0:00:05 > 0:00:08Behind me is the Tate Modern art gallery here on the Thames in London.
0:00:08 > 0:00:10It was opened in the year 2000
0:00:10 > 0:00:14and within a year, four million people had visited it for free.
0:00:14 > 0:00:18Art, which had once been exclusive, expensive, available to only a few,
0:00:18 > 0:00:21was now accessible and available to everybody.
0:00:23 > 0:00:25Does that mean in turn
0:00:25 > 0:00:29that the class system had undergone a comparable change?
0:00:29 > 0:00:33Today, working-class heroes consort with princes,
0:00:33 > 0:00:35former East End barrow boys are peers of the realm,
0:00:35 > 0:00:38children of the suburbs are now ladies of the manor.
0:00:38 > 0:00:40Information has been democratised.
0:00:40 > 0:00:44Never has the opportunity to consume, process
0:00:44 > 0:00:46and, above all, share culture been easier.
0:00:46 > 0:00:49But perhaps the signs and symbols of a three-tier class system
0:00:49 > 0:00:53are still there, just changed a bit in the way they're presented.
0:00:53 > 0:00:56In this final programme,
0:00:56 > 0:00:59I want to look at the last 30 years of culture in this country.
0:00:59 > 0:01:03I want to meet the writers, musicians, comedians, obsessives,
0:01:03 > 0:01:06people whose life and work reflect and challenge old notions.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09Will they argue that our nation has changed?
0:01:09 > 0:01:14Changed and decayed or grown? We all have an opinion on that.
0:01:14 > 0:01:16I want to see if class,
0:01:16 > 0:01:18that tangled web of divisions, of sub-divisions,
0:01:18 > 0:01:21upper, middle, lower, all that fuzziness,
0:01:21 > 0:01:25who has, who has not, is still at the heart of our culture today.
0:01:58 > 0:02:00In many ways, the last hundred years
0:02:00 > 0:02:03has moved us towards a more equal society.
0:02:03 > 0:02:05The cataclysms of two world wars,
0:02:05 > 0:02:08followed by the feeling of national unity in the '40s and '50s
0:02:08 > 0:02:11was reflected in a culture that could be shared.
0:02:11 > 0:02:13In the '60s and early '70s,
0:02:13 > 0:02:17it seemed an even more culturally inclusive Britain had emerged,
0:02:17 > 0:02:21driven by a socially mobile generation from the grammar schools and art schools
0:02:21 > 0:02:23and the rise of popular culture.
0:02:23 > 0:02:27We believed, whatever class you came from, everything was possible.
0:02:27 > 0:02:30By the end of the '70s, culture remained open,
0:02:30 > 0:02:33but it seemed that economics, the oil crisis and recession,
0:02:33 > 0:02:36had driven us back to the old class divisions.
0:02:36 > 0:02:38And since then, eliminating class
0:02:38 > 0:02:42has been a preoccupation of successive Prime Ministers.
0:02:42 > 0:02:45In 1979, we elected a Prime Minister
0:02:45 > 0:02:48who became the embodiment of a three-class system.
0:02:48 > 0:02:50It is, of course, the greatest honour
0:02:50 > 0:02:53that can come to any citizen in a democracy.
0:02:53 > 0:02:56Margaret Thatcher cultivated a voice that mimicked the upper classes.
0:02:56 > 0:03:00Plenty thought she'd little interest in the old working classes,
0:03:00 > 0:03:03and she championed her background from the lower middle classes.
0:03:03 > 0:03:07The class system into which she arrived was still well defined.
0:03:07 > 0:03:09Death duties had pegged them back,
0:03:09 > 0:03:13but much of the old aristocracy held on to their vast estates.
0:03:13 > 0:03:16Despite her proud lower-middle-class origins,
0:03:16 > 0:03:19Margaret Thatcher still had a generous sprinkling
0:03:19 > 0:03:21of old Etonians in her first Cabinet.
0:03:21 > 0:03:24Beneath these symbols of privilege, the economic state was grim.
0:03:24 > 0:03:28Inflation was in double figures, there was mass unemployment,
0:03:28 > 0:03:31and the country had been crippled by strikes.
0:03:31 > 0:03:33But while aspirational tenants
0:03:33 > 0:03:36were encouraged to move into the middle classes
0:03:36 > 0:03:38by buying their council homes,
0:03:38 > 0:03:41the great manufacturing industries had collapsed,
0:03:41 > 0:03:45throwing the industrial working class into crisis.
0:03:46 > 0:03:51And this was immediately reflected in culture, in television drama.
0:03:51 > 0:03:54Alan Bleasdale's Boys From The Blackstuff
0:03:54 > 0:03:56followed the effects of unemployment
0:03:56 > 0:03:59on Liverpool tarmac layers, the black stuff of the title.
0:03:59 > 0:04:02It hit the nerve of the nation. The series was built
0:04:02 > 0:04:06around the intense desperation of the blue-collar worker.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09Gi' us a job. Go on, gi' us it.
0:04:09 > 0:04:12Well, I wrote the original Blackstuff, I think, when I was 29,
0:04:12 > 0:04:15and it was the Callaghan Labour Government.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18I finished it off in the Thatcher Government,
0:04:18 > 0:04:26and I knew that politically... the Callaghan Government wasn't great
0:04:26 > 0:04:29but it was relatively benign.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32And what happened as I was writing The Boys From The Blackstuff
0:04:32 > 0:04:36is that Thatcher's Government came to power
0:04:36 > 0:04:38and that was truly malignant.
0:04:38 > 0:04:41Did you feel the Thatcher Government as a class attack?
0:04:41 > 0:04:46I don't think she cared about what she would probably consider to be...
0:04:46 > 0:04:50people who didn't count, and...that included me
0:04:50 > 0:04:53and the people I was born and brought up with.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56And that, inevitably, made you angry.
0:04:56 > 0:05:00It was as if, unlike Dickens, she would say, "They don't count,"
0:05:00 > 0:05:05and if they don't count, that means that I don't count, we don't count.
0:05:05 > 0:05:07There were sections of the working class
0:05:07 > 0:05:09that thrived under Mrs Thatcher's vision.
0:05:09 > 0:05:11But in 1984,
0:05:11 > 0:05:15it felt as if the old industrial working class was being threatened.
0:05:15 > 0:05:19The miners' strike was a war between the Government and unionised miners,
0:05:19 > 0:05:23and it became a confrontation between two working-class groups -
0:05:23 > 0:05:25the police and the strikers.
0:05:25 > 0:05:27With it went so much else -
0:05:27 > 0:05:30sense of worth, sense of dignity, sense of community.
0:05:30 > 0:05:33And for populations that grew up with not much money,
0:05:33 > 0:05:36but with this immense sense of who they were, where they came from,
0:05:36 > 0:05:40several generations in the same craft, unendurable.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44The romance of the country for which the pit wheel
0:05:44 > 0:05:47was the most potent symbol of all, all gone.
0:05:47 > 0:05:49It's very, very hard to take.
0:05:49 > 0:05:53Do you think it was the biggest cultural...movement
0:05:53 > 0:05:55of the last 50, 60 years,
0:05:55 > 0:05:58the collapse of the heavy industries,
0:05:58 > 0:06:01the great labour-intensive, skill-intensive industries?
0:06:01 > 0:06:05I think one of the great gaps in post-war British history
0:06:05 > 0:06:07that is still to be filled
0:06:07 > 0:06:12is to capture the magnitude of the change to British society,
0:06:12 > 0:06:15when the "workshop of the world" element finally went.
0:06:20 > 0:06:22And with the decline of heavy industry
0:06:22 > 0:06:25went a hundred-year cultural tradition of self-improvement,
0:06:25 > 0:06:28rooted in the pithead libraries, colliery bands
0:06:28 > 0:06:31and art groups such as the Ashington miners.
0:06:31 > 0:06:33But was there also a sense
0:06:33 > 0:06:37that large parts of the industrial working class were culturally conservative?
0:06:37 > 0:06:40The old suspicion that certain forms of art
0:06:40 > 0:06:42are not for the likes of the working classes
0:06:42 > 0:06:46could account for why there are few lasting memorials to mining
0:06:46 > 0:06:50beyond the grassy slag heaps and long defunct pits.
0:06:50 > 0:06:54But here, just off the M62 between Liverpool and Manchester,
0:06:54 > 0:06:56a piece of public art has been erected
0:06:56 > 0:07:00on the site of the old Sutton Manor Colliery.
0:07:00 > 0:07:02It's a cultural memorial to a class.
0:07:18 > 0:07:22Dream was made by the Catalan artist Jaume Plensa,
0:07:22 > 0:07:25but the project was driven by the local community,
0:07:25 > 0:07:27in particular a group of former miners.
0:07:27 > 0:07:29When you decided to do this,
0:07:29 > 0:07:33people would say, "Let's have a new sports field or build a new..."
0:07:33 > 0:07:36But to come to the idea of a work of art,
0:07:36 > 0:07:38how did you arrive at that? Was there much dispute?
0:07:38 > 0:07:40Quite a bit of dispute.
0:07:40 > 0:07:42They were split half and half between the people
0:07:42 > 0:07:45who thought the money could have been better spent on jobs
0:07:45 > 0:07:48and those who thought it should be a work of art.
