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Cannadine, D., Class in Britain, (Yale, 1998)
In a 1992 article printed in his
1998 book History in Our Time, Cannadine deals with the question of
class in Britain, and asks if there is any historian willing to tackle the
subject. The answer: he was!
Cannadine finds three models by
which the British have historically understood the inequalities in their
society, and he traces the relative popularity of each model from the
eighteenth century to the present. The three models are:
- hierarchical, with society operating through a
complex system with many gradations;
- tripartite, with society divided into ‘upper’,
‘middle’ and ‘working’ classes;
- dichotomous, with society composed of only two
classes: ‘patricians’ and ‘plebs’, or ‘them’ and ‘us’.
Cannadine’s view is that the
hierarchical model best describes British society, and builds a powerful
historical case over three centuries for this view. But why are the
British so obsessed with class when other countries are as or more unequal?
He says that ‘the British think
and talk about their inequality and immobility more, and that is
because, for good historical reasons, they have a larger repertoire of
surviving vernacular models than most nations in which to describe and discuss
them’.
One of the contributing factors
to the British obsession with class is the prevalence of ceremony. (His most
recent book, Ornamentalism, deals with the role of ceremony and
symbols in the British Empire.) The ‘cult of monarchy’ was built up by the
ceremony surrounding Queen Victoria’s golden and diamond jubilees, while the
Order of the British Empire extended the honours system outside the
aristocracy. Such developments helped to strengthen – by modernising and
adapting – the existing hierarchical organisation of society.
But there is a deeper question Cannadine barely touches on: what need
in society did hierarchy serve, what purpose? Being part of a
hierarchy must have made people feel somehow safe and secure, not just
physically but emotionally – it seems to have given them a sense of belonging.
Did it?
There is evidence for this in Tom Sharpe’s novel Porterhouse Blue, which shows an alliance between the upper classes (the academics and
students of a Cambridge college) and the working classes (the porter, Skullion)
in favour of tradition and against the middle class (the new master of
the college). The middle class master is the spoiler because he doesn’t fit
into the hierarchy, and upsets the college’s cherished anti-intellectual
traditions, doing unheard-of things like making a speech at the college dinner.
‘A speech!’ Skullion splutters. ‘Never! Never in five hundred years!’ Skullion
would undoubtedly be a Tory voter – as was the gardener at the Herefordshire
cottages where we stayed in June 2001. (He even touched his cap when he spoke
to me! For an Australian, this was a bizarre experience.) Skullion accepts his
place in the hierarchy of the college because it’s just that: a guaranteed place. He knows the college will ‘take care’ of him, rewarding his loyalty.
Indeed, he ends up as master, under typically bizarre Tom Sharpe circumstances
– because, unlike the previous master, ‘He understands’.
This sort of feudalism explains why so many ‘noblesse oblige’ aristocrats hated Margaret Thatcher, and why so many socialists found
the old Tory paternalism preferable to Thatcherism .
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