The British Class System: A 1963 Scholarly Look

So's you don't think I'm unduly dwelling on the popular conception of a reordering of the class structure in England in the 1960's and the stiff class stratification that was the reality in England at that time, I started looking at the scholarly writings concerning the English class system and found a very interesting article by Cambridge University sociologists John H. Goldthorpe and David Lockwood that was published in the Sociological Review (new series), Volume 11, No. 2, July, 1963 called "Affluence and the British Class Structure."

They focused mainly on whether the working class was making any headway in pulling themselves up into the middle class--or whether there was a large glass ceiling in place preventing that.

The researchers looked at three studies of working and middle class attitudes and concluded:
     1.)  "The majority of people have a more or less clearly defined image of their society as being stratified in some way or other; that is to say they are aware of inequalities in the distribution of wealth, prestige and power."  (page 146.)
     2.)  "In particular, there is no firm evidence either that manual workers are consciously aspiring to middle class society, or that this is becoming any more open to them." (my emphasis; page 155.)

On the general values from a working class perspective, Goldthorpe and Lockwood quote working class parents who said that the best job for a son was:  "A trade in the hands" and "A good steady job." (page 147.)

Remember that three of the real Beatles had manual jobs when they first started out:  George worked as an apprentice electrician; Paul got work from the Labour Exchange coiling cables for an electrical firm; Ringo had an apprenticeship at a Liverpool equipment manufacturer.  John did go to art school, but was shifted over into learning lettering which--if he hadn't quit school (or gotten expelled)--would have led to a "good steady" manual office support job.

The article talked about the solidarity of working class people--an "us against them" attitude--that, of course, was expressed clearly by the real John at the Royal Command Performance in November, 1963 and got real Paul and real John ousted from the group.