The Pitfalls of Social Mobility

There is currently a cross party battle in which all are claiming to support social mobility. It always pays to keep a close eye on the difference between what politicians say and what they do. Class is the British curse and never has a persons birth had such dictation over what their life will entail.

Of course, for the majority who remain within the area and social class of their birth the depth of the problems can be invisible. But for those who try to move life can be very difficult.

After a heavenly summer in 1982 after leaving home and school, aged 16 spent mostly in a cannabis haze, taking acid and other hallucinogens, listening to music and keeping odd hours our little world fell apart. The team of adolescent freinds spun off in different directions. The centrifuge hurled me in to living with some squatters. The drugs and music got darker. Mental illness became common. Before long I wanted out.

At that time in that part of the country, breaking in to the trades was as hard as breaking in to education. Having no qualifications didn't help.

But break through I did and I undertook a degree of social mobility. The change is impossible to see. I remember being called out for it but I could not see I had changed. No where had I been told or made the leap to understand that social mobility would lead to my not being able to return to many of the places I had lived on the same terms. By no means do I live an affluent life but the town where I now live has virtually no crime, no race problems, no riots. It is a bubble where the economic downturn has not hit.

It has taken 25 years to learn the subtleties of mid England middle class etiquette. Somewhere in its' learning I lost the cultural clips of my upbringing along with my accent.

All this left me in quite an odd position. Never fully accepted by the middle classes yet lost from my home. Where is home? I say all this as I was asked what class I considered myself. These things are not defined as they once were, or not defined in the same ways. This does not mean that class is no longer a problem. We still see tribes, with their own distinct languages, cultural rituals etc. and there purpose is to exclude and include for survival purposes. Most people have felt the cold shoulder if not the boot from one tribe or another for being different. For talking wrong, being too common, too posh. But it is the small minded who group others together in order to not have to think of them. And it is the brave who move from the place they were born. Those who journey in to new social landscapes where the footing may be poor, where the food tastes different who learn.