This video is brought to you by Squarespace. I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are, you know, working class, but I'm not working class, but... Deep down inside of every single British person on earth is a radar that allows us to detect someone's class.
You can listen to all the drill music you like, you can wear all the adidas you want, but I know deep down that you shop at Waitrose. Hunter Barrington Chessington, I hate to inform you that you are indeed white. But in 2024...
Things are different. The upper class saw a 20% rise in billionaires post-pandemic, whilst the homeowner middle class is shrinking. So today we're going to explore the past and the future of the Great British Class System.
So is the class system ceasing to be here in Britain? This dumbing down, this desire of the champagne socialists to destroy. I don't mind shooting all them.
That's going too far. No it's not, it's not going far enough. The untouchables, considered impure and unclean, are unworthy to belong to any caste.
By tradition, they are the lowliest of the low. Look, social class has always been a thing. There's always been the haves and the have-nots. In India, for instance, if you're a member of the Dalit, you are so low, your class is so low, that you literally can't use the same cutlery as people above you. But in some nations, it's much less pronounced.
Like in Scandinavian nations... But the British class system is revered, it's well known. And you might be wondering, where exactly did it come from?
This requires us going all the way back to the Saxon era. There was like a king of England, there was nobles, then there was freemans and serfs. So we had a class system, but it was just a little bit chiller. You know, it was simplified, it was relaxed. But then Britain got invaded.
I'm here with William the Conqueror, King... of england well as you all know the french are the worst people on earth but this fact has its origins all the way back in 1066. basically you had this boy called william the conqueror he came over from france with a group called the normans they bought loads of them over the server started lagging we were getting low fps and basically they got lucky and kind of took over england but willy he had a new system and a new way of running society and that was called feudalism Pretty much it was exactly the same as how the world was being run, but it was French, so it was more sophisticated. As Willy took over England, he gave all of the top knights, all of the boys by his side, the ownership of big plots of land.
I don't know how they divvied it out, I don't know who got unlucky and became the Lord of Luton, but this would be the beginning of what was later known as the British Aristocracy. Charles Anthony Peter Duncombe, 6th Baron Feversham, age 23. Being an aristocrat is said to be a state of mind. A lord is no different from anybody else. He is one of God's children.
To give you some perspective, if you're a Norman aristocrat, you might live in Windsor Castle or something like this. It was like wooden forts surrounded by stone. They weren't as beautiful as they had later become.
They were eating loads of f***. food they were just chilling all day with the bros passing laws speaking french and it was just a it was a massive vibe and then you had the anglo-saxons them boys just mud huts made of straw and horseshit manual labor work in the field and speaking english yikes and to be honest it kind of looked like it was going to stay like that forever that was until the black death. Between 1346 and 1353, roughly half of the European population were decimated.
But, this was Probably the best thing that ever happened to them. And not just because it gave them the sweet release of death, but mainly because it upped their labour value. Baza looks around and realizes, hang on a fucking second, with all these boys gone, I suppose I can start asking for a bit more money.
So basically, after Black Death, life started to kind of improve for the working class. See, boy King Edward III, he was starting to notice that the peasants had a few less holes in their shoes. And he went, hold on, what the bloody hell is happening?
So he passed some laws to basically say, look, you can't pay the peasants more money. We're going to return wages back to how they were. Pre-play and that went down like a lead balloon before we go any further with this video I want to give a massive shout out to today's sponsor Squarespace Squarespace is the number one platform for building your own beautiful website including Squarespace blueprint AI and SEO tools This AI can help you create your own website That's completely unique to what it is You do the optimized SEO tools will just help you appear higher in search results as well now there's flexible payments So you can pay with Apple Pay, PayPal, loads of different payment providers.
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So be sure to head over to squarespace.com forward slash Jimmy the Giant and to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain, use the code Jimmy the Giant. Anyway, back to the video. I'll be honest, the Peasants Revolt was a bit shit, you know.
