0:00:02 > 0:00:06The unprecedented rise of pop music in the 1960s
0:00:06 > 0:00:09was just one of the many collisions between class and culture
0:00:09 > 0:00:13that have changed this country in the last hundred years.
0:00:13 > 0:00:16It's an extraordinary story, full of oppositions, exceptions
0:00:16 > 0:00:19and contradictions. A rollercoaster ride.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22Inevitably selective through a century.
0:00:25 > 0:00:27This is Wigton in Cumbria.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30A small market town with a couple of factories, it's where I grew up.
0:00:30 > 0:00:32It was a church-dominated town.
0:00:32 > 0:00:3412 of them in this little town alone.
0:00:34 > 0:00:38I sang in the choir here in St Mary's Anglican Church.
0:00:38 > 0:00:40Every time I came, I heard magnificent language
0:00:40 > 0:00:42from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46Outside the church, it was comics and pop songs and socials
0:00:46 > 0:00:48and dances and outings and gangs
0:00:48 > 0:00:52and roaming about in the countryside, liberty hall.
0:00:52 > 0:00:54At the Grammar School I was introduced to great literature.
0:00:54 > 0:00:57I acted in plays and I joined the Memphis Five,
0:00:57 > 0:00:59a skiffle group that could have gone all the way.
0:00:59 > 0:01:03There was the Palace Cinema, now a warehouse
0:01:03 > 0:01:06and then, as now, a thriving amateur theatre.
0:01:06 > 0:01:08Both my parents worked in factories in the town
0:01:08 > 0:01:12and just before I went to grammar school, my dad tenanted this pub.
0:01:12 > 0:01:13We lived in the flat above it.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16We were working-class and you don't lose that.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19At that time, it was austere, intelligent, swarted,
0:01:19 > 0:01:20funny and strong.
0:01:20 > 0:01:24Later on, I bolted on the media middle class.
0:01:24 > 0:01:26I'm a class mongrel these days.
0:01:27 > 0:01:30Behind me is the House of Lords.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33A hundred years ago, it was occupied by hereditary peers, aristocrats,
0:01:33 > 0:01:37some of whose families had occupied the place for centuries.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40Now, people like me are in the Lords.
0:01:40 > 0:01:43So, does that mean that the ancient class system in this country
0:01:43 > 0:01:46has finally been turned on its head? Are we all classless now?
0:01:46 > 0:01:50The gains have been immense but have there been losses along the way?
0:01:50 > 0:01:54The working classes were to emerge from a rigid system
0:01:54 > 0:01:57but did that leave much of their distinct culture
0:01:57 > 0:01:59as derelict as the old industrial sites?
0:01:59 > 0:02:02In this first programme, we'll see how a middle class
0:02:02 > 0:02:04determined to hold on to what it possessed
0:02:04 > 0:02:08despised the working class and its culture.
0:02:08 > 0:02:12And could the upper classes, who once dictated a narrow view of art and taste,
0:02:12 > 0:02:17survive the changes brought about by two World Wars and a depression?
0:02:17 > 0:02:21And in our second programme the lower-middle and working classes
0:02:21 > 0:02:25were to lead a cultural attack, but did they sweep the old system aside?
0:02:25 > 0:02:28Was the lure of the middle classes so strong
0:02:28 > 0:02:30that it simply began a cultural takeover?
0:02:32 > 0:02:35And a superclass was emerging.
0:02:35 > 0:02:39The new wealthy, the celebrities, artists among them.
0:02:39 > 0:02:40But also an underclass.
0:02:40 > 0:02:44Even so, in the third programme, I'll be asking
0:02:44 > 0:02:47is class as we used to know it still with us?
0:02:47 > 0:02:50Or is culture, recharged by the ever-growing reach
0:02:50 > 0:02:53of the middle classes, now more important?
0:02:53 > 0:02:57I'm going to look at the connections between class and culture over the last hundred years.
0:02:57 > 0:03:00Everybody has a view on it, this is mine.
0:03:36 > 0:03:39The big ceremonial event in 1911 was the coronation of George V
0:03:39 > 0:03:41in London in June.
0:03:41 > 0:03:45The Edwardians dearly loved a parade and people joined in
0:03:45 > 0:03:47up and down the country.
0:03:48 > 0:03:51In 1911, my father's father was a farm labourer, married,
0:03:51 > 0:03:54with a daughter, the first of eight children.
0:03:54 > 0:03:57He would go through World War I and then go down the coal mines.
0:03:57 > 0:04:00My mother's mother was a few years away
0:04:00 > 0:04:02from a lifetime in domestic service.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05Britain's favourite author Rudyard Kipling observed
0:04:05 > 0:04:07and many wanted to believe
0:04:07 > 0:04:10that the essential note of the thing was the oneness of the people
0:04:10 > 0:04:13and the ease and intimacy that goes with it.
0:04:21 > 0:04:25There were strains and fears running through society about wages
0:04:25 > 0:04:27and conditions and taxation.
0:04:27 > 0:04:29Women were beginning to insist on their rights.
0:04:29 > 0:04:35But the famous British class system seemed secure.
0:04:35 > 0:04:38I think it's absolutely the moment, 1911,
0:04:38 > 0:04:41when you see the three classes
0:04:41 > 0:04:46at their brightest and, apparently, most triumphant.
0:04:46 > 0:04:52The rich enjoying an unparalleled extravagance of display.
0:04:52 > 0:04:56Huge land-ownings and sense of power.
0:04:56 > 0:04:57And then, in the middle classes,
0:04:57 > 0:05:01the rising of the professions expanding hugely.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05Doctors and lawyers and shop owners and so on.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08But most striking of all, in a way, in 1911,
0:05:08 > 0:05:13is the working-class culture, which is at its zenith.
0:05:13 > 0:05:16The trade unions, the non-conformist churches
0:05:16 > 0:05:21and all these other institutions which were created by the working classes.
0:05:21 > 0:05:26All this was at its greatest then. And, yet, in all the cases,
0:05:26 > 0:05:30it was about to crumble or be greatly changed
0:05:30 > 0:05:34by the First World War and by the social consequences of the War.
0:05:34 > 0:05:37Such were the classes, but what of their culture?
0:05:37 > 0:05:41Throughout this series I want to ask of each class, what did they own?
0:05:41 > 0:05:46What did they consume? And what did they produce?
0:05:58 > 0:06:01Certainly, the upper classes owned plenty of material culture,
0:06:01 > 0:06:05mostly inherited, and built by the labour of social inferiors
0:06:05 > 0:06:07who were firmly excluded from it.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11Centuries of exploitation were transformed into fine houses
0:06:11 > 0:06:13like this one, Cliveden in Buckinghamshire.
0:06:15 > 0:06:18They owned great gardens, they owned paintings,
0:06:18 > 0:06:21which often recorded family lineage.
0:06:25 > 0:06:27In Edwardian society, as for centuries before,
0:06:27 > 0:06:30rich and titled women sought out fashionable painters.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34And nobody, at that time, was more fashionable than the American
0:06:34 > 0:06:35John Singer Sargent.
0:06:35 > 0:06:38And this is his portrait of the woman who lived in this house,
0:06:38 > 0:06:40Lady Astor.
0:06:42 > 0:06:44Nancy Astor was untypical.
0:06:44 > 0:06:47She was interested in social reform and became the first woman MP.
0:06:47 > 0:06:50But, nonetheless, she was very much a member
0:06:50 > 0:06:52of the Edwardian aristocracy.
0:06:52 > 0:06:55They inherited, they curated,
0:06:55 > 0:06:59but the Edwardian aristocracy didn't seem to make much.
0:07:00 > 0:07:04Once the aristocracy, as a class, had produced art through patronage
0:07:04 > 0:07:07but now they seemed to quit the field.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10But there was the occasional enthusiastic individual.
0:07:10 > 0:07:14Gladys, Marchioness of Ripon, was another forceful upper-class woman,
0:07:14 > 0:07:17also painted by Sargent.
0:07:18 > 0:07:21In Paris, Gladys Ripon had seen the Ballets Russes,
0:07:21 > 0:07:24produced by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev
0:07:24 > 0:07:26and featuring the gravity-defying Nijinsky,
0:07:26 > 0:07:30drawn here, again, by Sargent.
0:07:30 > 0:07:34Assisted by Thomas Beecham, she brought the company to London
0:07:34 > 0:07:38and they performed in front of the new King and Queen.
0:07:45 > 0:07:47There was silence.
0:07:47 > 0:07:53There was no applause and Diaghilev thought, "This is a disaster.
0:07:53 > 0:07:56"What is...? What have I done?"
