. Why should you?
I called for greater equality of opportunity in education, health and the inheritance or wealth (as distinct from Conservative policies), and the privatisation of all those nationalised activities which either could not or ought not to be rationed by price (as distinct from Labour policies).
It was a powerful distinctive message at the time. I have just reminded myself from Wikipedia that the votes in the three General Elections in which I stood, were:
June 1970, Con 30,380, Lab 18,647, Lib 13,279 (21.3% up 4.6%)
Feb 1974, Con 24,620, Lab 10,935, Lib 23,419 (40.3% up 19% )
Oct 1974 Con 23,499, Lab 9,390, Lib 22,477 (40.6% up 0.3%).
The equivalent message today would be “A far fairer country (distinct from Conservative policies) WITHOUT the EU/WITH a promised Lisbon referendum” (distinct from Labour broken promises). The fact that the EU-fanatic LibDems are a million miles from that means that they will fade away.
If we vote LibDem and there is a hung parliament we will get a Labour/LibDem government.
So we might as well vote Labour and get a proper Labour government with Gordon Brown, who will be a lot more concerned with fairness at this difficult time than the LibDems.
We now no longer need the LIbDems to give us the electoral reform that we need to enable the EU sceptic parties to increase their representation at the General Election after next.
In fact all that the LibDems would do would be to delay electoral reform by pushing for the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member consituencies – which MPs will resist – (STVM / “AV”) instead of Gordon Brown’s Single Transferable Vote in existing Single member consituencies (STVS / “AV”)
I am sure that you disagree with what I have said but would prefer it if next time you would stick to argument rather than condescending insults to me and to other voters.
“Sesenco”
Class, surely, has to do with inherited wealth, which is wealth that its owners have done nothing themselves to create, earn, save or make.
It is inheritance over the centuries which has perpetuated inequalty of wealth and opportunity and enabled it to grow and class differences to take hold. What are LibDems going to do about that? Increase tax without using it to give all young adults a basic minimum inheritance?
Winning the real class war means getting your head round measures to positively redistribute the inheritance of wealth. A flat tax on givning and bequesthing in tandem with and deductible from a progressice tax on receiving (the legal kind!) and using the proceeds for a basic minimum inheritance for all.
The Conservative Party want to continue to start people off in each new generation as unequally as possible. They are raising the inheritance threshold to £1,000,000, regardless of whether there is one beneficiary or ten. Labour has increased the exemptions and has done nothing to reform Inheritance Tax
It is time for liberals to develop Popular Capitalism to replace unfetttered Dynastic Capitalism. The enemy in the class war is not only the Conservative Party but also the aristocratic / upper middle / middle class academic / media / politicians’ blind spot / taboo – of which these blogs give such telling evidence – on the discussion of the judicious positive redistribution of inherited wealth to benefit the many to a modest extent at the expense of the underserving few who inherit far more than they need or is good for them.
Matthew Huntbach
I should have referred at the end of my post to you to STVM / “STV” and STVS / “AV” instead of to STVM / “AV” and STVS / “AV” respectively. No doubt you will have worked that out already, but apologies for any initial confusion.
Matthew
I quote from Chambers English Dictionary:
UPPER CLASS – “the people of the highest social rank”
UPPER CRUST (mostly Scottish) – “the aristocracy”
MIDDLE CLASS – “that part of the people which comes between the aristocracy and the working-class”
Chambers does not provide a definition of “upper middle-class”, but I use the term (as most users of it do) to denote those who are very wealthy (either inherited or earned wealth or both) but are not part of the aristocracy. This would include Cameron, Rupert Murdoch, and most of the leading bankers and industrialists. The upper middle-class tend to ape some aspects of the aristocratic lifestyle (public schools, country houses, to a much lesser extent the promiscuity and high living), but the difference is instantly recognisable. There is also some blurring, where upper middle-class men marry into the upper-class, as Cameron and Sir Jams Goldsmith did. (Upper-class men rarely marry women of lower rank, they just take them as mistresses – Edward VIII and Lord Randolph Churchill are exceptions here).
