Struggling with class struggle

Press, 12 March 1985, Page 17

Struggling with class struggle

Should anyone have been puzzled at the apparent importance of the British class system, an hour spent watching “28-Up” should have made everything clear. It was a sort of “Coronation Street” for the social scientist and showed that it is genuinely possible for television to be simultaneously entertaining and educational. To film a group of people at seven-year intervals from age seven to age 28 comes close to pure research and perfect television.

It was fascinating to compare the children with the adults and to see some characteristics still there while others had completely disappeared. It was easy to predict some of their adult values from no more information than the sort of start in life they enjoyed, but their eventual occupations were often a surprise. Some were true to their origins and others changed completely. “28-Up” was so well observed and so rich in understated social commentary that it left one replete with questions. How could parents sent a charming, vulnerable seven-year-old off to boarding school? What is the point? Was it just her manner of speaking and voice that allowed the most upper class of the females to end up living in a country mansion? At 14 and 21 she appeared to be without charm and without intellect. What makes some schoolteachers so cynical? What proportion of people are thickening up and slowing down by age 28? Most of those featured in “28 Up” seemed to be. Where do the delightfully ingenuous hopes of childhood go? Can one

ever entirely escape one’s origins? It was a compelling programme and next Friday’s part two should not be missed. Let us hope they continue for another 28 years. It is not only the British who have problems with their backgrounds. Last week, Jim (Christopher Lloyd) in “Taxi” went home to see his family. In the end, one will have to stop mentioning Jim, but it is just that he is one of the best characters on television. His view of the world is so unusual and yet so charming that those around him do not know how to react. All they can do is look,, listen, think for a moment,’ and then shake their heads as though they have just had an uncomfortable glimpse down a black hole. Not having seen his immensley rich father for years, Jim first of all thought that the butler was his father, and then having found the real one could only comment on his baldness and girth. He also found that he had been telephoning the wrong family every month for 10 years. The conversation between father and son was terrific. “I don’t like potatoes.” “Still the rebel without a cause.” It also turned out that Jim had spent a year at Harvard, but was urged to leave when he started to write all his essays in finger paints. He should have his own series.

Back to Britain, and Saturday’s “The Wine Programme” really shown the class system for what it is. There are those who tread the grapes and those who drink the results and talk about them, using horse-

feathers for words. The presenter, Jancis Robinson, shows what it is all about. What person from East London or the centre of Liverpool would be called Jancis? She uses the programme as a personal fashion parade and describes the world of wine with a voice which could grate nutmeg. Wine is the epitome of upper-class concerns. It is about making fine judgements between things that look, taste and smell exactly the same to everyone else. Listening to Jancis, and large numbers of Frenchmen, sounding like Inspector Clouseau but without falling over their

bottles, it is easy to see where the burning class resentment comes from. On the one hand, the programme shows what interesting complexity there is to wine. On the other, it somehow makes one’s hackles rise, in accord with one’s suspicions.

After the wine, it was straight into the ugliness of the miners’ strike in “Foreign Correspondent.” It is class again, but the harsh side of workers and bosses, the working class versus the rest. As “28 Up” showed so clearly, it begins from birth. Anyone who dresses, moves and speaks like Margaret Thatcher will always be

treated with suspicion byArthur Scargill. And anyone who dresses, moves and speaks like him will be treated with suspicion, if he is noticed at all, by such as she. It permeates everything. Think of it. Is there’a programme from Great Britain that is not about class in some form or other?

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Ken Strongman