0:07:48 > 0:07:51Quite a lot were opposed to it as an idea at the time.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55Others wanted a...mining memorial.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59Others objected because we didn't get a British sculptor to do it.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03But what was very interesting was our journey what we've been on,
0:08:03 > 0:08:05and it was a magnificent journey
0:08:05 > 0:08:09of us starting off wanting something very mining literal here.
0:08:09 > 0:08:15- Such as?- A miner's lamp, a pick, a coalman holding a shovel,
0:08:15 > 0:08:17something along them lines,
0:08:17 > 0:08:20what you would normally see at any memorial.
0:08:20 > 0:08:23Can you tell us how you arrived at this particular work?
0:08:23 > 0:08:27We wanted something that would reflect the past
0:08:27 > 0:08:29but also look to the future.
0:08:29 > 0:08:33You know, it doesn't really reflect the mining industry,
0:08:33 > 0:08:37but if you look at it and you ask questions about it
0:08:37 > 0:08:42then it does, and don't forget the base is a giant miner's tally,
0:08:42 > 0:08:45the type we used to use here at Sutton Manor Colliery.
0:08:45 > 0:08:50People have a fairly low expectation of working-class communities,
0:08:50 > 0:08:53what they might reach out to, what they might do.
0:08:53 > 0:08:56What response have you had around this area, around St Helens,
0:08:56 > 0:08:59for this piece, Dream, now that it's there and standing?
0:08:59 > 0:09:00I think it's very positive.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04The people who came to me criticising this five years ago
0:09:04 > 0:09:06are now coming up and saying,
0:09:06 > 0:09:09"I love it, it's beautiful when you get up to it."
0:09:26 > 0:09:29There's always been a struggle within the working classes
0:09:29 > 0:09:33that by allowing in unfamiliar culture, by crossing the line,
0:09:33 > 0:09:36you are somehow betraying your class.
0:09:36 > 0:09:40The film Billy Elliot brilliantly portrayed this internal battle
0:09:40 > 0:09:43when it showed a boy choosing to pursue an art form
0:09:43 > 0:09:45regarded with suspicion, even hostility,
0:09:45 > 0:09:47by his own class and family.
0:09:47 > 0:09:49Two, three, pas de bourree.
0:09:49 > 0:09:53And a-one, two, three, pas de bourree.
0:09:53 > 0:09:55You! Out!
0:09:55 > 0:09:57Now!
0:09:57 > 0:10:01I suppose Billy Elliot... I call it a sort of fantasy autobiography
0:10:01 > 0:10:04because, you know, I'm not a dancer,
0:10:04 > 0:10:07but I think the experience of growing up
0:10:07 > 0:10:12in a working-class community then was...
0:10:13 > 0:10:19..in the '70s, was that really, art wasn't for you at all.
0:10:19 > 0:10:23And something... Um...
0:10:23 > 0:10:28It was very odd that art was for posh people, for middle-class people.
0:10:28 > 0:10:32It's still seen by a lot of people in the community that I come from,
0:10:32 > 0:10:35they raise an eyebrow at it.
0:10:35 > 0:10:39In the early '80s, Sue Townsend, a working-class mother of three from Leicester,
0:10:39 > 0:10:41had her first novel published.
0:10:41 > 0:10:43You'd been writing for the best part of 20 years
0:10:43 > 0:10:46up to the publication of Adrian Mole but you kept it a secret.
0:10:46 > 0:10:48Why was that?
0:10:48 > 0:10:53Was it anything to do with writing or publishing is not for the likes of me?
0:10:53 > 0:10:55It was to do with...
0:10:56 > 0:10:58It was to do with...
0:10:59 > 0:11:04Sorry. I'm unexpectedly moved by it because it was to do with
0:11:04 > 0:11:09my not wanting to move away from my working-class background.
0:11:09 > 0:11:15The awful thing is that people kind of despise you
0:11:15 > 0:11:21for what they consider is a move away from them.
0:11:21 > 0:11:24Um...
0:11:24 > 0:11:30And there's another set of people who do look down on you
0:11:30 > 0:11:34because of your working-class background.
0:11:34 > 0:11:39So, it's a very awkward position to be in, a working-class writer.
0:11:39 > 0:11:44You're desperate not to appear to be pretentious
0:11:44 > 0:11:46or to be lording it over anybody.
0:11:46 > 0:11:48And the money's difficult.
0:11:48 > 0:11:55I mean, I said years ago that if you give money to people
0:11:55 > 0:11:57they despise you
0:11:57 > 0:11:59and if you don't give it to them, they despise you!
0:11:59 > 0:12:03I don't know how you manage that.
0:12:04 > 0:12:08The old dilemma for the working-class artist propelled to success still seem to be with us.
0:12:08 > 0:12:12Yet during the '80s, the question of your background
0:12:12 > 0:12:16began to be eroded by the insistence of new cultures
0:12:16 > 0:12:18which seemed to exist outside class.
0:12:18 > 0:12:20REGGAE MUSIC PLAYS
0:12:24 > 0:12:27Coventry in the early '80s was a city in decline.
0:12:27 > 0:12:29Once the centre of the car industry,
0:12:29 > 0:12:33it had attracted a wave of Asian and West Indian immigrants in its boom years.
0:12:33 > 0:12:36Then in the '70s, car manufacturing collapsed,
0:12:36 > 0:12:39leaving a whole generation from the white and immigrant working class
0:12:39 > 0:12:41facing a future on the dole.
0:12:41 > 0:12:45They were also dealing with virulent racism.
0:12:45 > 0:12:47But what emerged out of this neglected generation
0:12:47 > 0:12:52was some of the most politically charged and original pop music of the decade.
0:12:52 > 0:12:54HE SHOUTS LYRICS
0:12:56 > 0:13:00The original creative force behind Coventry band The Specials
0:13:00 > 0:13:04was in fact the middle-class son of a dean, Jerry Dammers.
0:13:04 > 0:13:07But its musical blend of British punk and Jamaican ska
0:13:07 > 0:13:10reflected the rest of the band, from Coventry's white working class
0:13:10 > 0:13:12and first-generation West Indians.
0:13:12 > 0:13:15The result was the 2 Tone sound,
0:13:15 > 0:13:18the first significant musical blending of the two cultures
0:13:18 > 0:13:23and an adjunct to the late '70s Rock Against Racism movement.
0:13:23 > 0:13:25# Concrete jungle
0:13:25 > 0:13:27# Animals are after me
0:13:28 > 0:13:33# Concrete jungle It ain't safe on the streets. #
0:13:33 > 0:13:37I met up with John Bradbury and Terry Hall from The Specials.
0:13:37 > 0:13:39Coventry being the cosmopolitan city that it was,
0:13:39 > 0:13:42you've got a high immigrant population here,
0:13:42 > 0:13:44Indian, West Indian and Caribbean music,
0:13:44 > 0:13:46and it was a big influence on me.
0:13:46 > 0:13:52We were all at a really good age with the explosion of punk
0:13:52 > 0:13:57and I think pretty much nearly all the band saw The Sex Pistols and The Clash playing in Coventry.
0:13:57 > 0:13:59# God save the Queen
0:14:00 > 0:14:03# We mean it, man... #
0:14:04 > 0:14:07I do feel that punk empowered working-class people
0:14:07 > 0:14:11and they haven't really gone back since then.
0:14:11 > 0:14:16I feel that 2 Tone was an adjunct, really, to that.
0:14:19 > 0:14:22The Coventry youth clubs were where the two cultures blended.
0:14:22 > 0:14:26It was here where Specials guitarist and singer Lynval Golding started out.
0:14:26 > 0:14:28This is where we used to feel the bass,
0:14:28 > 0:14:31the bass just thumping in our music, you know?
0:14:33 > 0:14:35# Better think of your future... #
0:14:37 > 0:14:40Do you think those songs that you did and the group did,
0:14:40 > 0:14:46do you think they helped people to behave better to each other?
0:14:46 > 0:14:49Over the years I've met so many people,
0:14:49 > 0:14:52I don't know how many bands I saw where people say,
0:14:52 > 0:14:55"That song changed my life. It said something to me."
0:14:55 > 0:14:58To me, it was unique
0:14:58 > 0:15:03to get that clash of two different cultures working together, you know.
0:15:03 > 0:15:06It was such a good thing, it really was a good thing
0:15:06 > 0:15:10for the black people in Coventry.
0:15:10 > 0:15:13I also think it was a very good thing for the white people as well
0:15:13 > 0:15:18because there were a lot of youngsters, as you perhaps realise,
0:15:18 > 0:15:24who didn't necessarily share some of the nonsense that was going on at that time,
0:15:24 > 0:15:26which was totally unnecessary.
0:15:26 > 0:15:31You know, I think that actually made Coventry change a bit, to be honest with you.
0:15:31 > 0:15:34- You're talking about the racism of the time?- That's right.
0:15:34 > 0:15:38I think what they had in common, they actually show people
0:15:38 > 0:15:41that black and white can actually work together,
0:15:41 > 0:15:44not just in a factory, not just in a hospital,
0:15:44 > 0:15:50but in a bigger picture where they're exposed to the world
0:15:50 > 0:15:52and we're exposed to news camera.
0:15:52 > 0:15:56- So, music has been an agent of social change for you?- Absolutely.
0:15:56 > 0:15:59So, culture has changed the class system in a way?
0:15:59 > 0:16:01In a way, that's right. In a way.