It got clamped down pretty quickly, the King didn't get beheaded, nothing exciting happened. But, and you'll notice that this is a common theme, it did slowly and passively cause some change in British society. And so from here we would get the first release of a brand new class DLC, and that was...
The Merchant Class. One panda panda bananas! Excuse me sweetheart, can I interest you in a little sniff on these onions? A merchant, simply put, is someone who makes money selling the products of someone's labor.
But now as feudalism was coming to an end and the British Empire was starting to develop, we would start to see international trade routes appear, giving us some access to some Dope shit and a very particular type of working-class delboy saw this as a fucking opportunity But for just one pound fifty you can invest in one of these super deluxe trimming cones Hashtag be your own boss hashtag rise and grind hustle culture, this merchant class was raking in a lot of money. And some of these merchants would have come from very poor working class backgrounds. They were self-made. They were able to rise up through society's class structure via this new system.
called capitalism god's way of determining who is smart and who is poor these lads i'm talking about mickey the new money merchant their culture like their lifestyle was was hilarious and we can see that through this term nouveau riche this word it translates from french obviously and it means new money and you are old money you Is old money better than new money? Oh, definitely. Because?
Because, oh you've only just got money. We've had it for ages. It's an insult, basically, for when a person from a very poor background quickly gets money and then they try and emulate the lives of the upper class. 3, 2, 1, cheese! So as we moved into the industrial era and these new money bros were coming along, they would start doing things like building massive, grand, aristocratic mansions.
They would have these big, elaborate parties. They would buy art that they probably don't even know the name of the artist. Their homes would be super over-decorated, furnishings, hang-ins, you know, all the bells and whistles. But the problem was that it lacked taste. It lacked sophistication.
It was garish. They didn't know what they were doing. They just had a load of money and thought, this is what you're meant to do with it. What's up, my name is Chase and I'm the youngest flexer in the game.
Hey, get a zoom in on that. And so in this period there was a very weird power dynamic, whereby a lot of these new money merchants, that sounds like a boy band, were actually becoming wealthier than the aristocrats. I get a feeling of superiority over them. I get a feeling of inferiority from him, but a feeling of superiority over him.
I got a pain in the back of my neck. It's like the new money bros were like trying to marry into aristocracy. They were trying to get titles and they would even purchase titles like knighthoods, baronetsies and some would actually buy the estates, the land, off of the aristocrats. And so you might be there thinking, hang on a second, why?
Why are the aristocrats selling all their estates? Why are they selling these titles? Well, that's because some of the aristocrats were starting to go broke. They once ruled their fiefdoms, lording it over the commoners from their grand estates.
Now some of them, like Francis Fulford, can barely keep a roof over their heads. In other words, I had an ancestor who pissed the money up against the wall. So look, if there's one important thing you need to know about aristocrats, that is they don't work.
They don't do work. Work? No, no, no, no, no. And that is what makes them better than all of us.
What an aristocrat fundamentally does is... Own land that they inherited from birth and pass laws that tell everyone what to do. Simple. But as this merchant class, which started to become called the middle class, as this started to grow, they challenged the power of the aristocrats.
Slowly, they would gain political power. One of the most important moments I think we can look at is when they repealed the corn laws. This was a law that put high tariffs on foreign imported corn. So basically, in favor of the aristocrats that owned estates, that had large farms and peasants working on it, making corn. When that protectionist law went, they were now in direct competition with the capitalists.
And the capitalists had an advantage because they actually worked. I look at this moment as a key turning point in the power dynamic between the middle class, the merchants, and the aristocracy. And we would actually see a lot of the more ardent anti-work aristocrats going broke and having to sell their estates. Francis Fulford inherited this fortified mansion over 40 years ago. But over the years, the house has fallen further and further into disrepair.
And finally, the money has run out. Landowners like me always call ourselves asset rich, income poor. For class in Britain during this time, it really changed what it meant. Originally, middle class and merchant class, it was kind of like an interchangeable term.