0:07:56 > 0:07:57And then he looked up
0:07:57 > 0:07:59and thought there must be a hole in the roof
0:07:59 > 0:08:02because there was this little pattering sound,
0:08:02 > 0:08:07until somebody said, "No, no, it's not rain at all,
0:08:07 > 0:08:11"it's the audience putting their kid gloves together
0:08:11 > 0:08:13"and showing their appreciation."
0:08:16 > 0:08:20The rest of the nation was totally excluded from such experiences.
0:08:20 > 0:08:25A box at Covent Garden cost up to £60,000 a season in modern money.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29Diaghilev's production was radical but the aristocracy,
0:08:29 > 0:08:33so secure in its position, coped with his striking modernity
0:08:33 > 0:08:34and took it in its stride.
0:08:34 > 0:08:41They had a common code of speech and behaviour and manners and, yes,
0:08:41 > 0:08:46they were at ease with each other and inclined to repel borders.
0:08:46 > 0:08:50The insulated aristocratic world of Ladies Ripon and Astor
0:08:50 > 0:08:52was more fragile than they knew.
0:08:52 > 0:08:57Soon, like every other class, they'd be faced with upheaval.
0:09:00 > 0:09:02And what about the middle classes? What did they own?
0:09:02 > 0:09:05What did they produce? What did they consume?
0:09:10 > 0:09:12In this post-Victorian era,
0:09:12 > 0:09:15the middle classes saw themselves as the backbone of the nation.
0:09:15 > 0:09:17While they paid deference to the upper class,
0:09:17 > 0:09:19they disapproved of their frivolity.
0:09:19 > 0:09:21They liked to improve themselves.
0:09:21 > 0:09:23They liked concerts, music, especially Gilbert and Sullivan.
0:09:23 > 0:09:27They liked the theatre. Perhaps, above all, they liked novels,
0:09:27 > 0:09:29especially big, class-bound books
0:09:29 > 0:09:33by Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Hardy and others.
0:09:35 > 0:09:37A best-selling author of his day
0:09:37 > 0:09:41and, for many, the voice of the time was Rudyard Kipling.
0:09:41 > 0:09:44He lived here in Bateman's in Sussex.
0:09:44 > 0:09:47By now, Kipling had written The Jungle Book,
0:09:47 > 0:09:52the Just So Stories, Kim and much of his poetry, including Gunga Din.
0:09:55 > 0:09:57This is Rudyard Kipling's study.
0:09:57 > 0:10:01A fitting study for a great imperial writer.
0:10:01 > 0:10:04Kipling's books were enjoyed across the classes.
0:10:04 > 0:10:06And Kipling himself, unlike many other writers of the time,
0:10:06 > 0:10:09was idealistic about people in this country,
0:10:09 > 0:10:12from whatever background, getting on together.
0:10:12 > 0:10:15Kipling wanted the British, I think, to be one class,
0:10:15 > 0:10:17above the class system.
0:10:17 > 0:10:19He did that in his novels
0:10:19 > 0:10:22but there's one piece he wrote which shows it most of all.
0:10:22 > 0:10:24It shows aristocratic confidence,
0:10:24 > 0:10:28what became the middle-class stiff upper lip
0:10:28 > 0:10:31and working-class grit, all in one place.
0:10:31 > 0:10:32If.
0:10:37 > 0:10:41"If you can keep your head when all about you
0:10:41 > 0:10:44"Are losing theirs and blaming it on you."
0:10:44 > 0:10:47"If you can think and not make thoughts your aim
0:10:47 > 0:10:51"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
0:10:51 > 0:10:54"And treat those two impostors just the same."
0:10:54 > 0:10:58"If you can fill the unforgiving minute
0:10:58 > 0:11:03"With sixty seconds' worth of distance run
0:11:03 > 0:11:08"Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
0:11:08 > 0:11:12"And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"
0:11:13 > 0:11:16The success of that poem was quite extraordinary.
0:11:16 > 0:11:19It was hung in schools and homes and barracks and messes
0:11:19 > 0:11:23throughout the world. It was translated into 27 languages.
0:11:23 > 0:11:26When Ernest Shackleton went to the Antarctic,
0:11:26 > 0:11:30he framed it and put it on the bulkhead of Endurance.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35Kipling created a vision of Englishness
0:11:35 > 0:11:37which he wanted all classes to share in,
0:11:37 > 0:11:41whether at the far reaches of empire or in a garden in Sussex.
0:11:41 > 0:11:44That vision of the classes in harmony was to recur
0:11:44 > 0:11:49in the two World Wars but, always, it was temporary and ephemeral.
0:11:52 > 0:11:54There was another novelist who saw that age
0:11:54 > 0:11:57just as clearly as Kipling but from a different aspect.
0:11:57 > 0:12:01He was born into fuzzy territory, this upper-working-class,
0:12:01 > 0:12:02lower-middle-class family.
0:12:02 > 0:12:05He was born here, in Bromley High Street in 1866.
0:12:05 > 0:12:08HG Wells.
0:12:12 > 0:12:15Looking back on his young self, Wells would write that,
0:12:15 > 0:12:16"He's an individual
0:12:16 > 0:12:19"becoming the conscious, common man of his time and culture."
0:12:19 > 0:12:23His early experiences were similar to many of those struggling
0:12:23 > 0:12:25to keep a foothold in the middle class
0:12:25 > 0:12:29and not slip into what, they feared, was the abyss beneath them.
0:12:29 > 0:12:34His parents had run a dry-goods shop in Bromley and they'd gone bust.
0:12:34 > 0:12:36HG Wells would use that experience
0:12:36 > 0:12:40when he came to write his novel Kipps - The Story Of A Simple Soul,
0:12:40 > 0:12:41about a draper's assistant
0:12:41 > 0:12:46who comes into money and goes up a notch or two and is all at sea.
0:12:46 > 0:12:49He doesn't know what to do, this is a new culture.
0:12:49 > 0:12:51He seeks help, he wants the particulars.
0:12:51 > 0:12:54Kipps's misadventures were hugely popular
0:12:54 > 0:12:57and the book was, later, turned into a film, starring Michael Redgrave,
0:12:57 > 0:12:59which caught the social vulnerability
0:12:59 > 0:13:02of the innocent, lower-middle class hero.
0:13:02 > 0:13:04You, erm,
0:13:04 > 0:13:06you really think I could become a gentleman?
0:13:06 > 0:13:09You owe it to your position, my dear Kipps.
0:13:09 > 0:13:14You mean, I ought to get with educated people who know how to do things properly?
0:13:14 > 0:13:17So, say, if I wanted to call on someone I could know how to behave.
0:13:17 > 0:13:19That and other things.
0:13:19 > 0:13:21Being a gentleman is a full-time occupation, I'm afraid.
0:13:21 > 0:13:23I can see that.
0:13:25 > 0:13:29Wells had seen social disaster in the fate of his parents.
0:13:29 > 0:13:30He also saw upper-class life
0:13:30 > 0:13:34when his mother took a job as a housekeeper, here, at Uppark House.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37Kipling might paper over the idea of class conflict.
0:13:37 > 0:13:41Wells would see only the chasm between the classes.
0:13:41 > 0:13:43He saw the skull beneath the skin.
0:13:43 > 0:13:49Wells's views on class are most clearly seen in his science fiction.
0:13:49 > 0:13:52But the future Wells predicted for the human race
0:13:52 > 0:13:55was a dark and bleak one with savage class divisions.
0:13:58 > 0:14:00This mural is in Bromley High Street,
0:14:00 > 0:14:02just across the road from where HG Wells was born.
0:14:02 > 0:14:04And it celebrates Charles Darwin,
0:14:04 > 0:14:07a man who changed the way we look at the world.
0:14:07 > 0:14:10He lived nearby at Down House.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13Wells studied evolution under TH Huxley,
0:14:13 > 0:14:15a close disciple of Darwin's.
0:14:15 > 0:14:18And his idea of evolution,
0:14:18 > 0:14:21when it came into contact with his acute consciousness
0:14:21 > 0:14:25of class divisions, painted a chilling view of our society.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28What it was and what it might become.
0:14:32 > 0:14:35In the book The Time Machine,
0:14:35 > 0:14:39the traveller is transported thousands of years into the future
0:14:39 > 0:14:42to find that the upper and lower classes have now evolved
0:14:42 > 0:14:45into virtually different species.
0:14:46 > 0:14:50The sybaritic Eloi living on the surface.
0:14:50 > 0:14:54The industrious and vicious Morlocks labouring beneath it.
0:15:09 > 0:15:13You say of the Elois and Morlocks in The Time Machine of HG Wells,
0:15:13 > 0:15:16you wrote, "Wells sees them as the logical culmination
0:15:16 > 0:15:18"of existing tendencies."
0:15:18 > 0:15:21What were those tendencies and do you think he was right?
0:15:21 > 0:15:27It is a very peculiar thing that these great prophets of the future
0:15:27 > 0:15:32in literature, HG Wells and Aldous Huxley and George Orwell,
0:15:32 > 0:15:39all foresee, foresaw the future as sharply divided by class.
