MARSH FEN AND TOWN ……..AND CLASS. PART 1 INTRODUCTION “WHAT CLASS?”

I tend to know very little about class. But I don’t view that as unique, I believe most English people fail to understand this. Michael Caine summed it up in a TV interview with Russell Harty:

“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.”

I was never consciously aware of class until I was in my late twenties, although perhaps I should have been. You are not born aware of class and classism in the same way you are not born aware of race and racism, although the latter is possibly learned at a younger age. It is a popular quote of Labour’s John Prescott before the 1997 election victory , “We are all middle class now.” This is often regarded out of context, and perhaps was an acknowledgement that the Labour Party was under Tony Blair increasingly middle class and was seeking to expand social mobility as well as appeal to a wide range of people not just the now popularly quoted “ordinary working people” phrase that politicians keenly bander about to the point of being meaningless.

I have no education in sociology, but have read Karl Marx (whom I believe is responsible for spawning great evil) and subsequent authors, perhaps having the most sympathy with the historian E P Thomson who writing in 1963 sought to lift the English working class out of the status of statistics into the reality of people. Not enough people perhaps have this ability with George Orwell being one of the few most notably in Road to Wigan Pier. In more modern times possibly the most astute commentator on class is the anarchist Dr. Lisa McKenzie in her book “Getting By” in 2015. It is perhaps ironic that reading a book by a person of different politics, environment (urban Nottingham c.f. Rural Lincolnshire), and class (working class c.f. middle class) I found reading her work a revelation that made me consider how what she says applies to my totally different lived experience. Perhaps the only thing we have in common is similar ages both born in the late 1960’s.

I used to believe that class didn’t matter and that working hard would be rewarded and you have fairly equal opportunities regardless of background. I had been brought up told this and for my age group I believe this was a common mantra of both the working and middle classes. I believe this is a byproduct of us being brought up by a post-war generation with grandparents that had seen war and parents that had enjoyed the subsequent interaction of people from both various countries and classes. Indeed, simply look at the arts, especially pop music, theatre, film and television and you see people from working class backgrounds enjoying great success and advancement in those areas, this era saw a great deal of interaction of people between the classes on a more level playing field that ended in the late 1970’s. The post-war Absolute Beginners generation described by Colin MacInnes cut through classes where we see the rise of the teenager cutting through class and similarly the suppression of immigrants that create their own rules and society to cope with discrimination was a key example of how class was becoming less relevant. Especially in the arts you see people from privileged backgrounds crossing over into the working class like Nell Dunn working in a sweet factory in Battersea where her neighbours used her bathroom as their houses had no bath in what was to become slum clearance.

Similarly in the Fens you see a post war generation cutting through class barriers and the old estate structures. But this was always a bit different in the Fens compared to many areas. If you look at much of the countryside as the agricultural revolution happened it was in most areas dominated by the Upper class estate owners. In places like Norfolk, you saw, and still do see large estates owned by the landed gentry in such places as Norfolk the most famous estates being the King’s Sandringham Estate and the much older estate of Holkham established by Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester. In the Wolds we see various estates not least the famous Scrivelesby Estate of the Dymoke family and further north in Lincolnshire the much shrunken Yarborough Estate to name but two. In the Fens I would argue that two Estates dominated that is Lord de Ramsey Estate of the Fellowes family that was mostly on black peat Fen and Carrington Estates that dominated much siltland Fen. Both of these estates still exist and thrive with interests both in the Fens and beyond. However, the very nature of Fenland being reclaimed meant that the class and social structures of such large traditional estates did not dominate and the Fens was a land of opportunity. You see families and businessmen taking the opportunity of acquiring land and improving it and from the eighteenth century it was not unusual to see the new business and trading classes enter agriculture as well as tenant farmers move into the area to purchase land. Alongside the sea wall from the River Welland to the Nene you see dominance of farming names, Ward, Thompson, Hay and Caudwell (the latter related and interwoven).