But as time would pass, there would be more distinctions between like what level of middle class you are. The new industrial revolution created new jobs, new types of jobs, managerial jobs, lawyers, doctors, these kind of more professional roles that weren't quite as high earning as being like an industrialist, but certainly separated you from being a manual worker. And so bear in mind that in the UK, education wasn't free until 1891. this more defined middle class started to form where families that had some money could send their kids to school and they would become the bankers, the lawyers, the managers, etc.
During the Industrial Revolution, the middle class really became a force in British society, leading us to the 1832 Reform Act, where the middle class really cemented its power, as they were able to expand the rules on who could vote. No longer was Parliament completely ruled by aristocracy. I have got innate breeding, but I have not got any money. Sometimes I look up to him. I still look up to him.
Because although I have money, I am vulgar. The three main classes in Great Britain, which is the upper class, middle class and working class, they have three very different belief sets and three very different ways of living. And then you shook hands with Neville Chamberlain, just how do you do?
And then Lord Londonderry would be very nice too and say, oh, hello. You have got to come out and fight your three brothers. Four brothers here want to fight for you. On a very surface level we can look at things like accents. The working class will have very regional accents, like very thick accents.
I've got grandchildren and I'm afraid to talk to them. So posh here, like, hello grandfather, how are you? Then obviously you'd have the Manchester accent, Liverpool accent, and then the ones that no one understands, which is Welsh, Irish and Scottish.
Particularly for some of our colleagues who have a disability. Sorry, it must be something to do with... my antipodean background could he please repeat the question because i didn't follow it but like the historic stereotype of a working class person would go as follows they would work in low pay manual jobs their behavior is maybe a little less proper he's having a laugh you know they might spend their free time in pubs drinking beer with a boys watching footy probably they're living in tightly packed urban environments maybe limited education importantly they would rent accommodation probably accommodation they would never really own They didn't have enough money to buy a property.
So this very importantly meant they never had any economic stability If they got fired or got ill or maybe their landlord just didn't like them They had no power in those situations if they were kicked to the curb their life was fucked And so when it came to the attitude of the working class, it was very much defined by survival To be honest Barry, I'm just trying to get by mate. But then you have the middle class. Is there a slice of pomegranate in there as well? No darling, it's not pomegranate.
What do you actually think it is? Give it up again. It's grapefruit.
Yes, there he is. I don't know my fruit. Typically, these boys worked in more sort of expertise jobs. They're managers, they're doctors, they're lawyers.
They come from good education, they speak in quite a clear... You can maybe hear some regional accent, but it's probably more neutral than the working class. If they go to a pub, it's probably more of a middle class, cozy...
country pub. Very importantly, they own property. They're not renting and they're probably living in or suburban rural areas.
And so the middle class have a degree of economic stability. And so this affects their attitude to life. They're aspirational. They deeply believe in meritocracy. If I just work hard, and if I show my talent, life will reward me.
Thomas Richard John Long Chaloner, third Baron Gisborough, age 41, went from Eton to the Welsh Guards. The Chaloner family goes back to the 12th century. But then you have the upper class.
The rest of the Chaloner family Their accent is ridiculous. It sounds probably like this. Typically, their accent doesn't have any regional twang to it. It's just this kind of made-up accent.
Very importantly, they don't work. No, no, no, no. No worky for me. I'll just put my money into some industry and hope that...
Damien knows what he's doing with it. I genuinely think you are sitting on a goldmine. I really do. I don't say that lightly.
We are not competing with a hotel. I know. We are not a fucking hotel.
I know. It's not strictly true that they didn't work, I'm kind of playing. They were in politics most often, and they're considered like the ruling class, they make the laws.
They will of course own manor houses, vast estates of land. Their behaviour is very formal, very reserved. They'll do lessons in like decorum and elocution, I think is the word.
God, I'm a peasant. They will literally care about what angle a fork is on a table because that is very important, obviously. The aristocrats will go to elite schools. I'm talking like Eton, Oxford, Cambridge.
