“Social class no longer exists in Britain”

I snorted cornflakes laughing at that doozy in my Twitter feed last week.

I have a chip on my shoulder about this stuff. I grew up in relative poverty. While at primary school my parents were so hard-up my Dad stole food to make sure we ate. We sofa-surfed and crashed with extended family until my parents were able to get a council house. On one side of the family we had generations of worklessness; on the other side were coal miners, cleaners, waitresses. No-one had a job that would qualify them to witness a passport application. Most left school without O-levels, no-one had A-levels.

I didn’t have access to internships in professional services firms. My family’s connections extended to the coffee shop at the end of the street — so my summer job was as a dishwasher.

I didn’t have family money to rely on for tuition fees or living costs at university — I managed by working my summers and taking on student debt three times my family’s annual combined income.

I couldn’t find the type of career I wanted in the community I grew up in —so I moved the 400 miles to London to access those types of jobs.

And I still rarely see myself represented in the upper echelons of the public and private sector —which largely remain the preserve of Oxbridge-educated, middle-class, white, abled men.

Tell me again how social class isn’t a thing.

This is neither a sob- nor a success-story. Plenty of people had it harder than us. This is a rant.

Somehow the myth of meritocracy has permeated the middle-class consciousness and convinced reasonable, intelligent people that “social class is no longer an issue”.

What is with this collective blindness?

This is a public service announcement. I’d like to remind you that:

• parents’ careers largely determine their kids’ careers: if you have a professional career, your kids are 80% more likely to go into a professional occupation.
• access to capital, financial literacy, and familial safety nets allow middle-class kids larger risk appetites. Risk appetite affects outcomes from willingness to take on a student loan through to comfort negotiating promotions and pay rises. Did you know that women with working class backgrounds earn on average 35% less than middle-class men? And that’s, of course, for the few who make it — because where class, gender, ethnicity and disability intersect, the ceiling isn’t glass, it’s reinforced concrete.
• critical social mobility assets —like diverse networks of professional role models and door-opening contacts —are generally inaccessible to working class kids and unevenly distributed around the country. And with London and the South-East as the heart of the UK’s professional services sector, I can’t see things changing any time soon.

Have no doubt: social inequity and inequality are alive and thriving in the United Kingdom.