0:15:39 > 0:15:45While the politicians were saying, "We're all going to be one big happy family, the class war is over,"
0:15:45 > 0:15:48the writers were saying, "No, no,
0:15:48 > 0:15:54"the tendencies of modern society are to divide people more strongly."
0:15:54 > 0:15:57I don't know whether you could say they're more prescient
0:15:57 > 0:16:02or whether it's just a, kind of, they like to, kind of,
0:16:02 > 0:16:03unnerve their readers
0:16:03 > 0:16:06and say it's not going to be as nice as you think.
0:16:06 > 0:16:08In another novel, The Dream,
0:16:08 > 0:16:11which, again, seesaws between the present and the future,
0:16:11 > 0:16:16he has a drunken, failed shopkeeper tell his pal about the miners.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20"'These 'ere miners are paid and paid 'andsomely,' he said."
0:16:20 > 0:16:25Sorry about the accent. "'Paid 'andsomely they are. 'Andsomely.
0:16:25 > 0:16:28"'Why, I'd be glad of the pay they get, glad of it.
0:16:28 > 0:16:32"'They 'as bulldogs, they 'as pianos. Champagne.
0:16:32 > 0:16:35"'You and me, Smith, me and you and the middle classes generally,
0:16:35 > 0:16:38"'we don't get pianos. We don't get champagne.
0:16:38 > 0:16:42"'Ought to be a Middle Classes Union,' said my father.
0:16:42 > 0:16:44"'Keep these 'ere workers in their places.'"
0:16:54 > 0:16:57Who were these workers, these failed bogeymen
0:16:57 > 0:17:00who froze the imagination of the middle class?
0:17:00 > 0:17:02Most of the upper and middle class thought the working class
0:17:02 > 0:17:06had nothing that could be called culture.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09The working classes, what did they own? What did they make?
0:17:09 > 0:17:11What did they consume?
0:17:17 > 0:17:20Well, they didn't earn much in material terms.
0:17:20 > 0:17:22But they did earn a sense of themselves as communities
0:17:22 > 0:17:26and that was underpinned by the common and participating culture
0:17:26 > 0:17:28they made in music, for a start.
0:17:31 > 0:17:39# Jesu, joy of man's desiring. #
0:17:42 > 0:17:45In Wales and across the land, the people sang.
0:17:45 > 0:17:49Choirs were a rich seam in working-class culture.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00And there were the brass bands, the orchestras of the working class.
0:18:00 > 0:18:03Each colliery and many factories had a band attached.
0:18:03 > 0:18:04And they, like the choirs,
0:18:04 > 0:18:08made no concessions in the quality of the music they played.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11Some of the great composers of the day wrote for them.
0:18:11 > 0:18:13Holst, Vaughan Williams and Elgar.
0:18:13 > 0:18:17# Near, far
0:18:17 > 0:18:21# Wherever you are. #
0:18:21 > 0:18:25And there was craft. Working men and women made things.
0:18:25 > 0:18:28Beautiful things. Whether it was ironwork for a balcony,
0:18:28 > 0:18:30a ceramic pot or intricate marquetry
0:18:30 > 0:18:34for the inside of an ocean liner.
0:18:34 > 0:18:38# You open the door
0:18:38 > 0:18:42# And you're here in my heart
0:18:42 > 0:18:45# And my heart will go on. #
0:18:45 > 0:18:49And behind this was a network of institutions and associations.
0:18:49 > 0:18:51There were the non-conformist chapels,
0:18:51 > 0:18:53often built by the workers themselves,
0:18:53 > 0:18:57providing a rich culture through religion.
0:18:57 > 0:19:00They set up Sunday schools, there were sports,
0:19:00 > 0:19:05there were reading rooms and the Mechanics' Institute.
0:19:05 > 0:19:10But we shouldn't be too sentimental, there were classes within classes.
0:19:10 > 0:19:14To enjoy the culture I've described, you needed access to community,
0:19:14 > 0:19:18a decent wage and leisure. And not everyone had those.
0:19:18 > 0:19:21Two of my great grandmothers were in Middlesbrough,
0:19:21 > 0:19:25bringing up very large families on a very inadequate income.
0:19:25 > 0:19:29The town was very much the iron industry
0:19:29 > 0:19:32and there was no work for the women, basically.
0:19:32 > 0:19:36The men, if they were unskilled or semi-skilled,
0:19:36 > 0:19:39often reached their maximum earning capacity
0:19:39 > 0:19:42when they were very young men. And what happened after that,
0:19:42 > 0:19:45they set up house on 23 shillings a week.
0:19:45 > 0:19:48One child after another arrived.
0:19:48 > 0:19:50If the man was injured at work,
0:19:50 > 0:19:53and injuries in the iron industry were extremely frequent,
0:19:53 > 0:19:57the family was very quickly faced with absolute destitution.
0:19:57 > 0:20:01So, when we're talking about culture with regard to the unskilled workers
0:20:01 > 0:20:03and the lower-skilled workers, what are we talking about?
0:20:03 > 0:20:06Why does it feature at all in your description?
0:20:06 > 0:20:08Scarcely at all, I'm afraid.
0:20:08 > 0:20:10In the early years of the marriage,
0:20:10 > 0:20:13where I think the children were arriving
0:20:13 > 0:20:17one a year or one every two years, and money was particularly tight,
0:20:17 > 0:20:19and the woman's health was generally poor,
0:20:19 > 0:20:22I think there was very little going on
0:20:22 > 0:20:26that most people would call culture. I mean, there was some. I mean,
0:20:26 > 0:20:29I don't really see why neighbourhood talk and gossip
0:20:29 > 0:20:33should be excluded from culture. There'd be football, perhaps.
0:20:33 > 0:20:36And perhaps a very, very occasional visit to the musical hall.
0:20:36 > 0:20:39Though I rather doubt that in some of these families.
0:20:39 > 0:20:43The working class at that time could and did nourish genius.
0:20:43 > 0:20:47Thomas Hardy, for instance, and DH Lawrence.
0:20:47 > 0:20:49He was brought up in that mining community,
0:20:49 > 0:20:51the community that we've been talking about.
0:20:51 > 0:20:54And he added to it by going towards culture.
0:20:54 > 0:20:56He read more and more widely
0:20:56 > 0:20:59and took on an intellectual view of society.
0:20:59 > 0:21:02He painted, he drew. He went to cathedrals and museums.
0:21:02 > 0:21:05He drew in as much as he could from that base.
0:21:05 > 0:21:10But inside that there's always class and an interest in sex
0:21:10 > 0:21:13and the sexual politics of class and love.
0:21:13 > 0:21:16And the feeling that the world had to be explored
0:21:16 > 0:21:18from where he started.
0:21:18 > 0:21:22Lawrence fused a working-class imagination
0:21:22 > 0:21:25which would be taken up and fired by young men and women
0:21:25 > 0:21:29in the cultural revolution of the '50s and '60s.
0:21:31 > 0:21:33In the Great War, men and women of all classes
0:21:33 > 0:21:36answered the call to serve their country.
0:21:38 > 0:21:43In the response, there seemed to be unanimity across the classes.
0:21:43 > 0:21:45Common purpose.
0:21:45 > 0:21:48Private WB Owens spoke for many -
0:21:48 > 0:21:49he was one of the Liverpool Pals
0:21:49 > 0:21:53who joined up with a gang of his friends - when he wrote,
0:21:53 > 0:21:58"Well, we're away at last and, though no-one feels,
0:21:58 > 0:22:01"it's a solemn occasion to be in England for perhaps the last time.
0:22:01 > 0:22:04"I think the predominant feeling in every chap's heart,
0:22:04 > 0:22:07"in mine, at any rate, is one of pride and great content
0:22:07 > 0:22:11"at being chosen to fight and endure for our dear ones
0:22:11 > 0:22:13"and the whole country."
0:22:16 > 0:22:21There was common purpose but the class system went to war too.
0:22:21 > 0:22:26Officers could suffer from shell shock, men were shot for cowardice.
0:22:26 > 0:22:30The officers were, on average, five inches taller than the men.
0:22:30 > 0:22:34And the officers had a servant at the front
0:22:34 > 0:22:36just as they'd had servants at home.
0:22:36 > 0:22:40Behind the lines, the officers slept in the farmhouses.
0:22:40 > 0:22:44I'm not saying it was comfortable, but the men slept in the barns if they were lucky
0:22:44 > 0:22:48and, you know, they were out in the field if they weren't lucky.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51So, the whole thing was completely different.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01But did that intense experience of sharing the danger
0:23:01 > 0:23:03actually weaken the class system?
0:23:03 > 0:23:05And what culture came out of it?