0:16:01 > 0:16:05Do you still feel yourself, as it were, as working-class artists?
0:16:05 > 0:16:08- Or has the fact of your success changed you?- No doubt I do.
0:16:08 > 0:16:10I just feel like it's the work ethic
0:16:10 > 0:16:15that's burned into me from a very early age.
0:16:15 > 0:16:18When I'm sipping macchiato in Islington
0:16:18 > 0:16:21I'd like to think it's a working-class thing,
0:16:21 > 0:16:23but it doesn't feel that way, it really doesn't!
0:16:23 > 0:16:28I'm for ever trying to answer my son who said, "Are we working class, Dad?"
0:16:28 > 0:16:31I don't know. But it's still there. It's still there.
0:16:31 > 0:16:35But, you know, at 50, living in Islington, sipping macchiatos,
0:16:35 > 0:16:38I really don't know. I really don't know.
0:16:38 > 0:16:41MUSIC: "Ghost Town" by The Specials
0:16:42 > 0:16:472 Tone was a vital cultural fusion of working-class and immigrant culture
0:16:47 > 0:16:51but as often happens in pop, it was usurped by a new pop culture.
0:16:51 > 0:16:56Not all-working class kids were committed to expressing social issues in their music.
0:16:56 > 0:17:00In the early '80s, there was an almost Thatcherite spirit of you could be what you want to be,
0:17:00 > 0:17:05even if the New Romantics were more interested in flamboyant costumes than in politics.
0:17:05 > 0:17:09Your cultural tribe was becoming more important than your class.
0:17:09 > 0:17:12I think the first musical tribes were Mods and Rockers
0:17:12 > 0:17:17and then punk kind of turned all that on its head.
0:17:17 > 0:17:20Then after punk, we had New Romantics
0:17:20 > 0:17:24where people wanted to dress up, they wanted a reason to look lovely.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30Some of the New Romantic outfits were frankly absolutely insane
0:17:30 > 0:17:34but it was something that transcended class in a lot of ways.
0:17:34 > 0:17:37It was how you looked, not where you'd been to school or how you spoke.
0:17:39 > 0:17:43The working-class youth created its own cultural tribes
0:17:43 > 0:17:46but with the upper classes you could be born into a ready-made tribe.
0:17:52 > 0:17:55When Ann Barr and Peter York wrote Sloane Rangers
0:17:55 > 0:17:58it was the most brilliant piece of social observation.
0:17:58 > 0:18:02Not only were they talking about a group of people that already existed,
0:18:02 > 0:18:06instead of the people they wrote about being kind of...
0:18:06 > 0:18:10feeling maligned or insulted by this pigeonholing of them,
0:18:10 > 0:18:12they were proud to be Sloane Rangers.
0:18:12 > 0:18:15Do you know, I bloody hated Sloane Rangers.
0:18:15 > 0:18:19- I hated them as much as I hated hippies.- Why?
0:18:19 > 0:18:24Thought they were superior. You know, Mummy and Daddy had paid for everything.
0:18:26 > 0:18:31But the emerging force of the '80s was the ever-expanding and amorphous middle class.
0:18:31 > 0:18:33Their ranks were now being swelled
0:18:33 > 0:18:38by the new home-owning working classes who were on the move upwards.
0:18:38 > 0:18:39MUSIC: Brookside Theme Tune
0:18:39 > 0:18:44Brookside was set in a classic early '80s new-build housing estate.
0:18:44 > 0:18:48And here it is, at that time Britain's best known cul-de-sac.
0:18:52 > 0:18:54The anchor family in the series were the Grants.
0:18:54 > 0:18:56They lived here at number five.
0:18:56 > 0:19:00The father Bobby was a trade union leader and the working-class Grants
0:19:00 > 0:19:03had moved up the social ladder to middle-class Brookside.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06Bloody hell. Are you sure you've got enough here, Sheila?
0:19:06 > 0:19:10Eh? Want to feed the starving hoards of India while you're at it?
0:19:10 > 0:19:13It's not like having the shop at the end of the road any more.
0:19:13 > 0:19:15It's in the boot of the bloody car.
0:19:15 > 0:19:19Moving in the other direction socially was the Collins family.
0:19:20 > 0:19:23Forced to downsize from their grand house in the Wirral,
0:19:23 > 0:19:27this upper-middle-class family moved here, number eight.
0:19:28 > 0:19:30SHE SIGHS
0:19:30 > 0:19:33And next door at number nine were Heather and Roger Huntingdon,
0:19:33 > 0:19:36a classic, young, upwardly mobile, early '80s couple.
0:19:36 > 0:19:40Trade unionists rubbing shoulders with Yuppies.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43Fallen toffs slumming it with the middle class.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46This was Thatcherite new-build Britain.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49Brookside showed that the classes could live alongside each other
0:19:49 > 0:19:51and the soap became a cultural landmark,
0:19:51 > 0:19:54despite its early struggle to get viewers or good reviews.
0:19:56 > 0:19:57In reality, we may have had
0:19:57 > 0:20:00an all-embracing new middle class in the early '80s,
0:20:00 > 0:20:02but it seemed they didn't want
0:20:02 > 0:20:04this culture thrown back at them as entertainment.
0:20:04 > 0:20:07They preferred dramas where the classes were more defined
0:20:07 > 0:20:11like Brideshead Revisited, which pulled in 11 million viewers.
0:20:11 > 0:20:14Or they watched working-class soaps like Coronation Street,
0:20:14 > 0:20:16which had audiences of 18 million
0:20:16 > 0:20:18and appealed, it seemed, to everyone.
0:20:20 > 0:20:23But where we did enjoy watching our middle-class world
0:20:23 > 0:20:25was when we could laugh at it.
0:20:25 > 0:20:27It's often in television comedy
0:20:27 > 0:20:31that the nuances of middle-class culture are played out.
0:20:31 > 0:20:35There's a direct Oxbridge comedy line from Beyond The Fringe in the '60s,
0:20:35 > 0:20:37through Monty Python in the '70s,
0:20:37 > 0:20:40and Not The 9 O'Clock News in the '80s.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44Now the alternative comics from red brick universities
0:20:44 > 0:20:48were challenging the successful line of Oxbridge comedians.
0:20:52 > 0:20:55- Representing Footlights, we have Lord Monty.- Hello.
0:20:55 > 0:20:57Lord Snot.
0:20:57 > 0:21:00- Miss Money-Sterling.- Ah!
0:21:00 > 0:21:02- And Mr Kendal Mintcake.- Hi.
0:21:02 > 0:21:04And representing Scumbag, we have Mike.
0:21:04 > 0:21:06Hello.
0:21:06 > 0:21:08- Prick.- What?- Vyvyan.
0:21:08 > 0:21:09And Neil.
0:21:09 > 0:21:12Vegetable rights and peace.
0:21:16 > 0:21:19The middle-class strand of alternative comedy
0:21:19 > 0:21:22began to dominate on radio and television,
0:21:22 > 0:21:24but what's happened to live comedy?
0:21:24 > 0:21:27This is Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
0:21:27 > 0:21:28It's a comedy theme park.
0:21:28 > 0:21:31Whatever your comic taste, you can usually satisfy it here.
0:21:34 > 0:21:37With a huge expansion in live stand-up over the last 30 years,
0:21:37 > 0:21:40I wanted to ask the comedian Russell Kane
0:21:40 > 0:21:44if comedy could be this country's great class and culture melting pot.
0:21:44 > 0:21:48Do you think among comedians working now there are different classes?
0:21:48 > 0:21:50I'm not talking about class acts.
0:21:50 > 0:21:54- I'm talking about class backgrounds and class projections.- Absolutely.
0:21:54 > 0:21:58Comedy more than any other discipline -
0:21:58 > 0:22:00music, painting, anything -
0:22:00 > 0:22:05is democratic because the audience response is so brutally measurably.
0:22:05 > 0:22:08If I'm double first Oxbridge or I work in Tesco,
0:22:08 > 0:22:11the audience are either laughing or they're not.
0:22:11 > 0:22:14There are some comedians, northern comedians like Chubby Brown,
0:22:14 > 0:22:18who never get on the television and seem to be excluded, almost.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22Roy Chubby Brown is from the comic tradition of working-class men's clubs
0:22:22 > 0:22:26where the material is often considered too offensive for mainstream television.
0:22:26 > 0:22:29Look, I'm not a racialist, I swear down.
0:22:29 > 0:22:34My father said to me, "Never judge a man by the colour of his skin."
0:22:34 > 0:22:35My answer to that is f...
0:22:35 > 0:22:39First of all, Roy Chubby Brown, et cetera, are very successful
0:22:39 > 0:22:43and obviously are very funny cos their assembled thousand people are laughing.
0:22:43 > 0:22:46So, the democracy of laughter, that argument, stands.
0:22:46 > 0:22:50So far as who is exposed on television and in the mainstream,
0:22:50 > 0:22:53that is currently controlled by an agenda which says,
0:22:53 > 0:22:57"It's probably better to love people of colour and gay people and get along."
0:22:57 > 0:23:00I'm glad that dominates. I want it to continue to dominate.
0:23:00 > 0:23:03Were you defined by your upbringing and the class you were born into?
0:23:03 > 0:23:07Absolutely. I do a bit about it on stage and I stand by it in life.
0:23:07 > 0:23:10I wanted to do everything possible to annoy my father.