There are further complications. Some upper middle-class families have developed dynastic tendencies. This is especially true in the United States, where there is no aristocracy. Observe those descendants of 17th immigrants who lurked in the backwoods of New England for 200 years only to grab great chunks of the nation’s wealth when the industrial revolution came.
It is often asserted that the principal reason for Britain’s relative decline from the late 19th century onwards is the fact that the elite was cluttered with people who were not very intelligent and tended to be rather dissolute, while potential movers and shakers were shelling out substantial portions of their incomes to these people in rent. The United States did not have this problem, hence the overtaking of Britain as an economic power from the First World War onwards.
The trouble is that properly speaking all politics, certainly in this country, is a form of a “class war”.
When once there were Liberals who promoted the eradication of state granted privilege in order to prevent the massive and iniquitous build up of privileged wealth at source and level the playing field for more, many more, to be able to make their own way in life, and the championing of what Spencer called the “regime of contract” whilst the Tories defended privilege and the “regime of status” we have for a century been under the continual “regime of status” in which what is called “privilege” when used about the wealthy means exactly the same as “redistribution” when it is used about the poorer.
Everyone seems to think that’s all fine and dandy, so long as the groups who benefit from privilege get bigger – it somehow makes it more “democratic”. It was not okay for the previous regime of status, i.e. the nobility, to exploit the labour of the serf, but somehow it is okay if we are now taking from the wealthy few to privilege the masses. All that does, in fact, is to create an ever bigger state clientele who will vote for whoever offers them the most. But it is still a regime of status – the politicians go after a particular set of people who will benefit from their privilege and patronage. And we still have a system that allows those with the means disproportionately to influence the wielders of privilege and patronage.
The party that could lay claim to one of being classless will be the one which decides that instead of adding privilege on top of privilege, using new privileges to try to redress old privileges, it will seek to eradicate the privileges that create the very inequity the others now seek to use new privilege to put right.
Dane (aren’t there enough continuing Liberals in the online phone booth to have a decent discussion with?) wants to redistribute “inherited wealth”, regardless it would appear of whether that wealth was justly earned or not. There is certainly an argument that, because of the myriad ways in which privilege works most inherited wealth must have been created through privilege (just as the Duke of Westminster’s is through privilege in land, so Bill Gates’s is through privilege in fictional – intellectual – property protected by the state, and Mittal’s is down to a very ill-distributed access to capital, protected by the state), but there again I know of plenty of people who treat the family business as just that – the next generation works in it as much as the previous, they have not done “nothing” for their inheritance, but have been an integral part in working to build it up.
No, LVT is the start, as our forebears knew instinctively. The privilege of being able to accumulate the economic rent of land is what, in essence, creates these great fortunes (even many of those that do not appear to involve land but which, in many cases, are down to privileged access to capital secured on land) that Dane wants to tax away. Why wait until they die, Dane? Why allow these fortunes built on privilege to accumulate at all, Dane? All this means is that for several decades the very people you want to help out are being disadvantaged as someone else first accumulates the value only for it to be taken off their estate at the end.
LVT collects that value as it grows, year on year. It prevents those great fortunes being built up based purely on privilege, meaning that if there are any uncomfortably large inheritance left, they would at least have been created without relying on privilege – i.e. justly earned and therefore an unjust source of taxation. If you use the LVT to fund a citizens’ dividend you get a far better outcome than your one off inheritance, Dane, for most important of all you get the backup of knowing that, in extremis, you can refuse that job you feel exploitative and wait for one you don’t, or better still use what will, after LVT removes the built in advantage of landowners in access to productive capital, be easier access to investment to set up on your own and genuinely provide financial independence.
These measures have far more potency than your universal inheritance, Dane, for not only do they yearly prevent these excesses of privilege building up, but they have far more subtle effects in, for example, reducing the cost of living (land is cheaper) for most, reducing the cost of labour and thereby encouraging enterprise which is what produces real new wealth and indeed reducing the costs of doing business in areas that are economically depressed, so encouraging a more balanced creation of wealth across a whole country, and by eradicating barriers to trade open up opportunities for more to take advantage of the global opportunities.