0:23:07 > 0:23:12Officers, many of them upper-class, even aristocratic, were expected to lead from the front.
0:23:12 > 0:23:16And they did and their rate of attrition was terrible.
0:23:18 > 0:23:20While the generals would be vilified,
0:23:20 > 0:23:23many officers, coming into contact with working-class men
0:23:23 > 0:23:26for the first time, acted with a grace and humanity
0:23:26 > 0:23:29not always associated with their class.
0:23:30 > 0:23:32This is Second Lieutenant Stephen Hewitt.
0:23:32 > 0:23:36One of his duties was to censor men's letters.
0:23:39 > 0:23:43"Naturally, there are many quietly funny things in the men's letters
0:23:43 > 0:23:44"which we have to censor.
0:23:44 > 0:23:48"But they often blend with true pathos, courage and nobility.
0:23:48 > 0:23:51"What a lesson it is to read the thoughts of men,
0:23:51 > 0:23:54"often as refined and sensitive as we have been made
0:23:54 > 0:23:56"by advantage of birth and education,
0:23:56 > 0:24:00"yet living under conditions much harder and more disgusting
0:24:00 > 0:24:02"than my own."
0:24:02 > 0:24:07# If you want to find the private I know where he is. #
0:24:07 > 0:24:11In the ranks, a mordant culture did grow up, expressed in songs,
0:24:11 > 0:24:14cartoons and even trench newspapers.
0:24:14 > 0:24:16# I know where he is
0:24:16 > 0:24:19# He's hanging on the old barbed wire
0:24:19 > 0:24:21# I saw him
0:24:21 > 0:24:23# I saw him. #
0:24:23 > 0:24:27Some men used their peacetime skills while waiting to go over the top.
0:24:27 > 0:24:32They made objects that would later be called trench art.
0:24:34 > 0:24:37And then, there were the recorders and observers from the middle class
0:24:37 > 0:24:42who were often shaken out of their class loyalties by this experience.
0:24:44 > 0:24:46The middle-class painters and poets set themselves
0:24:46 > 0:24:51to find and express the deep themes in the horror of the Great War.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57Some of the group of painters who'd studied at the Slade,
0:24:57 > 0:24:59including Stanley Spencer and Paul Nash,
0:24:59 > 0:25:02went to the front as official war artists.
0:25:02 > 0:25:06Their former professor Henry Tonks made paintings of wounded faces
0:25:06 > 0:25:08to assist plastic surgeons.
0:25:12 > 0:25:14In some cases, like Richard Nevinson,
0:25:14 > 0:25:17painters abandoned the new styles they'd picked up such as Vorticism
0:25:17 > 0:25:20and returned to a simpler, more direct style,
0:25:20 > 0:25:24more in keeping, they thought, with the horrors of war.
0:25:25 > 0:25:29One of the most powerful paintings to come out of the First World War
0:25:29 > 0:25:33was, rather surprisingly, painted by the fashionable artist
0:25:33 > 0:25:35John Singer Sargent.
0:25:35 > 0:25:38He left the drawing rooms of London
0:25:38 > 0:25:40and went to the battlefield in France to paint this.
0:26:01 > 0:26:06"If I should die, think only this of me
0:26:06 > 0:26:09"That there's some corner of a foreign field
0:26:09 > 0:26:12"That is for ever England."
0:26:12 > 0:26:15Rupert Brooke died of septicaemia in 1915.
0:26:15 > 0:26:20His poem lasted. It came out of an aristocratic, chivalric tradition.
0:26:20 > 0:26:22But there was a new tradition.
0:26:22 > 0:26:24The realism of the middle-class writers
0:26:24 > 0:26:27who would not conceal their disgust.
0:26:30 > 0:26:33"If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
0:26:33 > 0:26:35"Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
0:26:35 > 0:26:38"Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
0:26:38 > 0:26:42"Of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues
0:26:42 > 0:26:45"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
0:26:45 > 0:26:48"To children ardent for some desperate glory
0:26:48 > 0:26:49"The old Lie
0:26:49 > 0:26:53"Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori."
0:26:57 > 0:27:01Early in the war, the decision was taken not to bring back
0:27:01 > 0:27:02any bodies from the front.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15Mourning would have to be done at a distance.
0:27:17 > 0:27:22Monuments like this by Charles Jagger would have to serve at home.
0:27:22 > 0:27:27One in three of all the men aged between 20 and 24 in 1911
0:27:27 > 0:27:31was now dead, including Kipling's son, Jack.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36But had the terrible sacrifices done anything
0:27:36 > 0:27:39to break down divisions between the classes?
0:27:39 > 0:27:43There was a shifting of the class sands after the Great War
0:27:43 > 0:27:45but it wasn't a tectonic shift.
0:27:45 > 0:27:49The equality of the trenches and the immense symbolism
0:27:49 > 0:27:52of the fallen being buried together in the war graves,
0:27:52 > 0:27:55whether they were officers, squaddies,
0:27:55 > 0:27:58non-commissioned officers, was very, very powerful indeed.
0:27:58 > 0:28:00But, once they were demobbed,
0:28:00 > 0:28:05went back into the great industrial bastions of the big cities,
0:28:05 > 0:28:08this huge, manufacturing base that we still had,
0:28:08 > 0:28:09there were the old divisions.
0:28:09 > 0:28:13The Kaiser and the violence of that war
0:28:13 > 0:28:16brought about an enforced equality but it was temporary.
0:28:16 > 0:28:19It was temporary but nothing was quite the same again.
0:28:19 > 0:28:22Religious faith had sapped powerfully,
0:28:22 > 0:28:25never to be restored in terms of church attendance.
0:28:25 > 0:28:28Plus, the homes fit for heroes that Lloyd George promised
0:28:28 > 0:28:29that didn't materialise.
0:28:29 > 0:28:32The returning of unemployment within two, two and half years
0:28:32 > 0:28:33on a grand scale.
0:28:33 > 0:28:38All this led to a deeply embittered home front
0:28:38 > 0:28:40to which the soldiers returned.
0:28:42 > 0:28:47There had been changes but great social gaps still remained.
0:28:47 > 0:28:50The one thing every class in the United Kingdom shared
0:28:50 > 0:28:53in the 1920s was anxiety.
0:28:53 > 0:28:57The upper class had lost sons, brothers, fathers.
0:28:57 > 0:29:01Now they lost land. Hundreds of thousands of acres changed hands
0:29:01 > 0:29:03as death duties soared.
0:29:03 > 0:29:08The bereaved middle classes, too, faced economic uncertainty.
0:29:08 > 0:29:12They worried that the Revolution in Russia would spread west.
0:29:12 > 0:29:16For the workers, disillusionment with promises made and broken,
0:29:16 > 0:29:19the fear and reality of unemployment.
0:29:19 > 0:29:24This insecurity bred tension and fear between the classes.
0:29:28 > 0:29:33In 1921, the poet TS Eliot used to visit this shelter in Margate.
0:29:33 > 0:29:36He was trying to recover from a nervous breakdown.
0:29:36 > 0:29:38He was also composing the poem The Waste Land
0:29:38 > 0:29:42which, more than any other, would express the nihilism of the time,
0:29:42 > 0:29:45the very opposite of Kipling.
0:29:45 > 0:29:50"On Margate Sands I can connect
0:29:50 > 0:29:51"Nothing with nothing
0:29:51 > 0:29:55"The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
0:29:55 > 0:30:00"My people humble people who expect Nothing."
0:30:00 > 0:30:04"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
0:30:04 > 0:30:06"Out of this stony rubbish?"
0:30:06 > 0:30:09That line and a half in The Waste Land from Eliot
0:30:09 > 0:30:11summed up, for many people, what had happened to this country
0:30:11 > 0:30:14after the devastations of the First World War.
0:30:14 > 0:30:17Eliot was on his way to becoming a naturalised Englishman,
0:30:17 > 0:30:20a high Anglican, at the top of the literary
0:30:20 > 0:30:23and poetic hierarchy of this country
0:30:23 > 0:30:25which matched the hierarchy of the classes.
0:30:25 > 0:30:27Eliot's first title for this poem
0:30:27 > 0:30:29was taken from Our Mutual Friend in Dickens,
0:30:29 > 0:30:31He Do The Police In Different Voices,
0:30:31 > 0:30:35and it's full of different voices. Esoteric, literary, philosophical,
0:30:35 > 0:30:39mythological, ravishing for any adolescent of any background
0:30:39 > 0:30:41who could read, who read it.
0:30:41 > 0:30:44And, at one stage, he attempts, rather patronisingly I think,
0:30:44 > 0:30:48rather superficially even, a working-class conversation.
0:30:48 > 0:30:51"When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said
0:30:51 > 0:30:54"I didn't mince my words I said to her myself
0:30:54 > 0:30:56"Hurry up please it's time
0:30:56 > 0:31:00"Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart
0:31:00 > 0:31:03"He'll want to know what you've done with that money he gave you
0:31:03 > 0:31:07"To get yourself some teeth He did, I was there."