0:23:10 > 0:23:14It was a horrible, passionate, angry rebellion I hit
0:23:14 > 0:23:16when the puberty hormones hit my body.
0:23:16 > 0:23:19He was racist, homophobic. "I've never a read a book.
0:23:19 > 0:23:21"Never needed to read a book, never will."
0:23:21 > 0:23:23Meat and metal working class. Weightlifting.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27So, as quickly as I could become an effeminate, Penguin-classic-consuming,
0:23:27 > 0:23:32I-love-everyone-of-every-colour, cover-me-in-hummus, three-to-a-bed, I did.
0:23:32 > 0:23:35Then I fell in love with the language that I was using
0:23:35 > 0:23:38for my own egotistical and show-off reasons
0:23:38 > 0:23:40and I ended up having a love affair with literature.
0:23:40 > 0:23:42The comedy thing's just an accident.
0:23:42 > 0:23:47What do you think of the Fringe? Is it how it should be, all classes mingling together?
0:23:47 > 0:23:50Things have changed in the last five years since I've been doing comedy.
0:23:50 > 0:23:54Alternative has become the norm, as it were.
0:23:54 > 0:23:56And there are all types of people up here.
0:23:56 > 0:24:00I've had people come to my show that have never seen me do stand-up.
0:24:00 > 0:24:02They just saw me on BBC One dressed as Beyonce,
0:24:02 > 0:24:05raising money for charity when I did a dance.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09At the same time, it's the people doing what I call festival lip, intellectual lip.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12They go, "Mm, so post-modern." That's intellectual lip.
0:24:16 > 0:24:20I first came here in the 1960s to make a film for the arts programme Monitor,
0:24:20 > 0:24:23and I think I've come to every Edinburgh Festival since.
0:24:23 > 0:24:27It's expanded hugely, especially in the 1980s,
0:24:27 > 0:24:30when the Fringe established itself in new venues like this,
0:24:30 > 0:24:33like the Assembly venues and like the Gilded Balloon.
0:24:33 > 0:24:37The high culture of the main festival was being challenged,
0:24:37 > 0:24:40even superseded by the varying demands of the young middle classes.
0:24:40 > 0:24:45There was an audience for the comedy festival, but also for the literary festival,
0:24:45 > 0:24:47which started small in Edinburgh in the '60s
0:24:47 > 0:24:51with a few thousand visitors, but now welcomes over 200,000.
0:24:51 > 0:24:55It extends across the genres, embracing the new energy in poetry
0:24:55 > 0:24:58which is exemplified by our Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy,
0:24:58 > 0:25:01herself a working-class voice from Glasgow.
0:25:01 > 0:25:06The traditional festival and the Fringe have expanded mightily and become more and more inclusive.
0:25:06 > 0:25:09But have they just drawn in more and more of the middle classes?
0:25:09 > 0:25:12If that is the case, you might well say, "What's wrong with that?"
0:25:12 > 0:25:16Over the last 30 years, this rising middle class
0:25:16 > 0:25:18has fed and nourished much of the arts.
0:25:18 > 0:25:22Theirs is the dominating voice in mainstream culture.
0:25:22 > 0:25:26There's a certain kind of art that only appeals to the middle classes.
0:25:26 > 0:25:30- And that's theatre, opera? - A lot of the theatre.
0:25:30 > 0:25:36But what we have seen really explode in popularity over the last decade
0:25:36 > 0:25:39is the popularity of musicals.
0:25:39 > 0:25:40We are...
0:25:40 > 0:25:44All the middle-class critics and the middle classes think,
0:25:44 > 0:25:49"Oh, it's hen night material. It's kind of common."
0:25:49 > 0:25:52So, even within the theatrical experience,
0:25:52 > 0:25:56and in London on any night of the week you've got something for everyone,
0:25:56 > 0:26:00but there's still that kind of unwritten class distinction
0:26:00 > 0:26:02between high art and low art.
0:26:02 > 0:26:06And low art is "Mamma Mia!". High art is Hamlet.
0:26:06 > 0:26:09But quite a few musicals attracted the middle class
0:26:09 > 0:26:13in their hundreds of thousands in London over the last 20 or 30 years.
0:26:13 > 0:26:17Oh, Les Miserables. Well, maybe not the Andrew Lloyd Webber ones,
0:26:17 > 0:26:21- although I actually like them.- Well, I do. I mean, Phantom did, Cats did.
0:26:21 > 0:26:25The Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals dominated the West End
0:26:25 > 0:26:29and later the capitals of the world in a way never seen before.
0:26:29 > 0:26:32His work was the cultural embodiment of the three-class system,
0:26:32 > 0:26:35transformed into brilliantly crafted popular culture
0:26:35 > 0:26:37for the ever-expanding middle classes.
0:26:37 > 0:26:39He drew on the high art of opera,
0:26:39 > 0:26:43the middle ground of musical theatre and the commonality of pop music.
0:26:43 > 0:26:44# Memory
0:26:44 > 0:26:49# All alone in the moonlight... #
0:26:49 > 0:26:51When I first came up with it,
0:26:51 > 0:26:53I thought, "Well, you know, what do I do?"
0:26:53 > 0:26:56I did actually go and play it to two or three people,
0:26:56 > 0:26:58the last of whom was my father.
0:26:58 > 0:27:00I said, "Does this sound like anything to you?"
0:27:00 > 0:27:02He said, "Yes. It sounds like 5 million!"
0:27:03 > 0:27:06# Touch me
0:27:06 > 0:27:08# It's so easy to leave... #
0:27:08 > 0:27:11Alongside this fantasy world so widely enjoyed,
0:27:11 > 0:27:15another more down-and-dirty culture was being consumed avidly.
0:27:19 > 0:27:22During the early '80s, an underground comic began to appear
0:27:22 > 0:27:25in Newcastle record shops and then across the country.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28It parodied everything from the tabloids' letter pages
0:27:28 > 0:27:30to classic children's comic strips.
0:27:32 > 0:27:36The key characters came from round here on Tyneside in the Northeast,
0:27:36 > 0:27:39where heavy industries had gone in the 1980s,
0:27:39 > 0:27:43completely ripping away an entire working-class economic structure.
0:27:48 > 0:27:51For its first five years, Viz was a cottage industry,
0:27:51 > 0:27:54only available at alternative record shops and some newsagents.
0:27:54 > 0:27:59In 1985, its creators struck a deal with a major magazine publisher.
0:27:59 > 0:28:03By the end of the decade, it was a nationwide bestseller.
0:28:03 > 0:28:05The magazine was started by
0:28:05 > 0:28:08a former clerk from a Newcastle branch of the DHSS.
0:28:08 > 0:28:13My dad was working class but he wanted to be middle class.
0:28:13 > 0:28:16He said, "Don't talk slang if you use the Geordie accent."
0:28:16 > 0:28:18He wanted us to be sort of posh.
0:28:18 > 0:28:20As far as we could tell, there was posh
0:28:20 > 0:28:23and there was the kids at school, the sort of rough kids,
0:28:23 > 0:28:25who we called menties at the time.
0:28:25 > 0:28:30My brother Steve and I, we were never comfortable being a sort of middle-class kid
0:28:30 > 0:28:32cos we both failed our 11 Plus and stuff
0:28:32 > 0:28:35and we weren't going to make it as university material.
0:28:35 > 0:28:39But we weren't comfortable being ordinary either.
0:28:39 > 0:28:43You felt like you were in the middle and removed from everything.
0:28:43 > 0:28:45As a result, you saw things as an observer.
0:28:45 > 0:28:48Are you lampooning the Geordie working class?
0:28:48 > 0:28:52These are vivid... Fat Slags, Biffa characters.
0:28:52 > 0:28:56Did you see that around you at the time in the '80s?
0:28:56 > 0:28:58Oh, very much so. They were all based on...
0:28:58 > 0:29:03The best ones would be sparked off by an actual event or a person.
0:29:03 > 0:29:06Sid The Sexist was based on a person.
0:29:06 > 0:29:11And Biffa Bacon, I was on a train and there was two kids fighting.
0:29:11 > 0:29:13Their parents were sitting either side of them
0:29:13 > 0:29:16and instead of saying, "Sit down, behave yourself,"
0:29:16 > 0:29:19he said, "Go on, son. I'm right behind you."
0:29:20 > 0:29:23The people you were taking the mickey out of would come up and say,
0:29:23 > 0:29:26"Oh, my mates reckon that I'm Sid The Sexist. Is it true?"
0:29:26 > 0:29:30They're proud of it cos even though you're lampooning them
0:29:30 > 0:29:33and there's some people, probably the top end of your readership,
0:29:33 > 0:29:36the intellectual people, would be laughing at them,
0:29:36 > 0:29:39they're laughing at themselves, laughing with you.
0:29:39 > 0:29:42The Guardian started giving it good reviews
0:29:42 > 0:29:45and the Daily Telegraph gave it a good review.
0:29:45 > 0:29:48We were always a bit uncomfortable when we got highbrow reviews.
0:29:48 > 0:29:51On the other hand, Auberon Waugh said
0:29:51 > 0:29:54if you want to know what's going on in this particular period,
0:29:54 > 0:29:57better to read Viz than to read Peter Ackroyd or Julian Barnes.
0:29:57 > 0:30:03Yeah, I was aware of his credentials, so I was quite flattered by that.
