The British Social Attitudes survey reports that more Britons declare themselves as working class than in the 1980s (“Forty years ago, class defined us. Now it’s we who define our class”, Comment). After a thousand years, will Britain ever recover from William the Conqueror and the feudal system he introduced?
We have a monarchy and an aristocracy still owning much of the land the Conqueror gave them, with privileges reinforced by public schools, and we have a working class, inheritors of serfdom, for whom trade union leaders such as Mick Lynch, and just like Watt Tyler, see it as their role to fight. With people still defining themselves in terms of class, and with such social divisions persisting, can Britain ever be a mature society, fit for the 21st century?
