11.11.2026
Anyone on LinkedIn or any social media will have seen the posts. Yet another person in a cultural institution will be telling everyone that they come from the working class and then they were isolated, marginalised and excluded in British high culture which is dominated by the middle class. This is the reality of being working class in the United Kingdom.
But wait a minute. Why am I writing about the class system in the United Kingdom? Surely, as I have often been accused by people with assumptions, I am middle class? After all, I am relatively well off. I have a posh accent. I follow middle class pursuits such as scholarship, museums and art galleries. I went to a grammar school and a top university.
Actually, I am working class. And how do you know you are working class? Because:
– I lived in a council estate growing up.
– I shared my bedroom with my brothers until I was eighteen years old. It wasn’t even a bedroom. It was a front room that had a balcony instead of a wall and no door to close when you came in and out. All the sounds in the little house would come into the room when you were studying.
– I never went on a holiday abroad until I was in my twenties because it was too expensive.
– I have bought food on reduced at the supermarket my whole life because to buy at the full price was too expensive.
– School dinners were too expensive. We ate packed lunches. I ate packed lunches all throughout university too.
– I was expected to work as soon as I hit the age of 16 to make my own money.
– I wore my older brother’s old clothes, including my school blazer, and rode his hand me down bikes. Because new stuff, it was too expensive.
– My trainers for P.E. were the cheapest ones in the whole year. Because cool trainers were too expensive.
– In the sixth form, when all the others would pay to go to the gym as instructed by the school, I got permission to use the school facilities so we could save the money. I never joined a paid gym. Instead, I would do weights in the freezing cold or blazing hot summer in the garage. Because a paid gym was too expensive.
And my parents? My mother came from a poor background and left school early in life. And while my father held a degree (and my grandfather had one from India), when my father married my mother he was cleaning bathrooms for a living.
So that is my background. I am not complaining about my background. It shaped me. I am not saying I overcame my background. Because there is dignity in a working class background. We are not handed wealth, we make it for ourselves. We are not handed cultural capital. We get it for ourselves.
What I am telling you is that this was my background. And do you think anyone ever helped me in life because I was working class? Did I get any special treatment? Do you think I ever got any special treatment or consideration for being from a working class, ethnic minority background? No. No special treatment. No help. And also, no acceptance from the white middle class in cultural insitutions.
Yes, you’ve got it. This is another social media post about how we are marginalised, excluded and oppressed by the white middle class in the United Kingdom and their domination of cultural institutions.