0:31:07 > 0:31:09Eliot himself was middle-class.
0:31:09 > 0:31:12He worked part of his life in a bank and in a publishing company.
0:31:12 > 0:31:16He was a friend of the intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Set
0:31:16 > 0:31:18which included Virginia Woolf.
0:31:18 > 0:31:23You quote Virginia Woolf on the Armistice Day celebrations,
0:31:23 > 0:31:26saying, "The London poor with their hideous voices and clothes
0:31:26 > 0:31:29"and bad teeth make one doubt whether any decent life
0:31:29 > 0:31:31"will ever be possible.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34"Or whether it matters if we're at war or at peace."
0:31:34 > 0:31:36I shouldn't imagine that wasn't commonly thought
0:31:36 > 0:31:39but it was thought, emphatically, by a serious number of intellectuals.
0:31:39 > 0:31:44It's very odd, it seems to be confined to intellectuals,
0:31:44 > 0:31:47particularly intellectuals who regarded themselves
0:31:47 > 0:31:49as socialists and wanting to see,
0:31:49 > 0:31:51you know, social improvements.
0:31:51 > 0:31:54I can't get to the bottom of it. You know, if you read poetry
0:31:54 > 0:32:00and novels, particularly the great novels of the mid-19th century,
0:32:00 > 0:32:05they're full of sympathy and often respect for the poor.
0:32:05 > 0:32:10Then, suddenly, Modernism appears to carry with it this strange,
0:32:10 > 0:32:16kind of, vicious side and a wish to draw away from the masses
0:32:16 > 0:32:22and to regard them as the enemies of civilisation.
0:32:22 > 0:32:26The working class was taking a cultural hammering.
0:32:26 > 0:32:28Maybe it was fear of their potential strengths.
0:32:28 > 0:32:31In the mid-'20s, the author Warwick Deeping,
0:32:31 > 0:32:33a former doctor and wartime officer,
0:32:33 > 0:32:36wrote a book that spoke for the fearful middle classes
0:32:36 > 0:32:39and re-voiced that revulsion of the working class
0:32:39 > 0:32:41expressed by HG Wells.
0:32:43 > 0:32:47Sorrell And Son was a blockbuster of the '20s and '30s.
0:32:47 > 0:32:51It went into 41 editions and it was filmed twice.
0:32:51 > 0:32:56A remarkably faithful television series was made in the 1980s.
0:32:56 > 0:33:00The novel, according to one critic, achieved talismanic status
0:33:00 > 0:33:03among its middle-class and lower-middle-class readers.
0:33:03 > 0:33:07Shall I go to school at Staunton?
0:33:07 > 0:33:11Of course. I expect there'll be a grammar school.
0:33:11 > 0:33:14Will it be a gentleman's school?
0:33:14 > 0:33:16Oh, yes.
0:33:16 > 0:33:20Stephen Sorrell had been an officer in the war.
0:33:20 > 0:33:24His wife has left him for a richer man and he can't find a job in London.
0:33:24 > 0:33:28Desperate to care for his son and educate him as a gentleman,
0:33:28 > 0:33:33he finally takes a job well below his class as a hotel porter.
0:33:33 > 0:33:37Sorrell is bitter about the profiteers who sat out the war
0:33:37 > 0:33:39but he has another target.
0:33:39 > 0:33:43Sorrell and, I presume, Warwick Deeping's real venom
0:33:43 > 0:33:48is reserved for the working class, who he sees as brutes getting ready for a class war.
0:33:48 > 0:33:50Perhaps this was what made his books so popular.
0:33:50 > 0:33:54Kit is the victim of a class-based attack
0:33:54 > 0:33:57and the author pulls no punches.
0:33:57 > 0:34:00"Sorrell had seen that these sons of working men hated
0:34:00 > 0:34:04"the son of an ex-officer.
0:34:04 > 0:34:09"They hated his face, his voice, his pride, his very good temper.
0:34:09 > 0:34:13"They hated him for his differences, his innocent superiorities.
0:34:13 > 0:34:18"Hatred, a cheaply educated hatred, was loose in the world."
0:34:18 > 0:34:21In Sorrell And Son, class issues come to be crystallised
0:34:21 > 0:34:24around the matter of Kit's education.
0:34:24 > 0:34:28- Would I get cricket at the grammar school?- You would.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31But there's one thing we must face.
0:34:31 > 0:34:35You'd be the son of a porter at the Angel Hotel.
0:34:35 > 0:34:38They might refuse to take you.
0:34:38 > 0:34:40That's my fault, not yours.
0:34:40 > 0:34:45Between 1911 and 1947, education was the most powerful motor
0:34:45 > 0:34:48in shoring up and challenging the class system.
0:34:48 > 0:34:50Between the '20s and '40s,
0:34:50 > 0:34:54successive governments tried to change the state educational system,
0:34:54 > 0:34:57which looked after 75% of the population.
0:34:57 > 0:35:00It was a big job. There were board schools, council schools,
0:35:00 > 0:35:04local-authority-funded schools, church-funded, community-funded.
0:35:04 > 0:35:08No-one argued against the goal of creating a ladder of opportunity
0:35:08 > 0:35:10but no-one quite knew how to achieve it.
0:35:10 > 0:35:15Above the struggle, the public schools sailed on serenely.
0:35:15 > 0:35:19They continued to prepare their pupils for lives in government,
0:35:19 > 0:35:23in empire, the law. Yet, from the middle of the 19th century,
0:35:23 > 0:35:26the time of Tom Brown's Schooldays,
0:35:26 > 0:35:28the public schools had managed to find a place
0:35:28 > 0:35:30in the public's affections and even in popular culture.
0:35:30 > 0:35:34Greyfriars School and its cheery pupils lead their carefree lives
0:35:34 > 0:35:37in the comic The Magnet for almost 40 years.
0:35:39 > 0:35:41The debates about reforming state education
0:35:41 > 0:35:43and what to do with the public schools rumbled on
0:35:43 > 0:35:47but they would become crucial in the Second World War
0:35:47 > 0:35:48when people had to decide
0:35:48 > 0:35:51what sort of society they wanted after that war.
0:36:03 > 0:36:05But it wasn't all dissension and class conflict.
0:36:05 > 0:36:10After the War, everybody wanted to find a place they could have fun.
0:36:11 > 0:36:14In 1919, ragtime raged in from America
0:36:14 > 0:36:16and there was an explosion in public dancing.
0:36:16 > 0:36:18Everybody wanted to do it.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21And they took to the dance floor, the dustman and the duke.
0:36:21 > 0:36:24Though, not always the same dance floor.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28The Original Dixieland Jazz Band played a sensational residency
0:36:28 > 0:36:32at the fashionable Savoy Hotel in London in the same year.
0:36:32 > 0:36:35The first Palais doors opened in Hammersmith
0:36:35 > 0:36:39and working-class people cascaded onto the floor.
0:36:39 > 0:36:43The working classes, those feral masses,
0:36:43 > 0:36:44turned out to be stylish dancers,
0:36:44 > 0:36:47well-dressed, well-mannered, cultivated.
0:36:47 > 0:36:51The working class was, literally, on the move.
0:36:51 > 0:36:54Upper, middle and lower classes might have found new common ground.
0:36:54 > 0:36:56Ballet and opera might have been exclusive,
0:36:56 > 0:36:59books might have been mainly for the middles,
0:36:59 > 0:37:01but everyone could go dancing.
0:37:01 > 0:37:05And for the next 30 years, dance music and public dancing
0:37:05 > 0:37:07became popular across the nation.
0:37:07 > 0:37:09It was a great unifier of class.
0:37:18 > 0:37:23Everyone, everyone went ballroom dancing.
0:37:23 > 0:37:29It's where probably 90% of people of my age's parents first met.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32It did come in as a great invasion, partly from America, didn't it?
0:37:32 > 0:37:35And the idea of, people had a little bit more money
0:37:35 > 0:37:37and then the clever people built the great ballrooms
0:37:37 > 0:37:39which are sort of dancing palaces.
0:37:39 > 0:37:42They must have been amazing for people from ordinary backgrounds
0:37:42 > 0:37:45to go into these, palaces like the great cinema palaces, weren't they?
0:37:45 > 0:37:48Wonderful. Yeah, no, you go into the Empress Ballroom
0:37:48 > 0:37:51or the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, and you look up.
0:37:51 > 0:37:55These are people that are probably living in tenements,
0:37:55 > 0:37:56all the buildings around and about
0:37:56 > 0:37:59and suddenly you're in this most palatial place.
0:37:59 > 0:38:02You have the band, the orchestra.