0:30:03 > 0:30:07But just occasionally you thought, this is all a bit silly, really.
0:30:07 > 0:30:11I don't know what level people were getting it at.
0:30:19 > 0:30:24At its peak, Viz sold in excess of a million copies an issue.
0:30:24 > 0:30:26It was one of the magazines most bought
0:30:26 > 0:30:29by the sharp-elbowed young professionals of the late '80s.
0:30:29 > 0:30:32So, a comic created by a lower-middle-class Geordie
0:30:32 > 0:30:34lampooning his fellow working-class Geordies
0:30:34 > 0:30:38had become an organ of the metropolitan middle class.
0:30:38 > 0:30:40# I've got the brains
0:30:40 > 0:30:42# You've got the looks
0:30:42 > 0:30:44# Let's make lots of money... #
0:30:44 > 0:30:48In London in 1986, Mrs Thatcher continued to dismantle
0:30:48 > 0:30:51what she felt were old class barriers.
0:30:51 > 0:30:54The City's growing confidence and drive
0:30:54 > 0:30:57owes a good deal to young people.
0:30:57 > 0:31:01Its vast new dealing rooms are run by the young.
0:31:01 > 0:31:05People who made it not because of who they know
0:31:05 > 0:31:09or what school tie they wear, but on sheer merit
0:31:09 > 0:31:13and that is the kind of society I want to see.
0:31:14 > 0:31:17As well as the old City gents of the upper middle class,
0:31:17 > 0:31:20the Government had aristocrats and their country estates in its sights
0:31:20 > 0:31:23with the looming prospect of a new inheritance tax.
0:31:23 > 0:31:26£100,000.
0:31:27 > 0:31:31The sale of the century has just finished at Christie's in London.
0:31:31 > 0:31:3870 drawings owned by the Duke of Devonshire fetched £19,611,000.
0:31:38 > 0:31:43But this was simply old-fashioned death duties by another name
0:31:43 > 0:31:45and just a token gesture against the aristocracy.
0:31:45 > 0:31:49They were still rich, if not quite as rich, in land and possessions.
0:31:49 > 0:31:52They may have lost their power decades ago,
0:31:52 > 0:31:53but selling off a picture or two
0:31:53 > 0:31:56was an easy price to pay for hanging on to their wealth.
0:31:56 > 0:32:01So, it was perhaps only symbolically that the aristocracy was under attack.
0:32:01 > 0:32:04And television was joining in the bunfight
0:32:04 > 0:32:06with the Royal Family on its agenda.
0:32:06 > 0:32:09# Once I was adored I was glorified
0:32:09 > 0:32:12# All I had to do was wave and they were on my side
0:32:12 > 0:32:17# But then we had so many scandals that their sympathy was lost
0:32:17 > 0:32:21# Now I have to pay my taxes and one's children are divorced... #
0:32:21 > 0:32:24By 1992, the Royal Family seemed to be in trouble.
0:32:24 > 0:32:27Their buildings burning, their marriages dissolving,
0:32:27 > 0:32:29their taxes pending.
0:32:29 > 0:32:33Some thought this was a defining moment for the keystone of this country's upper class.
0:32:33 > 0:32:38In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents,
0:32:38 > 0:32:42"It has turned out to be an annus horribilis."
0:32:42 > 0:32:44Sue Townsend caught the spirit of the times
0:32:44 > 0:32:48in her novel The Queen And I by deposing the Royal Family
0:32:48 > 0:32:51and forcing them to live among the working classes.
0:32:51 > 0:32:55What did the novel The Queen And I say about the class system in this country?
0:32:55 > 0:32:59I think by putting them on a council estate
0:32:59 > 0:33:04and forcing them to mix with their neighbours in the community,
0:33:04 > 0:33:10I think the classes started to merge a little,
0:33:10 > 0:33:12just a little,
0:33:12 > 0:33:16when the Queen helped a young girl to give birth to a baby
0:33:16 > 0:33:22and was able to do some kind deeds, if you like.
0:33:22 > 0:33:29When the working-class people eventually accepted the Queen,
0:33:29 > 0:33:33I think it was a way of just saying what everybody knows,
0:33:33 > 0:33:36that we're all the same under the skin.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40I mean, you know, I forced them to live with each other
0:33:40 > 0:33:42and they largely got on well.
0:33:42 > 0:33:44And the Queen was happier.
0:33:44 > 0:33:46SHE CHUCKLES
0:33:46 > 0:33:48So, it's a true story, then?
0:33:48 > 0:33:50Oh, yeah(!)
0:33:50 > 0:33:55Ladies and gentlemen, we're leaving Downing Street for the last time,
0:33:55 > 0:33:58after 11 and a half wonderful years
0:33:58 > 0:34:03and we're very happy that we leave the United Kingdom
0:34:03 > 0:34:05in a very, very much better state
0:34:05 > 0:34:09than when we came here 11 and a half years ago.
0:34:09 > 0:34:13Mrs Thatcher had gone, but her dream of middle England emerged again,
0:34:13 > 0:34:15this time in a more benign form.
0:34:17 > 0:34:21The new Prime Minister dreamed of a lost middle-class Eden,
0:34:21 > 0:34:23of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer,
0:34:23 > 0:34:26dog lovers, and as George Orwell wrote,
0:34:26 > 0:34:30old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.
0:34:30 > 0:34:35John Major's kindly, nostalgic and very English view of a middle-class England
0:34:35 > 0:34:39contrasted starkly with a wider world in flux.
0:34:39 > 0:34:41RAVE MUSIC PLAYS
0:34:41 > 0:34:44As in the 1960s, class was apparently subsumed and blurred
0:34:44 > 0:34:47into a frenzy of music and drugs.
0:34:47 > 0:34:51But there was a darker side to this second summer of love
0:34:51 > 0:34:55when the hardening drug culture collided with the social problems of the time.
0:34:55 > 0:34:59During the '90s, we began to hear references in the media
0:34:59 > 0:35:03to a new social group dismissively referred to as the underclass.
0:35:03 > 0:35:05Jobless, said to be feckless, possibly criminal,
0:35:05 > 0:35:09they were a swelling demographic on Britain's blighted housing estates.
0:35:11 > 0:35:14They were from communities left behind
0:35:14 > 0:35:17by the aspirational, home-buying working class.
0:35:20 > 0:35:22In 1993, the author Irvine Welsh,
0:35:22 > 0:35:25who was born in one of these crumbling estates,
0:35:25 > 0:35:28illuminated the world of the scammers, dealers and pariahs
0:35:28 > 0:35:30of his neighbourhood in Trainspotting.
0:35:30 > 0:35:32In the novel and the film adaptation
0:35:32 > 0:35:35some critics felt that the underclass depicted
0:35:35 > 0:35:39was at best amoral and at worst glamorised addiction.
0:35:39 > 0:35:43- Would sir care for a starter? Garlic bread, perhaps?- No, thank you.
0:35:43 > 0:35:46I'll proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs.
0:35:48 > 0:35:51As you wish, sir. As you wish.
0:35:53 > 0:35:56I went to Leith to ask Irvine Welsh
0:35:56 > 0:36:00if the world he came from was still an issue when the book came out.
0:36:00 > 0:36:02When you published Trainspotting,
0:36:02 > 0:36:06did you feel you were in a literary world that was itself class divided,
0:36:06 > 0:36:08not just the books but the way it was run?
0:36:08 > 0:36:10You have to be realistic about it.
0:36:10 > 0:36:14Most writers are going to come from the upper echelons of society
0:36:14 > 0:36:17because basically, they've got more time to write.
0:36:17 > 0:36:20They're going to be in rooms stuffed full of books
0:36:20 > 0:36:24and they'll have all this exposure to all these cultural tools.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28You'll get your Jock right, or your Paddy right, or your Asian right,
0:36:28 > 0:36:31to show how kind of cool and multicultural we are,
0:36:31 > 0:36:35but the bedrock of it all is this very kind of waspish kind of writing
0:36:35 > 0:36:40and I think it's always going to be that way to an extent.
0:36:40 > 0:36:46Reading contemporary literature over the last 30 years in Britain,
0:36:46 > 0:36:51do you find that it inhabits the old class system, the upper, the middle, the lower?
0:36:51 > 0:36:54Literature, in terms of the voices,
0:36:54 > 0:36:59it's probably the most conservative kind of medium.
0:36:59 > 0:37:04I think it's the one that takes a lot longer to catch up.
0:37:04 > 0:37:07You can see film making, TV, has always kind of been
0:37:07 > 0:37:10a bit more democratic about letting different voices in.
0:37:10 > 0:37:15The Play For Today stuff I think was a massive influence on a whole generation of writers.
0:37:15 > 0:37:18You must have read a lot and that takes you into areas
0:37:18 > 0:37:21which defies your categorisation, don't they?
0:37:21 > 0:37:23I think for a lot of working-class kids,
0:37:23 > 0:37:26the big thing that chimed with me first was Orwell.
0:37:26 > 0:37:31I was also interested in stuff that was outside my own experience.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34One of the most important things that we really have to remember
0:37:34 > 0:37:37through all the kind of class and cultural thing,
0:37:37 > 0:37:40as soon as we posit the issue of class or culture,
0:37:40 > 0:37:43we're immediately thinking about the vision,
0:37:43 > 0:37:45but we do have a common humanity.
