Cards (21)

  • There remained a great deal of variety in the wealth, attitudes and leisure pursuits of the upper and lower middle class throughout the 20th century
  • The traditional divide between the middle and upper class had been based on land ownership as a means of income and aristocratic title
  • Although this barrier became increasingly porous, participation in 'the Season' events continued to mark some distinction between the upper class and the merely rich
  • The lower middle classes worked hard to differentiate themselves from the working class, not only in their jobs but in their cultural and leisure pursuits as well
  • Wartime inflation contributed to their fear due to its impact on middle-class savings and incomes: something that cost £100 in 1914 would cost £276 in November 1920
  • Middle-class contemporaries unfairly blamed the increased strength of trade unions for pushing up wages and prices, but the inflation had more to do within the strains of a wartime economy
  • The middle-class fears helped to explain the enthusiasm of strike-breakers during the 1926 General Strike
  • The middle-class saw themselves as defenders of order and 'the constitution'
  • Middle-class residents of Bromley, Kent went as far as erecting a 2m high wall topped with broken glass across a private road to prevent working-class residents from the Downham council estate from passing through the wealthier area on their way into central Bromley
  • Such concerns as the Bromley Wall explain why the majority of the middle class solidly backed robust Conservative policies on law and order
  • Far from suffering from working-class encroachment, the middle class went from strength to strength, recruiting more members from below whilst cementing their distinct advantages over the working class
  • The war gave a spur to middle-class employment, with a 34% growth in commercial and financial jobs in London between 1911 and 1921
  • The growth of respectable jobs in science, technology and engineering, the rise of salaried jobs in management and administration (from 700k in 1931 to 1.25 million in 1951) and the expansion of clerking jobs for women (170k in 1911 to 1.4 million in 1951) drove middle class expansion
  • Workers in respectable jobs saw themselves as modern, progressive and financially responsible compared to the 'feckless' working classes, who earned irregular wages
  • Home ownership became a defining characteristic of middle-class status
  • Interwar contemporaries spoke of a 'new middle class' who had bought homes since 1920
  • By 1939, 60% of the middle class were home-owners compared to 20% of the working class
  • New homes had been constructed on 'spec built' estates largely in the south of England and especially the commuter belt around Greater London
  • The geographical separation of men from their place of work and the difference between suburban life and the more sociable way of life in densely populated urban housing areas, also differentiated middle-class from working-class culture
  • The middle classes led the way in the domestication of leisure time
  • When the greater prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s enabled the working class to assume elements of a middle-class lifestyle, privilege was partly retained through exclusive membership of certain clubs and societies, such as the Rotary Club or local golf club