Your system merely recycles and redistributes old wealth. LVT has been described as “pre-distributive” and prevents those huge builds ups and directs that money into real productive and low cost (when you get rid of all the other taxes on doing business) enterprise by which new wealth is created. And it is *fundamentally* more liberal because it eradicates a tier of privilege instead of letting privilege accumulate wealth and then creating a new privilege to redistribute it.
Dane
You picked up my comment: “Liberals tend to suffer from fighting the Conservatives in the South and Labour in the North, so they never know where they stand on have / have-not issues”
If you had said that this is a generalisation to which there are exceptions, I would of course have agreed with you. But what you did say was “This is sloppy talk we often get from ignorant members of the commentariat”. Really? You seem to imply that I am such an “ignorant member of the commentariat”.
This is something I feel very strongly about, underneath it is perhaps still my main driving force for being politically involved.
I am sorry if this came across as a personal attack on you. I was really just annoyed to see this old line repeated again, when I feel not only is it not true, it suggests a tactic which does not work.
The first time I ever stood in a local election was in a three-way marginal ward in the Brighton conurbation, then still part of East Sussex, it was for the County elections. It was a strange situation – the ward was Liberal held, but for various reasons campaigning had collapsed in it, and I ended up being nominated to stand for it at the last minute, and found I had to run my own campaign write all the leaflets and deliver most of them myself. Well, it did enable me to say things I probably wouldn’t get away with had I been under other people’s supervision, but come polling day I thing I’d shot our chances by being too left-wing and we would lose our vote to the Tories. Instead, Labour won it and the Tories came third.
From this I have always been sceptical of the line that to win votes in the south we have to adopt Tory-lite policies. The situation is not as those who imagine politics fits neatly into a one-dimensional spectrum suppose. There are a variety of reason why people in the south are more likely to vote Tory and less likely to vote Labour, and not all of them are to do with being rich people who vote Tory because they understand what the Tories are about and support that.
On your point about parties, at the time of the Liberal-SDP merger, I wrote a paper called “A Liberal Party” and I stand by that. It was intended in part to knock those who were then setting up “The Liberal Party”. My point was that obsession with party labels and the idea there was one true party was not a liberal thing. I was put off those who set up “The Liberal Party” because I could see in them this sort of obsession which makes sense amongst socialists, particularly of the Leninist sort who have an ideology of “The Party”, but makes no sense for us. My line has always been that we must work in whatever way works best for where we are. My sense of attachment to the Liberal Democrats has gone up and down regularly since those days, but I have not yet found myself in the situation where I felt what I wanted to see politically could be best achieved in a way other than y being an active member of that party. Not being a Leninist, that does not imply I ever agreed with every item of whatever its current platform was, or that I would not be selective in where I chose to put my effort.
Sesenco
Chambers does not provide a definition of “upper middle-class”, but I use the term (as most users of it do) to denote those who are very wealthy (either inherited or earned wealth or both) but are not part of the aristocracy. This would include Cameron, Rupert Murdoch, and most of the leading bankers and industrialists.
I really do not care what Chambers says. I know what you quote are the traditional definitions. I also know that language changes over time, and I am suggesting that this is a case where language ought to change to something that more usefully fits the world we live in rather than the world our ancestors lived in.
To suggest that Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron and the like are really just like slightly richer bank clerks or teachers, rather than the people who now dominate the way we live by their wealth and influence is nuts. I suppose you might say that as I have a good Staffordshire gentry family surname, I even have a coat of arms which I have a genuine right to use (can trace direct male descent to the Staffordshire visitations, in case you think I just looked it up in a surnames book) that I am higher on the class scale than Murdoch and Cameron. Does that make any sense? I don’t think so. I hasten to add, in the light of my previous comments, that on my mother’s side I’m Brighton peasants all the way back to before Brighton was called Brighton.
…and I thought I had read that your name originated in Staffordshire/Cheshire way as in “Sandbach” and similar!
…and I thought I had read that your name originated in Staffordshire/Cheshire way as in “Sandbach” and similar!
Yes, it did, that’s why it’s a Staffordshire name. There was a place called “Huntbach” which is on some old maps, and the earliest mention of the surname is “de Huntbach” in some medieval records where it was just emerging as a surname rather than a description of home village.
That is why correct pronunciation is exactly as it is spelt. Which most people find hard, they think it must be German.