Most interesting to me is their attitude. Their attitude historically was... was not meritocracy.
It was aristocracy. It was the belief in a birthright. I am just sick because I have fucking clean blood in me.
That's why all these marriages between the aristocrats were so important and you'll see it in every period drama because they wanted to keep their bloodlines pure. I don't really know what that means but it it sounds Hitler-y. Crack those atoms! You! Turn out those pockets!
As time had passed, the merchant class just kept getting bigger and bigger because they were actually making money, in many situations outpacing aristocracy. But despite these merchants'humble beginnings, despite the fact that they were once upon a time one of the boys, they basically turned their back on the peasants and just absolutely fucked them over. Awful working conditions, low pay, little advocacy for their right to vote.
And this wasn't just happening in Britain, this was happening all across Europe. And so, something started to happen. In the same way that the middle class, the merchants, they gained power through collective bargaining of the guilds, the working class made their own cool, fun collective of bros, and that would be called... workers unions.
Originally they just set out to sort of argue for better pay, better working conditions and eventually they kind of led bloody revolutions all around Europe Where either they would literally kill off the aristocrats like they did in France, or if it failed in killing them like in Germany and Austria, in order to appease these kind of enraged working class people, slowly the aristocratic classes would sort of lose their power. But you see, whilst all this madness was going on, Britain took a different approach. Britain never had some bloody revolution. We didn't decapitate any kings or queens. We did something very different.
So what Britain did specifically to its aristocrats was basically we nerfed them. A series of laws throughout the 1900s took away the aristocratic powers. Originally they would have a seat in the House of Lords just by the fact that their dad did.
And so we'd get the Parliament Act in 1911 all the way up until the House of Lords Act in 1999. Literally 1999. They still technically had power up until then. And this basically removed the automatic right for the aristocracy to sit in the House of Lords. And also we can look at our monarchy and the way that that changed.
All of the royal power now in 2024 is just, it's symbolic. It's a symbol of tradition. Like, for instance, the prime minister has to ask the king if he can lead the country. And the king has to say yes. Or, I don't know.
What, yeah, what does happen if he... doesn't say yes. And so, throughout the 20th century, through things like inheritance tax and changes to land ownership laws, basically, the sit back and chill lives of the aristocrats slowly started to come to an end.
Still, aristocrats exist, but it's just far fewer, and they have to actually, you know, kind of earn their money. And many of the very large, historically important estates are now in the hands of a charity, the National Trust, I think there's a few others. And so all of this leaves Britain in a very weird and particular scenario. Because we never consciously destroyed the class system like many other European nations did, social class still exists in this very strange way in Britain where, quite literally, it makes zero sense. What class are you?
I think it is for others to do. I'm um... A man of Somerset.
I mean, I would say... This will probably hurt you. I would say sort of upper middle rather than upper.
Well, I'm certainly not part of the aristocracy. That's definitely true. So we settle for upper middle? I'm a man of the people.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei. What I mean by that is, you know, take David Beckham as an example. The boy is worth more than 400 million.
He's culturally important. He's even got a royal title of OBE. But yeah, David Beckham... is working class he's always gonna be working class it is no way he can't no amount of money nothing will stop david being a working class boy we're very working working class be honest what did you get your dental job it depends no no no no okay in the 80s my dad had a rolls royce but then let's say rishi sunak who's worth 700 million not that much more than david beckham he's the Prime Minister of England, but due to the fact that he is kind of like a self-made man in a way, he didn't just inherit his position like aristocrats do. Rishi Sunak has no titles, no inherited social standing.
He doesn't talk in the royal regal accent. He just talks. in a well-spoken accent. So technically, Rishi Sunak is upper middle class.
Class really makes very little sense here, and it makes less sense every single day as the world changes. One example would be like manual workers. Manual working class people, like a builder type of thing, they can be very wealthy now.