0:38:02 > 0:38:06You've got a chance to get hold of a girl
0:38:06 > 0:38:11and smooch around and maybe a slight touching of the bosom. Oh, come on.
0:38:13 > 0:38:16I can see her now, a couple of mates, in we go,
0:38:16 > 0:38:20"Phew, she looks good over there, going to go and...
0:38:20 > 0:38:23"May I have the pleasure of this dance?" "Of course..."
0:38:23 > 0:38:27Fabulous! Who wouldn't love it?
0:38:28 > 0:38:30Do you think it was a class thing
0:38:30 > 0:38:33that was mostly for working class, lower-middle class, that end?
0:38:33 > 0:38:36My dad, who was a keen ballroom dancer, as I say, met my mum.
0:38:36 > 0:38:40He would say it was mostly the working class.
0:38:40 > 0:38:44You'd finish work and you'd get home and you'd scrub your nails
0:38:44 > 0:38:47to get them clean and put your best stuff on and off you'd go.
0:38:47 > 0:38:51And he had a regime, as long as the money lasted,
0:38:51 > 0:38:54Monday nights he'd be at the Orchid, Purley,
0:38:54 > 0:38:56Tuesdays he'd be at the Royal, Tottenham,
0:38:56 > 0:39:00Wednesday he'd go to the Hammersmith Palais, and so they'd go.
0:39:00 > 0:39:04- Was there anything left for Friday? - No, no, by then...- Bated breath. - They were skint by then.
0:39:06 > 0:39:09And if you weren't going dancing for your night out,
0:39:09 > 0:39:11you were probably going to the pictures.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16The flicks, the movies, the pictures,
0:39:16 > 0:39:19the other form of popular culture that everybody enjoyed.
0:39:19 > 0:39:23I'm standing at the epicentre of cinema-going in Britain,
0:39:23 > 0:39:29in Churchgate in Bolton. Around me, there were once 47 cinemas.
0:39:29 > 0:39:31There was The Royal, The Regal, The Queens.
0:39:31 > 0:39:34We had loads of cinemas in the town.
0:39:34 > 0:39:38What was it like on a Friday and Saturday night when you had all those cinemas here?
0:39:38 > 0:39:40Oh, it was fantastic. It was lovely.
0:39:40 > 0:39:44And, they had two houses and there's one early, just after six o'clock,
0:39:44 > 0:39:46and then another after eight.
0:39:46 > 0:39:50So, of course, people'd come for their tea and then go to the show
0:39:50 > 0:39:53and the people waiting to go to the second show
0:39:53 > 0:39:58would come and eat and then queue up to go into the Grand or the Theatre.
0:39:58 > 0:40:01This street was the very centre of it.
0:40:01 > 0:40:04This was the equivalent of Bolton's Golden Mile.
0:40:04 > 0:40:07So, you'd have the Grand Theatre behind us,
0:40:07 > 0:40:09the Theatre Royal, the Capital Theatre,
0:40:09 > 0:40:12the Regal right at the end of the street,
0:40:12 > 0:40:16the Hippodrome and the Embassy.
0:40:16 > 0:40:20So, all the way up here would be absolutely chock-a-block with people
0:40:20 > 0:40:21visiting the cinema.
0:40:24 > 0:40:27And there's not one left in this street now?
0:40:27 > 0:40:30Unfortunately, not one left in the town centre.
0:40:30 > 0:40:32All of them have gone.
0:40:32 > 0:40:34Bolton was a mill town.
0:40:34 > 0:40:37People laboured long hours in difficult conditions.
0:40:37 > 0:40:40When they went home it could be to overcrowded, cold,
0:40:40 > 0:40:42uncomfortable houses.
0:40:42 > 0:40:46The picture house was warm, cheap and glamorous.
0:40:46 > 0:40:49Working-class people didn't have a lot of choice in their lives
0:40:49 > 0:40:53but they could choose what they wanted to enjoy when they weren't working.
0:40:53 > 0:40:55And they wanted to enjoy the cinema.
0:40:55 > 0:41:00And, at the cinema, they wanted to enjoy, most of all, American films.
0:41:05 > 0:41:07For Bolton cinema-goers and working-class audiences
0:41:07 > 0:41:09around the country,
0:41:09 > 0:41:12the heroes they mostly wanted were cowboys or gangsters.
0:41:12 > 0:41:16Dangerous broads rather than society ladies.
0:41:16 > 0:41:20In American films, they found an energy, excitement and, above all,
0:41:20 > 0:41:23a classlessness missing from most of the films made here.
0:41:25 > 0:41:28But the middle classes and the upper classes also went to the cinema.
0:41:28 > 0:41:31Middle-class writers and directors would make the films
0:41:31 > 0:41:33and the upper classes were besotted by them.
0:41:33 > 0:41:36It was a form of cultural equality.
0:41:36 > 0:41:39From the late '20s, there were new voices available,
0:41:39 > 0:41:40mostly from the wireless.
0:41:40 > 0:41:44These immediately fell into the old, established ways.
0:41:44 > 0:41:47'Leicestershire and Yorkshire at Leicester.
0:41:47 > 0:41:50'Yorkshire 365, Leyland made 153.'
0:41:50 > 0:41:55In 1932, the British Broadcasting Corporation, funded by all of us
0:41:55 > 0:41:58through the licence fee, moved into its new headquarters, here,
0:41:58 > 0:42:00at Broadcasting House.
0:42:04 > 0:42:08There was a need for a voice to unify classes and cultures.
0:42:08 > 0:42:11Now there was the institution which could do it.
0:42:11 > 0:42:13But did it do that?
0:42:15 > 0:42:20The BBC's tone came from its Director General, the flinty Scot John Reith,
0:42:20 > 0:42:24whose values were, and appealed to, that solid middle class.
0:42:24 > 0:42:27The BBC was the sound of the Establishment,
0:42:27 > 0:42:29giving the public,
0:42:29 > 0:42:32as he put it, slightly better than it now thinks it likes.
0:42:32 > 0:42:38# The weird sisters, hand in hand. #
0:42:38 > 0:42:41Reith's intention was that the BBC should impose culture
0:42:41 > 0:42:42from the top down.
0:42:42 > 0:42:46It should be, as he said, "Authoritative, impartial
0:42:46 > 0:42:50"and embody the best in the values of the educated classes."
0:42:50 > 0:42:53But he never went onto explain why the values of the educated classes
0:42:53 > 0:42:55should have such national domination.
0:42:59 > 0:43:03That's not to say there weren't programmes for people of every class to enjoy.
0:43:03 > 0:43:07Popular music, for instance, played by the best bands and orchestras
0:43:07 > 0:43:10was relayed from London's top hotels.
0:43:10 > 0:43:13Variety shows soon started, as did coverage of sports.
0:43:16 > 0:43:18Yet, despite this spread,
0:43:18 > 0:43:22the BBC, staffed almost exclusively by public school boys,
0:43:22 > 0:43:26was, in its official voice, a narrow, rather than a broad-caster.
0:43:30 > 0:43:32Famously, from 1924,
0:43:32 > 0:43:34radio announcers wore dinner jackets to read the news.
0:43:34 > 0:43:39And, in 1926, an advisory committee on spoken English decreed that,
0:43:39 > 0:43:41"A form of educated English,
0:43:41 > 0:43:44"which would fall within a narrow band of southern English,
0:43:44 > 0:43:46"should be the sound of the BBC."
0:43:46 > 0:43:50Now we're taking you over to Montreal, where Captain Bisset
0:43:50 > 0:43:55of the Ascania will describe last week's rescue in Mid-Atlantic.
0:43:55 > 0:43:57It would be some years before the BBC would live up
0:43:57 > 0:44:01to its licence-fee obligation to speak to and for all the nation.
0:44:08 > 0:44:13Two passages from successful novels published in the early '30s in Britain
0:44:13 > 0:44:16show the difference of experience between the classes.
0:44:16 > 0:44:21The first is from Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies.
0:44:21 > 0:44:25"Masked parties, savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties,
0:44:25 > 0:44:28"Wild West parties, Russian parties,
0:44:28 > 0:44:32"parties at Oxford where everyone drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes.
0:44:32 > 0:44:35"Dull dances in London, comic dances in Scotland
0:44:35 > 0:44:38"and disgusting dances in Paris.
0:44:38 > 0:44:42"All that succession and repetition of mass humanity.
0:44:42 > 0:44:44"Those vile bodies."
0:44:44 > 0:44:47Waugh was a middle-class writer who'd adopted the upper classes.
0:44:47 > 0:44:50He went on to write Brideshead Revisited.
0:44:50 > 0:44:53Other writers, like the working-class Walter Greenwood,
0:44:53 > 0:44:56were beginning to turn to the plight of those at the bottom of society.
