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Jonathan Rutherford
© Jonathan Rutherford 2008
Labour politicians have spent a decade dodging the issue of class. But it's now getting harder to avoid. Talk about migration and race and you end up talking about class and inequality.
One in six of the population leaves school unable to read, write or add up properly. Social mobility has ground to a halt. Despite the government gearing education to the knowledge economy, the fastest growing occupations are in low paid areas like data input, admin, face-to-face services in health, education and care. De-industrialisation has left millions economically inactive, working in casualised and temporary jobs, or threatened with the loss of their job. The global division of labour means that manufacturing industry has largely relocated outside the country, whilst many low paid jobs within Britain are carried out by migrant workers.
Half the population share just 6 per cent of UK wealth, earning the median annual income of around £18,876 or less. The top 1 per cent of the population - 470,000 people - earn an average annual income of £220,000. They own approximately 25 per cent of marketable wealth. Within this group the top 0.1 per cent earn an average of £780,000.
Consumerism and the status-seeking pursuit of positional goods recreate the old class conflicts, though these may be experienced in different ways. The shame of failing in education, of being a loser in the race to success, of being invisible to those above, cuts a deep wound in the psyche. Research has proven how this kind of humiliation dramatically increases vulnerability to disease and premature death. Violence is more common where there is more inequality because people are deprived of the markers of status and so are more vulnerable to the anxieties of being judged by others.
These are some of the effects of the culture of consumption, which has shaped a new kind of class society over recent decades. It has been primed by the hard selling of cheap credit. Total UK personal debt currently stands at £1.4 trillion. £223bn is unsecured debt. This has created an indentured form of consumption, as the capital markets lay claim to great tranches of future earnings. Cheap credit has fuelled the highly lucrative market in debt securitisation that generates the City bonuses of the super-rich. In 2007, despite increasing market failure, these totalled £14bn.
Cultural difference is the prism through which large sections of the population experience and react to their insecurity. Migrant labour is used by unscrupulous employers and employment agencies to push down wages. Foreign workers are viewed as competition for housing and under-resourced public services. Political antagonisms and culture wars around race, gender and religion attempt to construct boundaries of identity which will define a sense of belonging and entitlement.
The dislocation, constant change and decline in any sense of belonging herald the cultural destruction of traditional English working-class culture. Life continues, but the cultural symbols and institutions that once gave it meaning are disappearing. Those who flourished in the old class culture find themselves ill equipped to deal with the new uncertainties. For them the future becomes difficult to imagine. To lose a way of life is to lose a sense of hopefulness. It is this loss that is driving class back onto the political agenda.
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