Middle class[edit]

The middle class in Britain often consists of people with tertiary education. They speak in accents which could range from received pronunciation, to provincial as well as Estuary English. They may have been educated in either state or private schools.^[35]

Typical jobs include accountants, architects, solicitors, social workers, managers, specialist IT workers, engineers, doctors or civil servants. Displays of conspicuous consumption are considered vulgar by them; instead they prefer to channel excess income into investments, especially property.

Members of the middle middle class are often politically and socially engaged and might be regular churchgoers, sit on local committees and governing boards or stand for political office. Education is greatly valued by the middle classes: they will make every effort to ensure their children get a university education; although they are sometimes unable to afford private schooling, they may go to great lengths to get their children into good state or selective grammar schools, such as moving house into the catchment area.^[36]

They also value culture and make up a significant proportion of the book-buying and theatre-going public. They typically read broadsheet newspapers rather than tabloids. Typical Mosaic geodemographic types would include Provincial Privilege. The comedy character Margo Leadbetter is a satirical stereotype for this group, as is Jilly Cooper's Howard Weybridge.^[32]

Upper middle class

Harrow School. The Public School is traditionally one of the key institutions of the upper-middle-class in Britain.^[37]

The upper middle class in Britain broadly consists of people who were born into families which have traditionally possessed high incomes, although this group is defined more by family background than by job or income. This stratum, in England, traditionally uses the Received Pronunciation dialect natively.

The upper middle class are traditionally educated at private schools, preferably one of the 'major' or 'minor' "public schools"^[38][39] which themselves often have pedigrees going back for hundreds of years and charge fees of at least £33,000 per year per pupil (as of 2013).^[37][40]

Many upper-middle-class families may have previous ancestry that often directly relates to the upper classes. Although not necessarily of the landowning classes - as a result, perhaps, of lack of a male heir - many families' titles/styles have not been inherited and therefore many families' past status became dissolved.

Although such categorisations are not precise, popular contemporary examples of upper-middle-class people may include Boris Johnson, David Cameron (politicians),^[41] Helena Bonham Carter (actress),^[42] and Matthew Pinsent.^[43]

28. What is known about the traditional and the new working class and about differences in their life style?

Working class[edit] Unskilled and semi-skilled working class[edit]

Traditionally, these people would work as Industrial or Manual labourers. They would typically have left school as soon as legally permissible and not have been able to take part in higher education.^[32] Many would go on to work semi-skilled and unskilled jobs on the assembly lines and machine shops of Britain's major car factories, steel mills, coal mines, foundries and textile mills in the highly industrialised cities in the West Midlands, North of England, South Wales and the Scottish Lowlands.

However, since the mid-1970s and early-1980s de-industrialisation has shattered many of these communities, resulting in a complete deterioration in quality of life and a reversal in rising living standards for the industrial working class. Many either dropped in status to the working poor or fell into permanent reliance on welfare dependence. Some dropped out altogether and joined theblack market economy, while a limited few did manage to climb up to the lower middle class.

Some examples of Mosaic geodemographic groups for these people would be Coronation Street or Rustbelt Resilience. Fictional stereotypes include Andy Capp and Albert Steptoe, who is not only unaspirational himself but crushes the aspirations of his son Harold. They are the mainstay of the trade unions and Labour Party vote, but there are also working class conservatives, particularly in the South East of England in the Medway towns of Kent and the east London border areas of suburban Essex, as exemplified by the fictional character Alf Garnett.

It has been argued^[33] that with the decline in manufacturing and increase in the service sector, lower-paid office workers are effectively working class. Call centres in particular, have sprung up in former centres of industry.

Terraced housing in Loughborough, built for the working classes.

During the postwar era, white working class Britons witnessed a big rise in their standard of living. As noted by Denys Blakeway:

"The white working class have prospered hugely since the war. They have experienced unparalleled growth in disposable income and today they are now richer than their parents and grandparents could ever have imagined. There are shared values in white working-class culture but I think it is incredibly difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is that defines 'white working class' because a lot of them are shared by the middle class, such as football and the pub."^[34]