Saturday 8 August 2009

Class and knowing your place

Just listening to a bloke being interviewed on TMS lunch time.
He was talking about Upstairs Downstairs, and saying how good it was when everyone knew their place and no-one was aspirational.
I remember Phillip Blond, the 'red Tory', going on about how good it was back in the day when everyone knew their place.
Funny how the upper classes are always going on about it being good when people know their place. Funnily enough, there don't seem to be too many of the lower classes who pine for the good old days of what amounted to pretty much a caste system.
'Knowing your place' makes me sick. Some say class politics is dead, I think the upper classes' enthusiasm for people being stuck with their lot and knowing their place shows it's still alive and well

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually it was probably better before the "working" classes started hating their place, hating themselves, hating their country, and hating just about everything. Thankfully, whether they know their place or not, the modern underclass aren't going anywhere.

Bearded Socialist said...

I quite like a bit of social mobility myself, leads to a fairer, more equitable and more efficient society.
World War 1 was a prime example of being being too attached to place, lead to incompetance in the military which took millions of deaths before it was addressed.

Hating everything as you describe is more a symptom of societal failure and it falling apart