MARSH FEN AND TOWN……….AND CLASS PART 5. SOCIAL MOBILITY. MY THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS

South Lincolnshire is frequently recognised as one of the areas of the country to have the least opportunity for social mobility by such authorities as The Sutton Trust and the 2023 government State of the Nation Report. The problem, I believe, with social mobility is that it looks at childhood conditions, education, work opportunities and social connections, but does not recognise how biased certain avenues are with hard work, ability and merit not being enough to improve your lot, but rather your ability to fit in with a hierarchy, change as it changes, and “play the game” well.

I believe social mobility is misunderstood and only looked at in terms of elevation from one class to another, when each class has its value. If society was truly mobile it would be accepted that people can switch between classes without any class being denigrated or undervalued and there would be a degree of fairness in social games. Now I appreciate this may be Utopian, but just accepting the unfairness of social games and recognising merit would be a start. The “conservative” power of the individual should be able to reach up and down through class structure, otherwise we have something akin to the Hindu caste system determined at birth.

Wartime helped improve social mobility in that it pushed people from different social classes and geography together and into a greater understanding of each other. I believe this had a benefit to society that lasted post War through to the mid 1970’s  when we saw a period of the greatest social mobility. The Absolute Beginners generation crossed social classes up and down and you see this in arts as bands, performers, artists, and writers from working class backgrounds come to the fore as equals along those from upper and middle class backgrounds. In literature you see working class stories valued in books by Alan Siltoe, Ted Lewis, Nell Dunn. John Humphrys rose from a working class background in Wales to the BBC to become a news anchor and presenter of mastermind. Similarly Janet Street Porter became a household name on LWT. In business you see Alan Sugar selling TV aerials from the back of a van and more locally Reg Clark of Kings Lynn assembling TV aerials on his kitchen table, both highly successful businessmen. In farming you see Clem Tompsett start from selling asparagus on his bike to becoming the Carrot King of the Fens. We even see two working class prime ministers in James Callaghan and John Major.

In the late 70’s saw a University educated class eventually move into domination alongside the privately educated. Now this matters in all works of life because when it comes to decision making  in politics or business in that people gathered together from a certain background can have a dangerously narrow perspective that is socially, economically and commercially damaging. We see this in the current University Class. Indeed Rory Stewart (ironically and Etonian) made a similar claim about David Cameron’s cabinet in Politics On The Edge.

This view I firmly point the finger at Tony Blair as a key turning point in that he took two actions undermining  both working class and genuine social mobility:

-          He continued and accelerated deindustrialisation of the UK destroying a layer of opportunity and condemning large areas to expanding disadvantage.

-          He created a mantra of “education, education, education” based upon his own privileged upper middle class view. This focused on “stars” catapulting on in a few elite universities and professions whilst economic and social neglect prospered.

This philosophy he started that education is the key to improving individual opportunity is a myth that is now proving costly to many students.

This matters  in South Lincolnshire and the Fens because the same cabal of University educated politicians in the Labour party in 2026 are now making decisions that affect local agriculture based upon academic ideas, philosophy (much from the London School of Economics and Green academics) and ignoring the views and lived experience of farmers. Indeed, I perceive only lip service is paid to the importance of the food and farming industry that the area relies upon for economic prosperity and the country relies upon for food.

It is the upholding of the “education myth” that saw me sitting in my son’s school in Spalding listening to the imperious fool of a head teacher newly installed from Bourne Grammar School state that too many children in Spalding had little or no aspirations other than ending up working locally in a food factory. This was frankly insulting and ignorant , especially when you consider many of the parents in the audience did such jobs and had even moved countries because they aspired to a better life. ASPIRATION is the most misused and abused term when referring to working class people. I have repeatedly seen an attitude that any child not wishing to go to university is lacking aspiration.

I saw this view in the way that my son was regarded in that at sixteen he wanted to go to a land-based college to learn agricultural engineering. Some teachers were fantastic and understood and supported his passion, but too many looked down their noses at such an aspiration. This bigoted view came from a management that had a bad attitude towards the local community and their behaviour and words illustrated this.

Here is the problem of our time in that we have a university educated class that see the world through their values, standards and experiences in a very narrow view. This dominates in politics and business to the detriment of all in an age where stepping stones of social mobility are being removed.