0:45:02 > 0:45:05"Nothing to do with time Nothing to spend
0:45:05 > 0:45:07"Nothing to do tomorrow or the day after
0:45:07 > 0:45:10"Nothing to wear, can't get married
0:45:10 > 0:45:12"A living corpse
0:45:12 > 0:45:16"A unit of the spectral army of three million lost men."
0:45:25 > 0:45:27In 1936, the future QC Lord Hutchinson
0:45:27 > 0:45:30had just left his public school.
0:45:30 > 0:45:32You witnessed the Jarrow March.
0:45:32 > 0:45:37Could you look back and say that had a challenging and an important affect on your life?
0:45:37 > 0:45:38Yes, an enormous affect.
0:45:38 > 0:45:40One's experience
0:45:40 > 0:45:44as a public school boy living in the South,
0:45:44 > 0:45:48we had no experience of the North at all.
0:45:48 > 0:45:52And the Jarrow marchers going past,
0:45:52 > 0:45:56all with their caps on and their haggard appearance
0:45:56 > 0:46:00and what they'd gone through made a tremendous impression on me.
0:46:00 > 0:46:04And so, were you seeing another part of the country for the first time?
0:46:04 > 0:46:07- Yes, really.- The, sort of, hidden nine tenths.
0:46:07 > 0:46:09Yes, exactly.
0:46:09 > 0:46:11I mean, one didn't know about the North.
0:46:11 > 0:46:16I mean, my nanny came from Newcastle in the North
0:46:16 > 0:46:20and, therefore, I knew a lot from her about how people lived
0:46:20 > 0:46:27on the Tyne and so on but I never went there, until leaving Oxford.
0:46:29 > 0:46:32Events like the Jarrow March forced the nation
0:46:32 > 0:46:35to look at the kind of lives some of its people were living.
0:46:35 > 0:46:38People who were demanding a better life.
0:46:38 > 0:46:42There'd always been those who'd taken an interest in the lives of the lower classes.
0:46:42 > 0:46:45Now there grew up a new movement, which at times lamented
0:46:45 > 0:46:48but at times celebrated the life and work
0:46:48 > 0:46:51of ordinary people. Documentary.
0:46:51 > 0:46:55The documentary film makers wrestled with their bulky equipment
0:46:55 > 0:46:58to show the dignity of labour, the hardship of life
0:46:58 > 0:47:00and to give working-class people a voice,
0:47:00 > 0:47:04something the Establishment and BBC, up to that point,
0:47:04 > 0:47:05had largely failed to do.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08It gets on your nerves when everything's filthy.
0:47:08 > 0:47:12Dirty, filthy walls and the vermin in the walls is wicked.
0:47:12 > 0:47:14So, I tell you, we're fed up.
0:47:20 > 0:47:24Writers as well as film makers set out to rediscover their own country.
0:47:24 > 0:47:27The novelist and journalist JB Priestley
0:47:27 > 0:47:30made his English journey, chronicling some of the glories
0:47:30 > 0:47:33and many of the horrors of England in 1933.
0:47:33 > 0:47:36Some have regarded these sort of accounts as patronising
0:47:36 > 0:47:38in their approach. I don't agree.
0:47:38 > 0:47:41There's no doubt that there was the will
0:47:41 > 0:47:44to help pull the working class up the ladder.
0:47:44 > 0:47:47JB Priestley, already, in the 1930s,
0:47:47 > 0:47:49an enormously successful writer,
0:47:49 > 0:47:51travelled England in his trusty Daimler.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55Another writer, not as well known at the time, came on foot or by bus.
0:47:55 > 0:47:58George Orwell made his way to Wigan.
0:48:09 > 0:48:12We're near the site of the original Wigan Pier.
0:48:12 > 0:48:14It was where they used to load coal onto barges.
0:48:14 > 0:48:17The title came from George Robey,
0:48:17 > 0:48:20the musical artist who used it rather facetiously.
0:48:20 > 0:48:24George Orwell nicked it for his book The Road To Wigan Pier.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28The Road To Wigan Pier was based on Orwell's experiences
0:48:28 > 0:48:30over January and February 1936.
0:48:30 > 0:48:33And his observations of the realities of working-class life
0:48:33 > 0:48:37and unemployment have entered the canon of human observation.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40"One scene stays in my mind," he wrote.
0:48:40 > 0:48:42"as one of my pictures of Lancashire.
0:48:42 > 0:48:45"The dumpy, shawled women with their sacking aprons
0:48:45 > 0:48:49"and their heavy, black clogs, kneeling in the cindery mud
0:48:49 > 0:48:53"and the bitter wind, searching eagerly for tiny bits of coal."
0:48:53 > 0:48:56Wigan Pier is about living conditions and unemployment
0:48:56 > 0:48:57and politics.
0:48:57 > 0:49:00But it's also, and perhaps mainly, about class,
0:49:00 > 0:49:03particularly the class of the writer himself.
0:49:03 > 0:49:07An old Etonian, a middle-class writer
0:49:07 > 0:49:11who tries to work out how he can interact with other classes.
0:49:11 > 0:49:15He spells it out. "Here am I, a typical member of the middle class.
0:49:15 > 0:49:19"It's easy for me to say that I want to get rid of class distinctions
0:49:19 > 0:49:21"but nearly everything I think and do
0:49:21 > 0:49:24"is as a result of class distinctions.
0:49:24 > 0:49:26"All my notions, notions of good and evil,
0:49:26 > 0:49:30"of pleasant and unpleasant, of funny and serious,
0:49:30 > 0:49:33"of ugly and beautiful are essentially middle-class notions.
0:49:33 > 0:49:36"My taste in books and food and clothes, my sense of honour,
0:49:36 > 0:49:40"my table manners, my turns of speech, my accent,
0:49:40 > 0:49:42"even the characteristic movements of my body
0:49:42 > 0:49:45"are the products of a special kind of upbringing
0:49:45 > 0:49:49"and a special niche about halfway up the social hierarchy.
0:49:49 > 0:49:53"When I grasp this, I grasp that it's no use clapping a proletarian
0:49:53 > 0:49:57"on the back and telling him that he's as good a man as I am.
0:49:57 > 0:50:00"If I want real contact with him, I have got to make an effort
0:50:00 > 0:50:04"for which, very likely, I am unprepared."
0:50:04 > 0:50:07Right at the end of the book, Orwell, rather tongue-in-cheek,
0:50:07 > 0:50:09envisions the sinking middle classes.
0:50:09 > 0:50:13The private school master, the bankrupt commercial traveller
0:50:13 > 0:50:15and the freelance journalist hitting on hard times.
0:50:15 > 0:50:18All of them "sinking into the working class", he writes.
0:50:18 > 0:50:20"Where they belong." And he adds,
0:50:20 > 0:50:23"It may not be so dreadful. All we have to lose is our aitches."
0:50:23 > 0:50:25He was completely wrong about that.
0:50:25 > 0:50:29The middle class has not sunk. It's risen and risen and risen.
0:50:29 > 0:50:32Another matter Orwell was wrong about, I think,
0:50:32 > 0:50:34was that values of the middle class
0:50:34 > 0:50:36and the working class were different and incompatible.
0:50:36 > 0:50:39Essential moral values, like a sense of honour or, as he writes,
0:50:39 > 0:50:43"Notions of good and evil, funny and serious, ugly and beautiful,"
0:50:43 > 0:50:46could be found in the working class every bit as much
0:50:46 > 0:50:50as in the middle class. And they meant much the same to both.
0:50:53 > 0:50:59In 1936, Hitler invaded the Rhineland. War was coming.
0:50:59 > 0:51:02'Now, isn't that a cheery dance?'
0:51:02 > 0:51:06Soon the nation would have to face hardship and danger again,
0:51:06 > 0:51:09less than 20 years after the end of the First World War.
0:51:09 > 0:51:14But, in the meantime, they'd enjoy themselves while they could.
0:51:14 > 0:51:16Ballroom dancing flourished.
0:51:16 > 0:51:19It had categories, competitions, judges, professionals.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23But, in 1937, one dance emerged from the working class
0:51:23 > 0:51:27which became a symbol of national unity almost. The Lambeth Walk.
0:51:27 > 0:51:28Even the King and Queen did it.
0:51:28 > 0:51:32# When you walk down Lambeth Way
0:51:32 > 0:51:35# Any evening, any day
0:51:35 > 0:51:38# You'll find us all
0:51:38 > 0:51:41# Doing the Lambeth Walk, oi! #
0:51:41 > 0:51:42And off you'd go.
0:51:46 > 0:51:49The dance came from a musical, Me And My Girl.
0:51:49 > 0:51:52In it, the Cockney who's become a lord invites his mates
0:51:52 > 0:51:53to a knees-up.
0:51:53 > 0:51:55The toffs can't help joining in
0:51:55 > 0:51:59and the result is a riotous dance in which class divisions are dissolved.
