Polly Toynbee raises an interesting point about class and how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us throughout our lives (Take it from me (and Keir Starmer) – you should never pretend to be more working class than you are, 26 September). Inevitably, however, this opens a whole can of worms, given the vast amount of scenarios that arise when one interrogates one’s own family tree.
While we concentrate on moving up the social scale, does the same happen in reverse? My maternal grandfather was born into a cotton mill-owning family in 1886, but the decline of said industry meant that his children trained and worked in occupations that may be considered working class. Was that seen as a decline in their fortunes? Certainly not by my mother and her siblings, who strove to do the best with the resources available, and allowed my siblings, cousins and I to have greater opportunity than they did.