Firstly, if a young person aspires to work in a local food factory the simple fact is that these are good jobs, local, requiring little initial skill, that offer great potential for development. Dismissing such roles as “factory fodder” is an act of stupidity by the imperious educated. If you looked at land work under direct employment that too has great potential especially if you develop skills to operate specialised and seasonal equipment. My role as an agricultural bank manager may have been deemed a good middle-class job, but chatting to a farmer in Tick Fen  I was told, “Blimey I pay my tractor drivers more than you earn with a lot less hassle and fewer hours” ( the difference annualised was about £8000, with them working 20hours a week less than me even in the harvest season). It’s very easy for people to look down on working class jobs and the people in them, but often they are the smart ones.

In the past every Fenland town had more stepping stones for social mobility in the form of entry level professions, businesses and trades. Now only the trades remain with banks, accountants, land agents, shops and offices all disappearing from town centres along with  courts, police stations, hospitals all these in the past offered entry level employment. Also key services had affordable accommodation. Just consider all the local houses that used to be police and fire service houses, plus nurses flats and some preferential allocation of housing to certain trades such as gas engineers allocated according to local need.  Add to this tied agricultural labour houses and you have a whole range of affordable housing enabling  employment. Centralisation of services, the largeness of both firms and organisations and a “graduates only” approach has removed vast layers of social mobility.

Add to this across the board free movement of labour has resulted in little or no investment in people preferring the migrant quick fix. If you doubt this talk to local workers excluded from certain shifts in favour of cheaper gang labour or to keep the gang agency happy for fear of lack of supply of staff. Talk to the nurses and doctors unable to get permanent positions whilst agencies recruit from abroad. Talk to care workers competing in a wages market  unable to get fair pay and conditions because Nigerians from the agency will do the job more cheaply without complaint.

It is an uncomfortable truth that social mobility is entwined  with housing affordability and migration. Equally it is inappropriate to pit one group of working class against another – locals against migrants, because reality is that no one wins.

Housing affordability and the supply of social housing has been taken away from the people that have the responsibility, the local authority, and a layer of bureaucracy and skimming off of money into directors pockets has been added in the form of housing associations. Exactly the same layering has happened in social care. The result is that aspirations are being thwarted, whether it be to work in the local factory, get married and have a family, or work on a farm. If people cannot see at least some of their dreams available locally within the same region as their parents and grand-parents what progress have we made?

I feel in 2026 we are in no better position than William Stapleton Royce was, South Hollands only Labour MP. The only difference is that poverty looks different.  Politically he played on his being brought up near Pigeon End, and it was the truth. He was born in Spalding in 1857 into poverty in a family of ten. He had a limited education at the Willesby School and the Petty Commercial School (an early form of elementary education). He entered and apprenticeship as a joiner. But, feeling he had little opportunity he broke his apprenticeship, and absconded to London working as a labourer on a building site for a few months before taking a free passage offered by the government of Cape Town in South Africa to work on railway construction where he worked through the ranks as an engineer constructing railways, public buildings and reservoirs. He acquired wealth and status and had several siblings join him before selling up and returning in 1910 to live in Pinchbeck. He did not like the continued poverty he had experienced as a child and sought to help people, often buying houses at the tenant’s bequest to ensure they could remain in their homes. His actions both in politics and in use of his wealth were driven by public good with judgement or a desire to impose a particular regime that he had seen imposed on the poor in his youth. When the local Liberal MP died in 1917 he declined to stand against his Liberal replacement that returned unopposed as in wartime he deemed it “no time for change”.  This is a point to consider, that William Stapleton Royce escaped poverty and migrated to improve his lot, like a lot of migrants do today. Whilst looking up his past I encountered an academic paper arguing that his life is an example of migration defeating poverty and that it should be considered that the same attribute of migration is valid today in Spalding.

This is not that easy, like so many colonial stories. The simple fact is William Stapleton Royce made his fortune on railway construction that excluded local black labour and happily used Chinese slave labour. When migration is done to improve the lot of one group of labour it is often to the detriment of another. Migration has two sides of the coin.

Amongst all this does class matter? I believe it does because people’s lived experiences are being denied and/or dismissed by an educated middle class. I have experienced this directly, even from friends, and perceive it is even worse for others as we see vast assumptions made about people’s biases and bigotry when all they wish for is to be able to afford to live and for services to work and be well maintained.

When academics choose to study an area they need to consider the words of the documentary photographer Mik Critchlow, “ You have to be in the tribe to photograph the tribe. You have to do the same dance.”