Everyone could go dancing ... It was a great unifier of class. ibid.
The pictures – the other form of popular culture that everyone enjoyed. ibid.
The Road to Wigan Pier was based on Orwell’s experiences of January and February 1936. And his observations of the realities of working class life and unemployment have entered the canon of human observation. ibid.
The old systems driven by private education, land, education and the historical power base of the upper class were still there. Melvyn Bragg on Class & Culture II
The middle classes dressed as their parents had done. ibid.
What was new was a third channel. ibid.
By the early sixties there were about five million teenagers. ibid.
Then a new set of working class dandies emerged – the Mods ... Their main aim was to have a good time. They were energetic but frustrated too, and were looking for a way to say so. ibid.
These new satirists [Beyond the Fringe], unlike most of the post-war comedians, were university and often public-school educated. ibid.
The birth control pill – thousands of women were freed from constant childcare and went to work. ibid.
In 1959 the scientist and novelist C P Snow delivered a lecture called The Two Cultures, which spoke of the rift between the arts and the sciences. ibid.
The more traditional arts were flourishing too. ibid.
The skinheads had just begun to appear, defining themselves against the middle class hippies. ibid.
Perhaps the signs and symbols of a three-tier class system are still there. Melvyn Bragg on Class & Culture III
The miners’ strike was a war between the Thatcher government and the unionised miners. ibid.
Two-tone was a vital cultural fusion. ibid.
Brookside was set in a classic early eighties’ new-build housing estate. ibid.
The middle-class strand of alternative comedy began to dominate on television and radio. ibid.
At its peak Viz sold in excess of a million copies an issue. ibid.
By 1992 the Royal Family seemed to be in trouble. ibid.
Is this blurring of accents really a sign of blurring of classes? ibid.
They have been called chavs ... A new destructive contempt. ibid.
Gets on your nerves where everything’s filthy. Dirty filthy walls and the vermin in the walls is wicked. So I tell you we are fed up. Housing Problems 1935, director Edgar Anstey, woman
Nothing to do with time,
Nothing to spend,
Nothing to do tomorrow or the day after,
Nothing to wear,
Can’t get married,
A living corpse, a unit of the spectral army of three million lost men. Walter Greenwood, Love on the Dole, 1933
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return. Gore Vidal
There is only one class of men, the privileged class. Albert Camus
Centuries of service have left behind a messy, emotional legacy: an obsession with class. Dr Pamela Cox, Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs III: No Going Back, BBC 2012
The State is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class, used to break the resistance of the adversaries of that class. Joseph Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, 1924
But my dreams – those dreams of long ago they still give me hope and faith in my class. I can’t believe that there’s no hope. Can’t. Alan Bleasdale, Boys from the Black Stuff: George’s Last Ride ***** George to Chrissie, BBC 1982
Austerity is just a fancy word for class war. Noam Chomsky
In Italy too, US labor leaders, primarily from the AFL, played an active role in splitting and weakening the labor movement, and inducing workers to accept austerity measures while employers reaped rich profits. In France, the AFL had broken dock strikes by importing Italian scab labor paid by US businesses. The State Department called on the Federation's leadership to exercise their talents in union-busting in Italy as well, and they were happy to oblige. The business sector, formerly discredited by its association with Italian Fascism, undertook a vigorous class war with renewed confidence. The end result was the subordination of the working class and the poor to traditional rulers. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
The United States happens to have a highly class conscious business community which is committed to fighting a continuous and very bitter class war. Noam Chomsky, lecture Portland Oregon October 2009, ‘When Elites Fail’, Youtube
It seemed as if they regarded their own children with a kind of contempt, as being only fit to grow up to be the servants of the children of such people as Rushton and Sweater. But it must be remembered that they had been taught self-contempt when they were children. In the so-called ‘Christian’ schools they attended then they were taught to ‘order themselves lowly and reverently towards their betters’, and they were now actually sending their own children to learn the same degrading lessons in their turn! They had a vast amount of consideration for their betters, and for the children of their betters, but very little for their own children, for each other, or for themselves. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
The Socialist – very much against his will – finds himself in the midst of this horrid battle, and he appeals to the other combatants to cease from fighting and establish a system of Brotherly Love and Mutual Helpfulness, but he does not hypocritically pretend to practise brotherly love towards those who will not agree to his appeal, and who compel him to fight with them for his very life. He knows that in this battle he must either fight or go under. Therefore, in self-defence, he fights; but all the time he continues to appeal for the cessation of the slaughter. He pleads for the changing of the system. He advocates Co-operation instead of Competition; but how can he co-operate with people who insist on competing with him? No individual can co-operate by himself! ibid.
Name of Morgan. He’s got class. We need a bit of that in our business. They Made Me a Fugitive 1939 starring Trevor Howard & Charles Farrell & Sally Gray & Griffith Jones & Rene Ray & Mary Merrall & Michael Brennan & Cyril Smith et al, director Alberto Cavalcanti, boss
Every class is unfit to govern. Lord Acton, 1834-1902
That is where we must strike – at the royals and the ruling class. Patriot Games 1991 starring Harrison Ford & Anne Archer & Patrick Bergin & Sean Bean & Thora Birch & James Fox & Samuel L Jackson & Polly Walker & J E Freeman & James Earl Jones & Richard Harris et al, director Phillip Noyce
We are so middle class we are thinking of voting Labour. Mark Thomas Comedy Product s1e3, Channel 4 1996
Why aren’t there more company directors in jail? … Pipa Alpha … Not one company director has been sent to jail for any of those … The Jerry Archer Wing: we’ll open one up, start shoveling in the pinstripes … ‘Are you sure this is part of the Masonic ritual?’ … The law is completely inadequate … There have been five prosecutions for corporate manslaughter since that law came into play … You have got more chance of getting justice if you are a goat in Britain. Mark Thomas Comedy Product s6e3
300 people killed at work each year … This is a class issue. ibid.
They were going to introduce this corporate killing. ibid.
An advert in the CBI: ‘Wanted: Mug’. ibid.
Over 100 of them are occurring on building sites, construction industry, these fatalities, and part of this is down to casualisation. ibid.
Once we got fox hunting, we’re coming for opera and polo. Mark Thomas, Youtube 1.08.01
I hate these academics that get praise, and they’re shallow. It’s all smug and bullshit. [Ian] McEwan and [Martin] Amis and all them. Middle-class mafia … They can buy their way to a lifelong competitive advantage over the uneducated and poor. This middle-class business, it’s the only place in the world where it’s really strong because it comes right down from the Queen. It’s a nepotistic way British society is run. They don’t draw from the whole gene pool, like America. That’s why you get good writers in America. There’s never been any great writers here in England, not in the last century. Look at Kingsley Amis. You can’t believe in the characters he writes about. And the experiences he attributes to them. And yet they made him a Sir. They’re disgusting people really. It can be treacherous, the publishing world. John Healy, interview May 2012