In this 8th and last piece about Marsh Fen and Town and Class I comment on where we are in 2026.

"Working hard used to get you something. It got you a house, a nice life, holidays. It got you somewhere....." Hannah Spencer MP Here I allow my thoughts to meander, try and consider where I fit in with class; acknowledge there are many pretenders; and finally consider whether it should be a legally protected characteristic.

My great-grandfather was known by everyone as Frank Elsden, although his birth name was Frederick, who moved to Spalding as a “man from the Pru” – an insurance agent for the Prudential Assurance Company in 1932, with his wife Ada and his son Cyril Frank Elsden. As such his was a story of social mobility from working class to middle class.

Here I look at Pigeon End Spalding, how labelling of the area and its people changed over time and some of its effects.

Gang labour has repeatedly been a means of exploiting workers and suppressing wages driven by a food system that loads costs to the producer creating a race to the bottom on the value of labour.

Rural class structures are very misunderstood. A popular history I was taught was that these people migrated to cities to work. This is a little misleading as in fact that they migrated into industry to work, not all industry was city based, especially coal mining as any visit to the former coal mining villages of the Midlands, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland will reveal.

“It’s terribly difficult to explain in England to people how much class distinction there is. Its only when you go away and look back that you see it.” Michael Caine

This article looks at the past development of chicory to adulterate coffee and how this intertwined with coffee making it affordable to the working class before becoming a victim of energy costs in the 1970's only for a new industry forcing chicory to be developed in the 1980's.

Allotments have a variety of forms and uses. They are important today as they were in the past. The purpose of them and their function may have changed, but as fiscal pressures become greater they may become even more significant to people by reverting to their original purpose: To enable those not receiving enough renumeration from their labours to support themselves and their families.

So in both Northumbria and Lincolnshire I see a reduction of income, hours and working opportunity for people as a direct result of government policy. Added to this is decreased job security and increased uncertainty combined with rising cost of living. Effectively all this is combining to increase hardship and poverty of working people.

They lie as thick as thieves, and they live like pigs.