Cloaking class: making the working class visible

Since the 1970s, wealth inequality in the UK has been rising year on year with the only exception being the early 2000s when the Blair Labour government made a few tweaks through their tax credit policy, slowing down the rapid widening of the wealth gap for a few short years. The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government's austerity measures in 2010 speeded the process up to such an extent that by 2014 the gap between the wealthy and the poor had never been greater (Hills, 2014). Consequently, it should come as no surprise that in the country where the Industrial Revolution began – and, as E.P. Thompson chronicled, the English working class were made – the vertical class system that capitalism needs to function is in great shape. There has been a redistribution of wealth from the poorest upwards since 2010 (ONS, 2021). The divisions between the rich and the poor both in the UK and in Europe have never been greater in modern times, and there is now a full body of work from academics studying economics, sociology, anthropology and urbanism, focusing on the elites and the evergrowing wealth gaps particularly in the UK and within Europe (Savage, 2010, 2015, 2021; Picketty, 2014; Atkinson et al, 2017). However, the narrative of a solution to the widening wealth gap has focused somewhat on social mobility and meritocracy. To an extent, these concepts acknowledge the structured nature of inequality within capitalist societies, but for the most part social mobility is still seen as an individual act of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. The social mobility narratives favoured by governments and administrations focus on shaping and introducing specific policies targeted at the bottom of society with the intention of creating ‘fairer opportunities’, with the hope that this will change the fates of some working-class people who are ‘hardworking’, ‘naturally clever’, and who accept without complaint the dominant narratives and culture (Friedman and Laurison, 2019; Social Mobility Commission, 2021). However, these policies focusing on social mobility are not intended to change the system, nor to tackle the unfair advantages the system awards to those in the middle or at the top.