0:51:59 > 0:52:03It became a national myth and a propaganda weapon.
0:52:03 > 0:52:05MUSIC: "The Lambeth Walk"
0:52:21 > 0:52:23When war broke out, Jeremy Hutchinson had already served a year
0:52:23 > 0:52:26in the Navy as a rating.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31That was an eye-opener and something that I very much wanted to do and enjoyed.
0:52:31 > 0:52:34What was the eye-opening thing about it?
0:52:34 > 0:52:40Living with people of a completely different background of all sorts.
0:52:40 > 0:52:44And finding that it was perfectly possible to do that
0:52:44 > 0:52:49without embarrassment, with a common purpose, as everybody had,
0:52:49 > 0:52:51and enormous enjoyment.
0:52:51 > 0:52:54All guns closed up and cleared away and communications tested, sir.
0:52:54 > 0:52:58- All to action stations. - Very good. Open fire.
0:52:58 > 0:53:00The theme of people of different classes pulling together
0:53:00 > 0:53:02in the national interest
0:53:02 > 0:53:05is one that the British cinema would take up and push relentlessly.
0:53:05 > 0:53:09Reynolds, Adams, Blake, Coombe, Parkinson,
0:53:09 > 0:53:11what sort of a ship do I want the Torrin to be?
0:53:11 > 0:53:14- A happy ship, sir.- That's right.
0:53:14 > 0:53:16- An efficient ship, sir.- Correct.
0:53:16 > 0:53:18A happy and efficient ship.
0:53:18 > 0:53:20A very happy and a very efficient ship.
0:53:20 > 0:53:24In the film In Which We Serve, Noel Coward told the story
0:53:24 > 0:53:27of Louis Mountbatten's destroyer Kelly and its company.
0:53:27 > 0:53:31And he emphasised the respect and affection between the classes.
0:53:31 > 0:53:33SHE GIGGLES
0:53:33 > 0:53:36Hello, Blake, what are you doing here?
0:53:36 > 0:53:40- I'm on my honeymoon, sir.- Well, that's splendid, congratulations.
0:53:40 > 0:53:43Thank you, sir. This is my wife, Mrs Blake.
0:53:43 > 0:53:45- How do you do?- Pleased to meet you, I'm sure.
0:53:45 > 0:53:48Alex, come and meet one of my shipmates and his wife,
0:53:48 > 0:53:50they've just been married. Ordinary Seaman Blake, Mrs Blake, my wife.
0:53:50 > 0:53:53- How do you do?- Ma'am.- I hope you'll be very happy.- Thanks.
0:53:55 > 0:53:58Jeremy Hutchinson experienced it first-hand.
0:53:58 > 0:54:00He knew Mountbatten, played by Coward,
0:54:00 > 0:54:03and he was on the Kelly when it was torpedoed.
0:54:03 > 0:54:07How accurate was that film, in your view, of what really went on?
0:54:07 > 0:54:09It was really very accurate
0:54:09 > 0:54:12because Mountbatten was a friend of Noel Coward's.
0:54:12 > 0:54:16I've come to say goodbye to the few of you who are left.
0:54:16 > 0:54:22And when Mountbatten told him about his goodbye to the survivors,
0:54:22 > 0:54:25standing on a box and each of us coming up
0:54:25 > 0:54:28and shaking his hand and talking to him
0:54:28 > 0:54:30and saying goodbye, which was very, very moving.
0:54:30 > 0:54:32Noel Coward said,
0:54:32 > 0:54:36"Well, that's very interesting, I want to know exactly what you said."
0:54:36 > 0:54:41And Mountbatten then told him exactly what he'd said.
0:54:41 > 0:54:42It is accurate.
0:54:42 > 0:54:43Goodbye.
0:54:45 > 0:54:46Good luck.
0:54:48 > 0:54:52And thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
0:54:52 > 0:54:56It's a scene Kipling would have applauded.
0:54:56 > 0:54:59During World War II, politicians seemed to realise
0:54:59 > 0:55:01that those returning home, if the Allies prevailed,
0:55:01 > 0:55:06would have the power to demand a better, more equal society.
0:55:06 > 0:55:10And realistic plans must be laid and made to work.
0:55:13 > 0:55:15'As the result of much intensive study
0:55:15 > 0:55:17'into questions of social security,
0:55:17 > 0:55:20'Sir William Beveridge is the recognised authority
0:55:20 > 0:55:22'on present-day and post-war problems.'
0:55:22 > 0:55:25In 1942, the Beveridge Report delivered its strategy
0:55:25 > 0:55:30on social security which would attack inequality and poverty.
0:55:30 > 0:55:33The welfare state was plainly in view.
0:55:33 > 0:55:37It means that no-one is to fall below a certain standard.
0:55:40 > 0:55:42'At last, Labour in power in Britain
0:55:42 > 0:55:45'and here are some members of the new government.'
0:55:45 > 0:55:49The Labour Party got this huge, 146-seat overall majority,
0:55:49 > 0:55:52and the Conservative Party was prostrate.
0:55:52 > 0:55:58The expectation was both, I think, higher in 1945 than in 1918
0:55:58 > 0:56:02and also it was fulfilled, to a remarkable degree.
0:56:02 > 0:56:06It wasn't socialism and paradise on earth, far from it.
0:56:06 > 0:56:08But the huge deprivations
0:56:08 > 0:56:11that the Industrial Revolution had bequeathed this country
0:56:11 > 0:56:13were in retreat.
0:56:13 > 0:56:15And there was a period of genuine optimism
0:56:15 > 0:56:18that, generation upon generation,
0:56:18 > 0:56:21there would be a kind of exponential betterment
0:56:21 > 0:56:24and you would gradually ease the class antagonisms
0:56:24 > 0:56:27that had so disfigured the 19th century and the interwar years.
0:56:27 > 0:56:30It was the most extraordinary moment.
0:56:30 > 0:56:34There was a real bloom of promise and optimism for all the austerity.
0:56:34 > 0:56:36But there was still unfinished business.
0:56:36 > 0:56:39The Education Act had promised free secondary education for all.
0:56:39 > 0:56:43But it had stopped short of abolishing the public schools.
0:56:43 > 0:56:49The Labour Party's great victory shows that the country is ready...
0:56:49 > 0:56:52Attlee, a public-school man himself, who loved his old school,
0:56:52 > 0:56:54could have done it but he didn't.
0:56:54 > 0:56:57Perhaps he thought public schools would wither on the vine
0:56:57 > 0:57:00as state education achieved excellence.
0:57:00 > 0:57:04When the Labour won that election and we had the great meeting
0:57:04 > 0:57:07in the Westminster Hall the next day,
0:57:07 > 0:57:14I was convinced the apartheid in education would go
0:57:14 > 0:57:19and that the...this would be the end of the public schools.
0:57:19 > 0:57:20I really believed that.
0:57:20 > 0:57:23Would you welcome, would you have welcomed that?
0:57:23 > 0:57:26No. Absolutely. I thought the..
0:57:26 > 0:57:28I mean, as long as the public,
0:57:28 > 0:57:32as long as 7% of the population go to public schools,
0:57:32 > 0:57:36have a separate and wonderful education,
0:57:36 > 0:57:39the class system will go on.
0:57:39 > 0:57:45Bound to. We have class somehow in our genes in this country.
0:57:45 > 0:57:47It still goes on.
0:57:53 > 0:57:58On November 20th 1947, the bells rang out from Westminster Abbey,
0:57:58 > 0:58:01just over there, announcing the wedding of Elizabeth Windsor
0:58:01 > 0:58:03and Philip Mountbatten.
0:58:03 > 0:58:07The gathering of crown princes, kings, titled aristocracy,
0:58:07 > 0:58:10the enthusiasm of the crowds might have recalled
0:58:10 > 0:58:14the scenes of George V's coronation in 1911.
0:58:14 > 0:58:18But this was now poised to be a very different Britain.
0:58:18 > 0:58:21So, had the class system and the culture that reflected it
0:58:21 > 0:58:25disappeared after two World Wars, economic hardship,
0:58:25 > 0:58:28a depression and the promise of a socialist future?
0:58:28 > 0:58:32Or is class locked in our genes as Jeremy Hutchinson suggested?
0:58:32 > 0:58:37In the next programme, I'll be looking at 1945 to 1979.
0:58:37 > 0:58:42The angry young men, rock'n'roll and the full impact of TV.
0:58:42 > 0:58:45# We gotta get out of this place
0:58:45 > 0:58:48# If it's the last thing we ever do
0:58:49 > 0:58:52# We gotta get out of this place
0:58:52 > 0:58:57# Girl, there's a better life for me and you
0:58:58 > 0:59:01# Believe me, baby
0:59:01 > 0:59:03# I know it, baby
0:59:03 > 0:59:05# You know it too. #