0:37:45 > 0:37:48That can be very strange because I was in choirs when I was a kid,
0:37:48 > 0:37:51church choir, town choir, school choir,
0:37:51 > 0:37:55and we sang some magnificent music by the greatest composers
0:37:55 > 0:37:58and yet when the Third Programme came on in our house,
0:37:58 > 0:38:00we knocked it off immediately.
0:38:00 > 0:38:03We didn't want to listen to that sort of music that we were doing.
0:38:03 > 0:38:06A lot of people in that town were singing that...
0:38:06 > 0:38:07It was a very strange thing.
0:38:07 > 0:38:11On one level, it wasn't for us and on another level, we were doing it.
0:38:11 > 0:38:16So, you wanted to do it yourself but you didn't want to watch other people doing it and consume it.
0:38:16 > 0:38:20You started off as working class. How would you describe yourself now?
0:38:20 > 0:38:23Probably upper class, really,
0:38:23 > 0:38:25because I think of middle-class people as having...
0:38:25 > 0:38:29People say that I'm middle class now, but I don't see that at all
0:38:29 > 0:38:32cos I think of middle-class people as having mortgages
0:38:32 > 0:38:37and jobs and sort of struggling a little bit, you know.
0:38:37 > 0:38:42But I'm... You know, I don't live that kind of life, really.
0:38:42 > 0:38:47I have a very comfortable life in terms of what my own needs are.
0:38:47 > 0:38:48I live quite a...
0:38:48 > 0:38:52I mean, I work hard because I'm kind of driven to write,
0:38:52 > 0:38:56I enjoy doing it, but I don't really see it as work.
0:38:56 > 0:39:00I see it as a kind of hobby that I've been able to make pay.
0:39:00 > 0:39:04So, I see myself as quite a sort of idle rich person, really.
0:39:04 > 0:39:07- Is it nice? - Yeah, it's great! It's wonderful!
0:39:07 > 0:39:11Irvine Welsh's success made him part of a new classless, cultural elite
0:39:11 > 0:39:14which he shared with a generation of young British artists.
0:39:14 > 0:39:17They showed
0:39:17 > 0:39:19that provocative artistic gestures
0:39:19 > 0:39:21plus an acute sense of publicity
0:39:21 > 0:39:25was more important than if you came from working-class Leeds or Margate.
0:39:25 > 0:39:29This new culture was also being manipulated and bankrolled,
0:39:29 > 0:39:31not by an old art establishment, but by collectors,
0:39:31 > 0:39:35most notably Charles Saatchi, whose background in advertising
0:39:35 > 0:39:39gave him a particular skill in spotting, even creating, cultural trends.
0:39:39 > 0:39:43At the same time, money for the national culture appeared
0:39:43 > 0:39:45on a scale never seen before.
0:39:45 > 0:39:50AUDIENCE: ..Four, three, two, one. Go!
0:39:50 > 0:39:57And the first ever national live lottery draw takes place on the BBC.
0:39:57 > 0:39:59The first number will be coming out now. It's a green.
0:39:59 > 0:40:04The public may have seen the National Lottery as a route to becoming a millionaire,
0:40:04 > 0:40:06but for culture, it was a turning point,
0:40:06 > 0:40:09providing funding on an unprecedented scale.
0:40:09 > 0:40:12Its aim was to provide access to culture for all.
0:40:12 > 0:40:15But was it as classless as had been intended?
0:40:15 > 0:40:18Certainly there were thousands of beneficiaries, not least up here.
0:40:18 > 0:40:20For example, the Gateshead Sage.
0:40:20 > 0:40:25Since 1994, the arts and heritage have received over £8 billion of Lottery funding,
0:40:25 > 0:40:28benefiting projects from the major concert halls
0:40:28 > 0:40:30to the smallest town choirs.
0:40:30 > 0:40:33But did the bigger chunks of money go to the bigger,
0:40:33 > 0:40:35middle-class institutions?
0:40:35 > 0:40:38And which class was controlling this cultural enrichment?
0:40:38 > 0:40:40I went to the Royal Opera House,
0:40:40 > 0:40:43beneficiary of a vast Lottery grant, to meet Lord Gowrie
0:40:43 > 0:40:47who was Chair of the Arts Council of England when the money was handed out.
0:40:47 > 0:40:49There was a feeling abroad that the Lottery
0:40:49 > 0:40:51benefited those who had
0:40:51 > 0:40:56unduly and disproportionately compared with the rest of the country.
0:40:56 > 0:41:00Well, the argument was that more poor people played the Lottery
0:41:00 > 0:41:04than rich people played the Lottery.
0:41:04 > 0:41:10We got round that, not simply as a political fudge,
0:41:10 > 0:41:15but out of great belief, by regionalising it.
0:41:15 > 0:41:19We did the great school of music in the Northeast
0:41:19 > 0:41:23and we did the Baltic Exchange and we did the Lowry Centre.
0:41:23 > 0:41:26We're here behind the stalls in the Royal Opera House
0:41:26 > 0:41:28and there was a great controversy in the '90s
0:41:28 > 0:41:32about the Lottery money coming to the Royal Opera House, the size of it.
0:41:32 > 0:41:36The idea behind the Lottery was in order to be able to give money
0:41:36 > 0:41:41to things like the Opera House, which was very unpopular in terms of current funding.
0:41:41 > 0:41:46So, it was to help those things in our culture
0:41:46 > 0:41:48and our society which needed public money
0:41:48 > 0:41:52but which the public, on the whole, didn't like getting money.
0:41:52 > 0:41:55So, it was an irony that it was chosen in that way.
0:41:55 > 0:41:59Not helped by my friend and somebody I very much admire,
0:41:59 > 0:42:02Jeremy Isaacs was the intendant at the time,
0:42:02 > 0:42:06who popped champagne, and my heart sank when I heard that.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09There were, and are, a few affordable tickets for the Royal Opera House
0:42:09 > 0:42:12but the public perception was that their Lottery money
0:42:12 > 0:42:16was being handed out to institutions that only the elite could afford or enjoy.
0:42:16 > 0:42:21So, although over there the Tate Modern welcomes four million visitors a year for free,
0:42:21 > 0:42:25is there still a sense that somehow things like opera, ballet,
0:42:25 > 0:42:29classical concerts, even theatre are not for the likes of us?
0:42:29 > 0:42:33I remember I wrote a play and it was on at the Haymarket
0:42:33 > 0:42:39and on the first night, I'd invited all my relations,
0:42:39 > 0:42:42my extended family,
0:42:42 > 0:42:47and I was on the balcony looking down, waiting for them to come
0:42:47 > 0:42:53and...there they were in their best suits and shirts and ties.
0:42:53 > 0:42:55Everybody else was in casual clothes,
0:42:55 > 0:42:59but they'd all had their hair cut for the theatre
0:42:59 > 0:43:02and their shoes were shiny and I really...
0:43:02 > 0:43:05I mean, I love them for it. I love them for it.
0:43:05 > 0:43:10But I knew that that meant there was an awful lot of anxiety as well.
0:43:10 > 0:43:12They hadn't been to the theatre.
0:43:16 > 0:43:19A massive injection of money into arts and heritage,
0:43:19 > 0:43:24along with a booming economy, was the welcoming arena into which Tony Blair stepped.
0:43:24 > 0:43:28But like his predecessors, he had a familiar mantra.
0:43:28 > 0:43:34Slowly but surely, the old British establishment is being replaced
0:43:34 > 0:43:39by a new, larger, but more meritocratic middle class.
0:43:39 > 0:43:42Where Tony Blair diverged from Mrs Thatcher
0:43:42 > 0:43:45and John Major was the way in which he spoke.
0:43:45 > 0:43:48Mrs Thatcher, a lower-middle-class child of the '30s,
0:43:48 > 0:43:51cultivated an abrasive upper-class voice.
0:43:51 > 0:43:55The lady's not for turning.
0:43:55 > 0:43:57But Tony Blair, public school and Oxford educated,
0:43:57 > 0:43:59went in the opposite direction.
0:43:59 > 0:44:03He found a voice that he thought would appeal across the classes.
0:44:03 > 0:44:07What do I need a bloke with a stick and a pig's bladder for? LAUGHTER
0:44:07 > 0:44:09I've got John Prescott, he's much better!
0:44:09 > 0:44:11APPLAUSE
0:44:11 > 0:44:14As we all know, class is blurred by accent, defined by accent,
0:44:14 > 0:44:17camouflaged by accent, lied about by accent.
0:44:17 > 0:44:20The late John Peel went to Shrewsbury Public School,
0:44:20 > 0:44:24but when he climbed the ladder of success in Broadcasting House,
0:44:24 > 0:44:26he took his accent downstairs, to Liverpool,
0:44:26 > 0:44:28to a sort of Beatles accent.
0:44:28 > 0:44:33Nowadays there are regional accents all over the airways.
0:44:33 > 0:44:39MONTAGE OF REGIONAL ACCENTS
0:44:39 > 0:44:43But is this blurring of accents really a sign of the blurring of the classes?
0:44:43 > 0:44:47Is it a step along the way towards a classless society?
0:44:47 > 0:44:50Or is it merely an attempt to mask your privileged background
0:44:50 > 0:44:52because now it isn't cool to be posh?
