LITMIR.BIZ

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‘smart’ we were, and I knew, as a result, that despite the flashes of proper, undiluted privilege, many of my classmates and cousins were considerably grander. I knew that we were ‘smart’, mostly on account of my father’s side, and that we were ‘comfortable’, thanks to my mother’s side. In short, I knew we were upper class. Just. Hanging on to the coat-tails of aristocracy by our fingertips, though hoping we didn’t look too desperate as we got caught up in the slipstream.

      My children have been born middle class. Or, if we are being more accurate, Class A in the National Readership Survey category: born to a share-owning, broadsheet-reading professional in the 40 per cent tax bracket. Or, if we are being more up-to-date, using the Office for National Statistics’ most recent classifications for socio-economic groups, introduced in 2000, they live in an L3.1 household, fourth placed in a list of 17 different gradings. I am a traditional employee in a professional organisation. Or, if we are being even more specific, in category 18 of 56 Acorn socio-economic classifications: ‘multi-ethnic, young, converted flats’, where the Guardian is likely to be the newspaper of choice, and the householders visit the cinema far more regularly than most people, while having a strong propensity to buy their groceries online, but an above-average experience of having had their mobile phone stolen.

      Confused? Trying to be specific about your class is like trying to nail jelly to a fast-moving Mondeo Man.

      My children are not aristocrats, certainly. Neither are they Rockabillies with a tendency towards the scruffy and occasionally expensive country tastes and habits of old Britain. That’s because I have spent most of my adult life, indeed from adolescence onwards, trying – not always successfully – to edge away from the class I was born into, while retaining some of its habits and even maintaining a quiet affection for it. Indeed, I am probably onto at least my third class, even though I am (I hope) less than half way through my life. The process has been accelerated by marrying out of my class.

      And this is where I need to explain my father-in-law’s class. He was born resolutely in the working classes but ended up assuredly in the middle classes. He, indeed, is a triumphant member of the Middleton classes, because for every Carole there are many millions of others who in the space of one lifetime climbed up from the bottom of the ladder to pretty much the top. Money is important but not really the key. What matters is assimilation – the ability innately, or through careful consideration, to make the right choices in order to furnish themselves with the lifestyle and habits of the class above them. And to then feel comfortable, confident even, to continue upwards.

      He was born in Workington, now a sad and depressing town on the wrong side of the Lake District. His actual father was a ‘wrong ’un’ who never featured in his life, so he was brought up by his mother and grandparents. His grandfather, whom he always referred to as ‘Dad’, was a blast furnaceman at the Oldside iron works, a dirty, dangerous and physically demanding job. His grandmother was a maid in service, though not for a grand family. It was a home financed by and in the shadow of the great factory. In the days before the Welfare State and the widespread building of council houses, there were many millions who lived in a factory or pit house on a peppercorn rent. It was a proudly working-class household, and a respectable one at that. The man he called Dad was a union man and a member of the Co-operative; bills were paid from the jar of savings, the New Gresham Encyclopaedia was on the bookshelf, the Daily Herald on the kitchen table.

      He passed the 11-plus exam, unimaginable to ‘Dad’ who’d started work at the iron works at the age of 13, and this was the first rung up the ladder, as it was for countless members of the Middleton class. University, however, was denied to him by lack of money. To escape national service, he opted to join the merchant navy. Caked in oil and sweat in the engine room, it might have looked as though he’d done no better than his own father, but it was skilled labour of a kind that only an engineer who’d trained as an apprentice could undertake. In the evening he’d wear his white mess uniform and host a table in first class, and it made him realise that the luxury the passengers at his table were enjoying was something worth aiming for. Back on land, he used his savings to open a ten-room hotel in Workington designed for travelling salesmen; his mother did the cooking in the kitchen. It was a success, and was expanded. Eventually he built the biggest hotel in town, with crêpes Suzette on the menu and Rotary club dances in the ballroom. Golf was learnt, the Telegraph was taken, and savings were used to send the children to private school. Holidays were initially in Bournemouth, but as the years rolled on they ventured first to the Costa Brava, later to Normandy, eventually to Tuscany. In 1980 the Queen visited the hotel, where she was served roast saddle of Lamb Henry IV (with artichokes, a bewildering array of tubers: Parisienne Potatoes & Bernaise Sauce, Delmonico Potatoes, New Potatoes, and Bouquetière of Vegetables). It was his Carole Middleton-on-Buckingham-Palace-balcony moment. ‘It was a huge thing, huge,’ he remembers.

      Whether or not your family ends up defining you until the day you die has to do with the choices made along the way. Not all of them are choices governed by economics, and not all of them are choices you can make. Some of the most important ones are made for you by your parents, who can purposefully or unwittingly set you on a path very different from the one down which they travelled. The most important choice, in many ways, is the first one: your name. Before you have even left the womb you have already been allotted a very specific socio-economic class thanks to a (frequently idiotic) decision made by your parents. And the divisions have increased along with the proliferation of names. Last year 6,039 boys’ names were registered by the Office for National Statistics along with 7,395 girls’ names – a bewildering choice.

      It used to be the case, in the main, that you named your child after either a monarch or a saint. My parents played it straight – as most people did in the 1970s, be they Rockabillies, the Middleton classes or Asda Mums. I was Harry, my sister was Victoria. Simple. Solid. Classy but classless. Shakespearean Prince Harry or Cockney Harry Palmer: names back then just didn’t carry that much baggage. There were a handful of names such as Sharon, Tracey, Wayne or Kevin that were a little downmarket for children born in the 1970s, and Quentin and Rupert were certainly quite upmarket, but the class issue has become far more stark as more and more people – regardless of which class they come from – attempt to find something a little bit special. It’s another example of how consumers since the 1950s have striven to assert their individuality through the choices they make – it just happens, in this case, to be a decision as long-lasting as a tattoo on your ankle. And even though it costs nothing, it can carry as much metaphorical baggage as a Louis Vuitton suitcase.

      Casper or Casey? One is posh, one is not. Jayden is unequivocally low class. Artemis and Arthur are for the type who think slumming it is buying Waitrose Essentials ratatouille. Acorn, the data company that splits the country up into 62 different socio-economic groups on behalf of consumer companies and government agencies, can immediately categorise you by your name. It has 51 million individuals on its database by name, and statistically if you are a Crispian, Greville, Lysbeth or Penelope you are about 200 times more likely to be in the ‘wealthy executive’ top class than in the ‘inner-city adversity’ bottom one. Seaneen, Terriann, Sammy-Jo, Jamielee, Kayliegh and Codie are the six names most disproportionately skewed towards the ‘struggling families’ category, a group of people Acorn works out as most likely to live in social rented accommodation, work in a routine occupation, read the Sun newspaper and play bingo.

      If in doubt about how class determines baby names, just spend a minute scanning the Births announcement column in the Daily Telegraph – a group which is immediately self-selecting. Not only are they readers of the most upmarket national paper in Britain, but they are a niche category within that, happy to spend upwards of £150 on an announcement and keen to make public the joy of their child’s birth along with a sense of pride in the wisdom of their choice of names. ‘A son, Zebedee Ebenezer Jay, a brother for Badger, Clementine and Florence’ is a particular favourite of mine. So too: ‘Sybella, a sister for Freddy, Hugo, Oscar and Rex’ and ‘Lysander, a brother for Ottilie and Rafferty’. These all appeared over the last year.

      The truly grand have no need to be so showy. When the 15th Duke and Duchess of Bedford had their first child in 2005 – a son and heir, Henry Robin Charles Russell, born already bearing the title Marquess of Tavistock – the following announcement appeared

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