They can make more money than a lot of white collar jobs. And so you can have working class Steve, and he's earning 80 grand a year as a manual worker. owns a house owns a cars married has kids but in social terms he could be considered working class where you might have a michael working an office job he pays rent he makes 30 grand a year but he is considered middle class so i mean you you you try and explain it to me because i'm i'm lost but the architecture of that very different era could be hiding behind its doors the risk of Britain slipping back to a time of two nations, that Victorian age gap between mainstream society and an impoverished underclass, not some tiny minority either, but more than 13 million people. The reason that social class is so much harder to kind of define now is because of after World War II, where social mobility was more flexible than it had ever been.
But all this history now leaves these strange impacts on the way that the general British public thinks about things. Bye. But now I just feel like some people are having benefits as a life child's choice. And I was reading an article about an Afghan family that come over. The woman now has another child on the way, so that will be 12. The man is working, but only as a delivery driver.
Look, at the moment, 40% of claimants of universal credit are in work. The bigger question is not why people should or should not be getting benefits, but why work doesn't pay enough so that the state has to supplement employers. If we take from the aristocratic era, the idea of... of born privilege, birthright. They considered poor people, the working class, the peasants, they were just inherently bad.
The merchant industrial era challenged this way of thinking. It brought in the ideas of meritocracy, the idea that every man is equal and we all have equal rights to go and make something of our own lives. These two attitudes, in my opinion, have left a passive belief amongst lots of the British public where quietly they see... poverty or people of the lower class as being like just a bit lazy or work shy.
They're unmotivated and kind of being poor is sort of their fault. Suella Braverman has floated the idea of limiting the use of tents by homeless people and described life on the streets as a lifestyle choice on social media. But the problem with this way of thinking is it just doesn't account for how different the world is right now than it was 50 or so years ago.
For a good period post-war, there was a lot of opportunity for social mobility. And so meritocracy did exist. If you worked hard, you probably could elevate your life. And that's because equivalent to the amount of money you would make, the world was significantly cheaper. There was tons of support for the working class, you know, social housing, welfare state, cheaper education.
And so there was more social mobility, and there was an opportunity for meritocracy to thrive. But things are very different. for the younger generation now and i think slowly people are starting to realize it as they see that the british middle class and many middle classes all around the world are shrinking I've made millions of pounds betting that the average British family will collapse into poverty.
Desperate poverty. I'm talking about Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist. That is the future of this country.
If we don't deal with growing inequality, that is what I see. We've seen government debt explode. We've seen living standards collapse for all no working people.
At the same time, the biggest and fastest ever increase in the wealth of millionaires and billionaires. Nowadays, we live in this era where the ruling class isn't the aristocracy. It's more middle upper-class people this class built their lives on hard work.
They were raised in private elite schools They worked hard in their lives and achieved good things in their profession. My hat goes off to it So in their lives meritocracy does exist, but this is where like the disconnect happens and I think you can see it in this clip What do you have a bit you work with this? The truth is there is always Exceptional people who can kind of come out of the worst scenarios and achieve tons But for every one Alan sugar you have you have found I think how many thousands you have of people who just do what everyone Else does in their scenario most people aren't exceptional Most people are normal and most people don't thrive worrying about whether they can put food on the table Afford heat in afford rent and so lots of people at the bottom are forced into like a survival mode Survival mode for most people isn't the best conditions to come up with some cool business idea on a banana Cooler that you can control with an app on your phone And so sometimes my class gets so divided you even create what some people call an underclass These are the people that don't work at all and often this can become more criminal more violent, etc And that really isn't very good for anyone.
So when I finally think about what do I think class will look like in the future, I do think we're in this kind of make or break position where I think class divides could get far worse, far more problems, far more criminality. And perhaps we might have this like arbitrary symbolic- middle class based on things like what their accent is. But I think as that gap gets worse and worse, we're going to see the living standards of people who aren't ultra wealthy becoming more and more similar. And I can't see it getting better unless something changes. I'd be really excited to hear your opinion on this on my Discord.
Come join that. Link's in the description. Like this video, subscribe to the channel, and I'll catch you in the next one.
Peace.