0:44:52 > 0:44:56Tony Blair certainly saw cross-cultural coolness
0:44:56 > 0:44:58as part of his new classless vision.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01And as for this new, inclusive, smart, middle-classless culture,
0:45:01 > 0:45:04there was a perception from many parts of the country
0:45:04 > 0:45:06that it was all a bit too metropolitan.
0:45:08 > 0:45:12And this assumption that our society was now open, more liberal
0:45:12 > 0:45:15and inclusive as reflected in our cultural tastes,
0:45:15 > 0:45:19now came up against something more traditional - voices from our past.
0:45:19 > 0:45:24On the 22nd of September in 2002, 400,000 people marched to here,
0:45:24 > 0:45:27Hyde Park in the middle of London, to protest
0:45:27 > 0:45:30at what they saw as a threat to the way of life
0:45:30 > 0:45:32of the British countryside.
0:45:34 > 0:45:38The issue that mobilised most people was political,
0:45:38 > 0:45:42the Government bill to ban fox-hunting, but there was a wider schism.
0:45:42 > 0:45:44It seemed to highlight a class division
0:45:44 > 0:45:47between the governing metropolitan bureaucrats here in London
0:45:47 > 0:45:52and the ancient loyalties and hierarchies of the countryside.
0:45:52 > 0:45:58It was the ancient medieval divide between the city and the country
0:45:58 > 0:45:59in a modern form.
0:45:59 > 0:46:02If you define class in terms of income and occupation,
0:46:02 > 0:46:07that was a huge concertina of class on the move from the countryside
0:46:07 > 0:46:12and what brought them together, the core of the alliance,
0:46:12 > 0:46:15was that you metropolitan types don't understand us.
0:46:15 > 0:46:17You think we're bloodthirsty,
0:46:17 > 0:46:20our motivation in life is slaughtering fur and feather.
0:46:20 > 0:46:23"You are metropolitan wankers, we are the real people."
0:46:23 > 0:46:28But it was a class society, plural, on the move
0:46:28 > 0:46:30against a different kind of class society
0:46:30 > 0:46:33and they too, I suspect, had a parody view
0:46:33 > 0:46:37of the people they thought neither understood them nor wanted to.
0:46:37 > 0:46:39Fascinating phenomenon.
0:46:40 > 0:46:43These two groups, so seemingly opposed to one another,
0:46:43 > 0:46:46nonetheless share a fear and distaste for the class
0:46:46 > 0:46:49that finds itself at the bottom of the heap.
0:46:49 > 0:46:52They've been called chavs and the wide use of the word
0:46:52 > 0:46:54seems symptomatic of this growing contempt.
0:46:56 > 0:46:58The problem with the word "chav" is it's not a sub-culture
0:46:58 > 0:47:01like Goths, for example.
0:47:01 > 0:47:04It's not something really people describe themselves as such.
0:47:04 > 0:47:10But basically, what it sums up are things like antisocial behaviour,
0:47:10 > 0:47:13being work-shy, teenage pregnancy,
0:47:13 > 0:47:16spending money in a tacky way, but all of those things
0:47:16 > 0:47:20exclusively associated with people from a working-class background.
0:47:20 > 0:47:2250 years ago, the novelist Nancy Mitford
0:47:22 > 0:47:26wrote about the notion of you and non-you vocabulary which was used
0:47:26 > 0:47:29by the upper classes to look down on those beneath them.
0:47:29 > 0:47:33"Chav" seems to be a continuation of this invidious class superiority.
0:47:33 > 0:47:37The writer Ferdinand Mount sees this as indicative of a demonisation
0:47:37 > 0:47:41of the working class that comes out of a wider social context.
0:47:41 > 0:47:46The huge expansion of the middle class, which in general,
0:47:46 > 0:47:50is a very good development, has had a bad side effect
0:47:50 > 0:47:55which is that those who are in the bottom class
0:47:55 > 0:47:59are regarded as having been left behind,
0:47:59 > 0:48:06they have become a class to be pitied, and in some cases despised.
0:48:06 > 0:48:09And it is reflected too in television.
0:48:09 > 0:48:10Still wouldn't want ya.
0:48:10 > 0:48:12Cos he knows a bit of class when he see it.
0:48:12 > 0:48:15- SHE SCOFFS - Class? Class?!
0:48:15 > 0:48:18You peroxide chav!
0:48:18 > 0:48:21Uh, who you calling a chav? You're an ugly ginger muggler!
0:48:21 > 0:48:25In the post-war period, you at least had positive representations
0:48:25 > 0:48:29or an attempt to positively represent working-class people.
0:48:29 > 0:48:33You had things like the Likely Lads, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet,
0:48:33 > 0:48:37whilst today you don't really get any positive representations.
0:48:37 > 0:48:39You get grotesque caricatures.
0:48:39 > 0:48:42Vicky Pollard, I suppose, being probably the most striking example.
0:48:42 > 0:48:45Did you bite Jacquie Hayes?
0:48:45 > 0:48:48I never even done nothing. Let me tell you the whole thing.
0:48:48 > 0:48:51Julie wrote on the wall about Lorraine being a 100% minger,
0:48:51 > 0:48:53and then Samantha came into our dorm to stir it all up,
0:48:53 > 0:48:55but Carlie found a pube in her lasagne.
0:48:55 > 0:49:00I think dramatists, especially, have always taken the piss
0:49:00 > 0:49:04out of working-class characters, underclass characters,
0:49:04 > 0:49:08you know, the village idiot,
0:49:08 > 0:49:12the fool is part of the, you know...
0:49:12 > 0:49:15It's the dramatist persona if you're a dramatist.
0:49:15 > 0:49:18Six kids,
0:49:18 > 0:49:20kids to keep on top of.
0:49:20 > 0:49:22You never had to do stuff before.
0:49:22 > 0:49:26Massive...and clothes for school, massive.
0:49:26 > 0:49:29I see it as a very old tradition
0:49:29 > 0:49:33of the satirist from Gillray, Rowlandson
0:49:33 > 0:49:38and the great Victorian novelists, of celebrating people
0:49:38 > 0:49:42who are resistant to the status quo.
0:49:42 > 0:49:45When people come back and defend the use, they'll say,
0:49:45 > 0:49:48well, it's not just used against people who are working class,
0:49:48 > 0:49:51it's used against people who are actually really wealthy,
0:49:51 > 0:49:55like Cheryl Cole, like Katie Price, like David Beckham, for example.
0:49:55 > 0:49:58He's sometimes called a chav.
0:49:58 > 0:50:00And of course, what unites all of those celebrities
0:50:00 > 0:50:04is they're from a working-class background and there's this sense,
0:50:04 > 0:50:07and this is sometimes how "chav" is used,
0:50:07 > 0:50:11is that when working-class people get money, they don't know how to spend it properly.
0:50:11 > 0:50:14They spend it in the wrong way, they don't have the taste,
0:50:14 > 0:50:17the discretion, you know, the elegance, whatever,
0:50:17 > 0:50:20that middle-class people have when they have money.
0:50:20 > 0:50:23So, although there seems to be a new destructive contempt
0:50:23 > 0:50:27for the lives and cultural taste of those from the modern working class,
0:50:27 > 0:50:30it hasn't stopped the middle class from colonising their great institutions.
0:50:30 > 0:50:34This is Old Trafford, the biggest football ground in the country.
0:50:34 > 0:50:39It's the home of the most successful English football team of the last 30 years.
0:50:39 > 0:50:44With a billionaire American owner and a fleet of trophy-winning international stars,
0:50:44 > 0:50:45it's also a global brand.
0:50:45 > 0:50:48This club's now worth more than a billion pounds
0:50:48 > 0:50:51but it started like all of them, in very humble circumstances.
0:50:51 > 0:50:56Formed in 1878 out of a local railway company, Manchester United
0:50:56 > 0:51:00is a football club rooted in the industrial working class.
0:51:00 > 0:51:02And the players are still overwhelming working class,
0:51:02 > 0:51:06as is their manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, a former shop steward.
0:51:06 > 0:51:09But at the top level in places like this,
0:51:09 > 0:51:12football culture's changed radically over the last 100 years
0:51:12 > 0:51:13like so much else.
0:51:13 > 0:51:18Peter Hargreaves has been going to Old Trafford since 1954.
0:51:18 > 0:51:20As well as being a season ticket holder,
0:51:20 > 0:51:25he's also part of the Sad Red Bastards Club that attends every reserve and youth game.
0:51:25 > 0:51:29What is going on today in terms of the crowds going,
0:51:29 > 0:51:31in terms of the prices being charged?
0:51:31 > 0:51:34I've had a season ticket since 1969.
0:51:34 > 0:51:39In 1969, it cost £12 for the whole season.
0:51:39 > 0:51:43My season ticket this season is £950.
0:51:43 > 0:51:46Exactly the same seat, I haven't moved.
0:51:46 > 0:51:50So, it's now double the average weekly wage
0:51:50 > 0:51:53and what I think happened, I think somebody had been to America
0:51:53 > 0:51:58and went to an American football match and saw it was exclusively middle-class people
0:51:58 > 0:52:00and thought, "This is what we want.
0:52:00 > 0:52:03"This is what we want football in Britain to be like."
0:52:03 > 0:52:06Would you say a different class of people go to football now?
0:52:06 > 0:52:08Yeah, I think so, I think it's likely.
