Social class in the United Kingdom

The social structure of the United Kingdom has historically been highly influenced by the concept of social class, which continues to affect British society today. British society, like its European neighbours and most societies in world history, was traditionally divided hierarchically within a system that involved the hereditary transmission of occupation, social status and political influence. Since the advent of industrialisation, this system has been in a constant state of revision, and new factors other than birth are now a greater part of creating identity in Britain.
Although the country's definitions of social class vary and are highly controversial, most are influenced by factors of wealth, occupation, and education. Until the Life Peerages Act 1958, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was organised on a class basis, with the House of Lords representing the hereditary upper class and the House of Commons representing everybody else. The British monarch is usually viewed as being at the top of the social class structure.
British society has experienced significant change since the Second World War, including an expansion of higher education and home ownership, a shift towards a service-dominated economy, mass immigration, a changing role for women and a more individualistic culture. These changes have had a considerable impact on the social landscape. However, claims that the UK has become a classless society have frequently been met with scepticism. Research has shown that social status in the United Kingdom is influenced by, although separate from, social class.
This change in terminology corresponded to a general decrease in significance ascribed to hereditary characteristics, and increase in the significance of wealth and income as indicators of position in the social hierarchy.
The "class system" in the United Kingdom is widely studied in academia but no definition of the word class is universally agreed to. Some scholars may adopt the Marxist view of class where persons are classified by their relationship to means of production, as owners or as workers, which is the most important factor in that person's social rank. Alternatively, Max Weber developed a three-component theory of stratification under which "a person’s power can be shown in the social order through their status, in the economic order through their class, and in the political order through their party. The biggest current study of social class in the United Kingdom is the Great British Class Survey. Besides these academic models, there are myriad popular explanations of class in Britain. In her work Class, Jilly Cooper quotes a shopkeeper on the subject of bacon: "When a woman asks for back I call her 'madam'; when she asks for streaky I call her 'dear'."

History

In 1485, virtually all the English men and women were Roman Catholics. All were taught to believe that God created the universe and ordered it and was active in its daily workings. In other words, the world was a physical manifestation of God's will. There was no room for coincidence or accident. Educated English men and women had many ways of describing how the world was supposed to be, most of them metaphorical. One of their favorite metaphors was that of the body politic or viewing their nation as the human body. The king was the head; the aristocracy the arms and shoulders; the tenant farmers and poor the legs and feet, etc. The beauty of this metaphor was that it conveyed that all parts of the body politic contributed equally to the common good but were not equal in status: if the arms or legs attempted to usurp the head, chaos would ensue. This train of thought would later become known as the Great Chain of Being in which all inhabitants of the universe, in hierarchal order, went: God, then Angels, then Man, then Animals, then Plants, then Stones, then the Damned. Each of the ranks were further subdivided into smaller hierarchies. For the category Man, the order, from highest to lowest was; King, nobles, gentlemen, yeomen, husbandmen, cottagers, and laborers.
The United Kingdom never experienced the sudden dispossession of the estates of the nobility, which occurred in much of Europe after the French Revolution or in the early 20th century, the British nobility, in so far as it existed as a distinct social class, integrated itself with those with new wealth derived from commercial and industrial sources more comfortably than in most of Europe. Opportunities resulting from consistent economic growth and the expanding British Empire also enabled some from much poorer backgrounds to rise through the class system.
The historian David Cannadine sees the period around 1880 as a peak after which the position of the old powerful families declined rapidly, from a number of causes, reaching a nadir in the years after the Second World War, symbolised by the widespread destruction of country houses. However, their wealth, if not their political power, has rebounded strongly since the 1980s, benefiting from greatly increased values of the land and fine art which many owned in quantity.
Meanwhile, the complex British middle classes had also been enjoying a long period of growth and increasing prosperity, and achieving political power at the national level to a degree unusual in Europe. They avoided the strict stratification of many Continental middle classes, and formed a large and amorphous group closely connected at their edges with both the gentry and aristocracy and the labouring classes. In particular the great financial centre of the City of London was open to outsiders to an unusual degree, and continually expanding and creating new employment.
The British working class, on the other hand, was not notable in Europe for prosperity, and early modern British travellers often remarked on the high standard of living of the farmworkers and artisans of the Netherlands, though the peasantry in other countries such as France were remarked on as poorer than their English equivalents. Living standards certainly improved greatly over the period, more so in England than other parts of the United Kingdom, but the Industrial Revolution was marked by extremely harsh working conditions and poor housing until about the middle of the 19th century.

Formal classifications

Early modern

At the time of the formation of Great Britain in 1707, England and Scotland had similar class-based social structures. Some basic categories covering most of the British population around 1500 to 1700 are as follows.

Class	Characteristics
Cottager or labourer; servant	Cottagers were a step below husbandmen, in that they had to work for others for wages. Lowest order of the working castes; perhaps vagabonds, drifters, criminals or other outcasts would be lower. Slavery in England died out by 1200 AD, so in feudal times this would have been the villein or serf. Most young women of middle and lower ranks became servants to neighboring families for a few years before marriage. Servants in husbandry were unmarried men hired on annual contracts as farm workers.
Husbandman	A tradesman or farmer who either rented a home or owned very little land was a husbandman. In feudal times, this person likely would have been a peasant, either as a serf who paid a large portion of his work or produce to the land-holding lord or more likely as a freeman who paid a rent in cash rather than in labour.
Yeoman	The yeoman class generally included small farmers who held a reasonable amount of land and were able to protect themselves from neighbouring lords et cetera. They played a military role as longbowmen before 1500. The village shopkeeper was placed between yeoman and gentry in the modern social hierarchy. Sir Anthony Richard Wagner, Garter Principal King of Arms, wrote that "a Yeoman would not normally have less than 100 acres" "and in social status is one step down from the Landed Gentry, but above, say, a husbandman."
Professional and businessman	Urban professionals included lawyers, with the highest status going to the London barristers and the Inns of Court. Physicians were rising in status as professionalisation and education built upon rapidly increasing knowledge bases. Merchants and businessmen could range in status from middle to high, depending on their wealth and importance. For higher social prestige, they would buy a landed estate or negotiate for a knighthood or a baronetcy.
Clergy	Clergy were mostly located in rural areas, where they were under the direction of the gentry. A bishop had the status of nobility, and sat in the House of Lords, but his son did not inherit the title.
Gentry/gentleman	The gentry by definition held enough assets to live on land rents without working, and so could be well-educated. If they worked it was in law, as priests, in politics, or in other educated pursuits without manual labour. The term Esquire was used for landowners who were not knighted, a term which later became Squire and referred to as the Squirarchy. They typically possessed estates worked by tenants and laborers. It was prestigious to purchase a military or naval commission for a likely son.
Knight	The role of knighthood was very important in the medieval period, with the role of organising local military forces on behalf of a senior noble. However, by 1600 the title was an honorific one, often granted to outstanding combat soldiers in the king's army.
Baronet	A baronet held a hereditary style of knighthood, giving the highest rank below a peerage.
Aristocracy: Peer	Further subdivided into Dukes, Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts, and Baron. The rules of succession were elaborate; usually, however, the eldest son inherited the title and the wealth. When the male line expired, so too did the title. The peers were generally large land holders, often also owning a house in London. They sat in the House of Lords and often played a role in court. Ireland and Scotland had entirely separate aristocracies; their nobles sat in their own parliaments but not in the English House of Lords.
Royal	A member of the royal family, a prince, or a close relative of the queen or the king. The King was the ruler of the kingdom, God's lieutenant on earth and the owner or 5% of the land.