With the Fens being remote and large it required a large work force that was in short supply compared to the older established estates in Britain. In Norfolk, or the Lincolnshire Wolds whole villages were owned by the estates. This was not so in the Fens of South Lincolnshire. There was much reliance upon the cottager and the traditional fenman and this person had a degree of independence from the power of land owners by exploiting common grazing rights of the Fens, wildfowling, fishing for eels and pike. Such people could be apart from the old peasant structure and did not even fit into the old classic yeoman of old as they were independent of mind and deed. Thus you see a breaking of a mould seen elsewhere in working class, such as the factory owner and factory worker, mine owner and miner, land owner and farm worker. Towards the end of the nineteenth century we see the cottager of the Fens using horticulture to improve his fortune and land ownership. This pattern of small beginnings growing into opportunity and developing large and successful farming and food processing businesses accounts for many of the larger farmers in the Fens in the 1980’s. You can find repeated tales of humble working class origins transforming into middle class success and affluence.

Class in the countryside is not necessarily an obvious barrier as various activities see a levelling of class difference that urban people do not realise. This is especially true of country sports where knowledge, usefulness and ability trump class. Perhaps the most misunderstood pursuit was fox-hunting (leaving aside the cruelty arguments) in that people of working class enjoyed such pursuits. You even had miner’s having their own packs of hounds. Hunting provided useful supplementary employment and income to the rural working class. You got very little fox hunting in the Fens although I have seen the Belvoir hunt and the Fitzwilliam Hunt in Heckington and around the Bourne and Twenty area.

Fitzwilliam Hunt at Threekingham c.1990

The rural sport that saw the greatest mixture of class was hare coursing. I have only been to two meets when it was legal and what struck me was the vast cross section of society with people I knew as farm owners privately educated, large business owners alongside gypsies, farm workers, shopkeepers, magistrates and known villains all getting along together enjoying their common pursuit. Banning of hare coursing ran a coach and horses through this and left it as an illegal pursuit of those who were perfectly comfortable to operate outside the law as a way of life. Thus creating a greater issue. The sport that brought together people from across the classes is now dominated by a criminal class that are not invested in the local society as they tear through the Fens in illegal vehicles, damaging crops and property, threatening people and assaulting them with an impunity enforced by fear and poorly resourced police and justice systems.

Fen shoots vary greatly but even the larger ones have a cross-section of society more so than in other parts of the countryside where grouse, partridge and pheasant shooting are increasingly dominated by businessmen from China, India and Eastern Europe rather than the Estate owners of the past. Those estates are dominated by an outside class that have little interest in or care for the local people and their environment, but rather what their money can buy. Fen shoots have largely escaped this dominance of the rich and retained the land owners and cross section of people of all classes and a variety of shooting

In post war Fenland towns the War had levelled class differences in many ways, not least a steady increase in working class welfare, income and opportunity that possibly reached a peak in the early 1970's.

Nowadays I would argue that class differences are denied hence we see the late John Prescott's words as already quoted. The problem is, in my opinion, is that "working class" is not embraced as a worthwhile, honourable, honest and fulfilling status quo that deserves equal regard and standing to the other classes. It should be noted that this discrimination would not be deemed acceptable if applied to a person's race, religion, sex or sexuality. Indeed the existence of class structures is broadly denied in a way these other aforesaid attributes are not. Yet you have people in the public eye, especially politicians and celebrities, heralding (often questionable) working class origins to reinforce their credibility.

In all this I feel that English rural society and especially that of the Fenland area has with great difficulty tried to maintain the ability for people to be individuals and be different, something that is becoming increasingly difficult especially in urban and corporate societies.

In the following I will seek to do the following in turn:

- describe the origins and development of rural working class and explain how and why I believe this developed differently in the Fens of South Lincolnshire.

- gang employment the ups and downs of working class exploitation

- class labelling of location, its history and modern day effect

- social mobility – my thoughts and observations

- class in relation to my family history

Whilst I do not address this in this group of posts one significant factor has plagued the growth production and distribution of food: the cost of living gap between income and outgoings, in history and today in juxtaposition to the cost of production and income of the farmer. This feeds a food and farming industry that is reliant upon cheap labour obtained at a reduced standard of living or by exploitation in many forms including of the farmer themselves.