0:52:08 > 0:52:14Plainly, there are still a lot of working-class people go, like me,
0:52:14 > 0:52:18who have had to cut other bits of expenditure,
0:52:18 > 0:52:23change, reshape their budget, to accommodate the increases.
0:52:23 > 0:52:25I think by necessity, the profile's changed.
0:52:25 > 0:52:28I mean, I see people walking into Old Trafford
0:52:28 > 0:52:32who are dressed in outfits that are worth more than my car.
0:52:32 > 0:52:35There's also the fact that a lot of people who were working class
0:52:35 > 0:52:38and have, in the last 50 years, one way or another,
0:52:38 > 0:52:41made a bit more money, they're going and they would say,
0:52:41 > 0:52:45"We're middle class now but we were working class and we can't be blamed for that."
0:52:45 > 0:52:46No, no, I'm not blaming anybody.
0:52:46 > 0:52:49No, no, honestly, I'm not, and I'm not criticising.
0:52:49 > 0:52:54People are people irrespective of what they've got.
0:52:54 > 0:52:58But what about the pay on the pitch, because I remember my dad's idol
0:52:58 > 0:53:01was Tom Finney and one of the things he liked about Tom Finney,
0:53:01 > 0:53:04Preston North End, you know that, best winger we ever had...
0:53:04 > 0:53:06- Yep.- ..was that he was a plumber
0:53:06 > 0:53:09and at home games, he would work on a Saturday morning at his plumbing
0:53:09 > 0:53:13then catch the bus into the ground and play his game in the afternoon.
0:53:13 > 0:53:15Now, that is... that's a planet away, isn't it?
0:53:15 > 0:53:17It's totally different.
0:53:17 > 0:53:22- Yeah.- I mean, equally, had that facility been available to Tom Finney
0:53:22 > 0:53:25he would not have refused it, he wouldn't have said,
0:53:25 > 0:53:30"Oh, no, I don't want the £200,000 a week. I'd just go and sooner fix this U-bend."
0:53:30 > 0:53:34So, with priced out working-class fans, millionaire players
0:53:34 > 0:53:35and billionaire owners,
0:53:35 > 0:53:39is top division football nowadays less for the working class
0:53:39 > 0:53:41and more for the rich, or the super-class?
0:53:53 > 0:53:56What do we mean when we say somebody's upper class these days?
0:53:56 > 0:53:59Is it their dress sense, their accent, their education,
0:53:59 > 0:54:01their house, their title?
0:54:01 > 0:54:04Increasingly over the last three decades, entry into the elite
0:54:04 > 0:54:09has been guaranteed by one thing above all - money, loads of money.
0:54:09 > 0:54:12It seems the ancient cultural symbols of the aristocracy
0:54:12 > 0:54:15have been appropriated by new money,
0:54:15 > 0:54:18particularly from the City of London, hedge funds
0:54:18 > 0:54:22and the internationally global elite, but this is no recent development.
0:54:22 > 0:54:24There have always been new men and new money.
0:54:24 > 0:54:26I mean, there were people who did well
0:54:26 > 0:54:29out of the dissolution of the monasteries
0:54:29 > 0:54:30and there were people who did well
0:54:30 > 0:54:33out of the dissolution of the nationalised industries.
0:54:33 > 0:54:37And new money comes from new trades.
0:54:37 > 0:54:40Over the last 30 years, with the rise of new media
0:54:40 > 0:54:45and the entertainment industries, another elite has emerged.
0:54:45 > 0:54:50It's made up of the pop stars, sports stars and TV stars who feed the media and the media, in turn,
0:54:50 > 0:54:52builds their status and financial value.
0:54:52 > 0:54:54Instead of a class creating a culture,
0:54:54 > 0:54:58a culture through magazines, internet gossip, hit TV shows,
0:54:58 > 0:55:01has created a celebrity super-class.
0:55:02 > 0:55:07So, has that classless pop culture idealism that we saw in the 1960s
0:55:07 > 0:55:10been eclipsed by instant fame and the riches that go with it?
0:55:10 > 0:55:12Where do we look now for new forms, new groupings,
0:55:12 > 0:55:15a new cultural charge?
0:55:16 > 0:55:20At the beginning of this programme, we met a de-industrialised country
0:55:20 > 0:55:22that had sidelined both the working classes
0:55:22 > 0:55:25and our immigrant population.
0:55:25 > 0:55:27But a creative moment emerged from this time
0:55:27 > 0:55:31that showed the growing importance of our immigrant culture.
0:55:31 > 0:55:32# ..Out tonight
0:55:32 > 0:55:35# I don't know if I feel all right
0:55:35 > 0:55:37# Everyone... #
0:55:37 > 0:55:40Three decades on from 2 Tone,
0:55:40 > 0:55:43and even if only 13% of our population is considered of ethnic origin,
0:55:43 > 0:55:46the cultural influence is fully anchored.
0:55:48 > 0:55:52Pop music is at the heart of this, and recently grime,
0:55:52 > 0:55:54an original form of urban British music,
0:55:54 > 0:55:56has produced several pop superstars
0:55:56 > 0:55:59from a generation that some wanted to write off.
0:55:59 > 0:56:02# It was nothing but a quick thing Kids' games, kiss chase
0:56:02 > 0:56:04# Just a quick fling, now I'm hoping you never go missing... #
0:56:04 > 0:56:07Brought up one of east London's roughest estates,
0:56:07 > 0:56:10Tinchy Stryder is from this generation.
0:56:10 > 0:56:13He's still only 23 but his career has taken him
0:56:13 > 0:56:18from being a 14-year-old rapper on pirate radio to two UK number ones.
0:56:18 > 0:56:23The music definitely rose above all the differences in the background
0:56:23 > 0:56:27because music, I guess, is like a language everyone understands, like,
0:56:27 > 0:56:29if you hear music and you know it...
0:56:29 > 0:56:31But just to relate to, like...
0:56:31 > 0:56:34I guess that's why it opened my mind up before, like,
0:56:34 > 0:56:36you know, what I like and what I listen to
0:56:36 > 0:56:39only people that might have grew up
0:56:39 > 0:56:41or been around where we've been might understand that.
0:56:41 > 0:56:44I feel like it's come together much more recently
0:56:44 > 0:56:47when you hear people from different genres of music
0:56:47 > 0:56:50coming together and collaborating and making music
0:56:50 > 0:56:54and it feels like it gets kind of rounded up a bit more.
0:56:54 > 0:56:59Britain's multicultural inheritance has shown that cultural mobility
0:56:59 > 0:57:02can burst through social restriction,
0:57:02 > 0:57:05both celebrating and subverting the usual stereotype of hoodies,
0:57:05 > 0:57:08gangsters and blighted estates.
0:57:08 > 0:57:10This is one modern triumph of culture over class.
0:57:10 > 0:57:15There are now few boundaries, alternative to commercial, pop to classical, black to white.
0:57:15 > 0:57:17- # Dodgin' police- Constables
0:57:17 > 0:57:20# Walking with ... Jeans too low to ever consider
0:57:20 > 0:57:22# Running or jumping walls
0:57:22 > 0:57:24# When I walk round here There's a couple of rules
0:57:24 > 0:57:26# No bling round here Tuck your jewels
0:57:26 > 0:57:28# Unless you wanna get done by the wolves... #
0:57:28 > 0:57:30So, what's changed over the last 100 years?
0:57:30 > 0:57:32You could say, "Not very much".
0:57:32 > 0:57:35Although free education for all has flourished,
0:57:35 > 0:57:39around 60% of the current Cabinet were privately educated at schools
0:57:39 > 0:57:42that still represent only 7% of the population
0:57:42 > 0:57:45and the consequences that flow from that.
0:57:45 > 0:57:48The upper classes are still with us, joined by the new super-class,
0:57:48 > 0:57:51still forming an economic upper crust.
0:57:51 > 0:57:54While at the other end, some of the lower class
0:57:54 > 0:57:58appears to have been abandoned, demonised by the more privileged.
0:57:58 > 0:58:02But it seems to me that the middle class has just grown and grown.
0:58:02 > 0:58:04An avalanche of access to all the arts has given them
0:58:04 > 0:58:07a command across culture, from festivals to galleries,
0:58:07 > 0:58:11through television, radio and the internet and theatre, wherever you look,
0:58:11 > 0:58:14their appetite for culture appears to be insatiable.
0:58:14 > 0:58:16And it's the multicultural tastes and ambition
0:58:16 > 0:58:20of this new mass intelligentsia which characterises us now.
0:58:20 > 0:58:23After a tumultuous century, many people have, I think, emerged
0:58:23 > 0:58:27as more tolerant, more ambitious, now defined by their culture.
0:58:27 > 0:58:31Class, especially expressed in money, still matters,
0:58:31 > 0:58:33but culture is in the ascendant.
0:58:33 > 0:58:37Britain 100 years ago seems rather like a foreign country.
0:58:37 > 0:58:40We all do things differently now and on the whole, in my view,
0:58:40 > 0:58:42much, much better.
0:58:42 > 0:58:46# I wanna live like common people
0:58:46 > 0:58:49# I wanna do whatever common people do
0:58:49 > 0:58:52# Wanna sleep with common people
0:58:52 > 0:58:57# I wanna sleep with common people like you
0:58:57 > 0:59:00# Well, what else could I do?
0:59:00 > 0:59:03# I said, "I'll see what I can do." #
0:59:05 > 0:59:09Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd