I Know My Place

KPMG wants to take more people from the working class to better reflect the UK's diversity. That, however, calls into question the construct of class - what is it?

There was a time when there were only 2 classes; the aristocracy (albeit having its own ranking system within it), and the rest. The aristocracy owned the source of wealth - the land - and had no need to work. They settled for martial pursuits and jostling for position close to the reigning monarch or, occasionally, supplanting him or her, if not to their liking.

Then there arose a bourgeiosie - a class that created wealth through inventions or new processes. The aristocracy always hated 'trade' as these entrepreneurs were termed, precisely because they demolished the aristocracy's monopoly on wealth, which was based on land ownership.

So, you have the aristocracy, who have no need to work, those who rose to become the middle class (i.e. the ones who used their own skills and the skills of others to create wealth) and those who merely laboured for others.

There's a slight conflict here with another form of class distinction. The first becomes upper; the middle stays the same, but the working class is now transformed into the lower class, but they are two entirely separate things. Working class people can and do frown upon lower class people and no one wants to believe they're lower class. 

Then there are the younger scions of the aristocracy who have to enter 'trade' so as to provide a living for themselves. They go into merchant banking marketing and high-end drug dealing. By any strict, mercantile definition, they're middle class, but they don't consider themselves as such and form cliques on the coat tails of the aristos. The Tory Party loves them and some even entered into the ranks of Labour Party. 

Class is a spectrum and there's no clearly defined cut-off between one class and another. There are even strata within this spectrum whereby one can be middle class according to one stratum (say education), but lower class in another (say taste or appreciation of art). 

Think of the barrow boys of the financial boom of the 80s and 90s. Many of them ended up with fortunes that meant they never had to work again. That puts them in the upper class bracket, but they're not accepted as such because their fortunes were derived from trade and are seen by the upper class as lower class made good, or middle class if they're lucky.

The problem is that, while there are some people who are vociferously and proudly working class and refuse to acknowledge their transition to a higher class through education, the vast majority of the hoi polloi want to be thought of as middle class. Essentially it's a form of insecurity and engenders Britain's preoccupation with the class system.

Could it all boil down to the manner in which one pronounces the word class?