The Great British Class System, Explained

this video is brought to you by Squarespace I have friends who are Aristocrat I have friends who are upper class I have friends who are you know working class but not working class but deep down inside of every single British person on earth is a radar that allows us to detect someone's class you can listen to all the drill music you like you can wear all the Adidas you want but I know deep down that you shop at wait Hunter barington chesington I had to inform you that you are indeed white but in 2024 things

are different the upper class saw a 20% rise in billionaires post pandemic whilst the homeowner middle class is shrinking So today we're going to explore the past and the future of the Great British class system so is the class system ceasing to be here in Britain this dumbing down this desire of the champagne socialists to destroy don't mind shooting all them that's going too far no not not going far enough The Untouchables considered impure and unclean are unworthy to belong to any cast by tradition they are the lowliest of the low look social class has

always been a thing there's always been the Haves and the Have Nots in India for instance if you're a member of the dallet you are so low your class is so low that you literally can't use the same Cutlery as people above you but in some Nations it's much less pronounced like in Scandinavian Nations but the the British class system is is revered it's welln and you might be wondering where exactly did it come from this requires us going all the way back to the Saxon era there was like a king of England there was

Nobles and there was Freemans and surfs so we had a class system but it was just a little bit Chiller you know it was simplified it was relaxed but then Britain got invaded I'm here with William the Conqueror King of England well as you all know the French are the worst people on Earth but this fact has its Origins all the way back in 1066 basically you had this boy called William the Conqueror he came over from France with a group called The nor they bought loads of them over the server started lagging we were

getting low FPS and basically they got lucky and kind of took over [Music] England but Willie he had a new system and a new way of running society and that was called [Music] feudalism pretty much it was exactly the same as how the world was being run but it was French so it was more sophisticated as Willie took over England he gave all of the top Knights all of the the boys by his side the ownership of big plots of land I don't know how they divvied it out I don't know who got unlucky and

became the Lord of luten but this would be the beginning of what was later known as the British aristocracy Charles Anthony Peter Dunham sixth Baron feam age 23 being an aristocrat is said to be a state of mind a lord is no different from anybody else he is one of God's children to give you some perspective if you're a Norman Aristocrat you might live in Windsor Castle or something like this it was like wooden fort surrounded by Stone they weren't as beautiful as they had later become they were eating loads of food they were just

chilling all day with the Bros passing laws speaking French and it was just it was a massive Vibe and then you had the Anglo Saxons then boys just mud Huts made of straw and horseshit manual labor working the fied and speaking English yikes and to be honest it kind of looked like it was going to stay like that forever that was until the Black Death we're expecting severe outbreaks of the plague this year sweeping over on ships from Europe it's expected to spread right across England between 1346 and 1353 roughly half of the European population

were decimated obviously it completely obliterated most of the working class they were living in unsanitary conditions any anyway towns and cities will be the worst affected with people dying in vast numbers here here and indeed here but this was probably the best thing that ever happened to him and not just because it gave him the sweet release of death but mainly because it up their labor value baser looks around and realizes hang on a second with all these boys got us but I can still asking for a bit more money so basically after the Black

Death life started to kind of improve for the working class so your boy King Edward II he was starting to notice that the peasants had a few less holes in their shoes and he went hold on what the bloody hell is happening so he he passed some laws to basically say look you can't pay the peasants more money we're going to return wages back to how they were pre-play and that went down like a lead balloon before we go any further with this video I want to give a massive shout out to today's sponsor Squarespace

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a prompt in and it will actually do all the copyright on your website and of course you can then just tweak it and adjust it yourself it's great for like descriptions and text on the website so be sure to head over to squarespace.com jimy thee Giant and to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain use the code Jimmy the giant anyway back to the [Music] video kill them kill them all I'll be honest The Peasants Revolt was a bit you know it got clamped down pretty quickly the king didn't get

beheaded nothing exciting happened but and you'll notice that this is a common theme it did slowly and passively cause some change in British society and so from here we would get the first release of a brand new class DLC and that was the merchant class one panda panda bananas excuse me sweetheart can I interest you in a little sniff on these onions a merchant simply put is someone who makes money selling the products of someone's labor but now as feudalism was coming to an end and the British Empire was starting to develop we would start

to see international trade Roots appear giving us some access to some dope and a very particular type of workingclass delboy saw this as a opportunity but for just £50 you can invest in one of these Super Deluxe trimming cones # Be Your Own Boss # rise and grind # hustle culture this Merchant class was raking in a lot of money and some of these Merchants would have come from very poor workingclass backgrounds they were self-made they were able to rise up through society's class structure via this new system called capitalism God's way of determining who

is smart and who is poor these Lads I'm talking about Mickey the new money Merchant their culture like their lifestyle was was hilarious and we can see that through this term Novo this word it translates from French obviously and it means new money and you are old money is old money better than new money oh definitely because because oh you've had oh you've only just got money we've had it for ages it's an insult basically for when a person from a very poor background quickly gets money and then they try and emulate the lives of

the upper class 3 2 1 so as we moved into the industrial era and these new money Bros were coming along they would start doing things like building massive Grand aristocratic Mansions they would have these big elaborate parties they would buy art that they probably don't even know the name of the artists their homes would be super over decorated Furnishings hangings you know all the all the bells and whistles but the problem was was that it lacked taste it lacked sophistication it was garish they didn't know what they were doing they just had a load

of money and thought this is what you're me to do with it what's up my name is Chase and I'm the youngest flexer in the game hey get a get a zoom in on that and so in this period there was a very weird power Dynamic whereby a lot of these new money Merchants sounds like a boy band were actually becom wealthier than the aristocrats I get a feeling of superiority over them I get a feeling of inferiority from him but a feeling of superiority over him I get a pain in the back of my

neck it's like the new money Bros were like trying to marry into aristocracy they were trying to get titles and they would even purchase titles like knighthoods baronet's and some would actually buy the Estates the land off of the aristocrat and so you might be there thinking hang on a second why why are the aristocrats selling all their Estates why are they selling these titles well that's because some of the aristocrats were starting to go broke they once ruled their Thoms lording it over the commoners from their Grand Estates now some of them like Francis

fulford can barely keep a roof over their heads in other words I had an ancestor who pissed the money up against the wall so look if there's one important thing you need to know about Aristocrats that is they don't work they don't do work work no no no no no and that is what makes them better than all of us what an aristocrat fundamentally does is own land that they inherited from birth and pass laws that tell everyone what to do simple but as this Merchant class which started to become called the middle class as

this started to grow they challenged the power of the aristocrats slowly they would gain political power one of the most important moments I think we can look at is when they repealed the corn Lords this was a law that put High tariffs on foreign imported corn so basically in favor of the aristocrats that owned Estates that had large farms and peasants working on it making corn when that protectionist law went they were now in direct competition with the capitalist and the capitalist had an advantage because they actually worked I look at this moment as a

key turning point in the power dynamic between the middle class the the merchants and the aristocracy and we would actually see a lot of the the more Ardent anti-work aristocrats going broke and having to sell their Estates Francis fulford inherited this fortified Mansion over 40 years ago but over the years the house has fallen further and further into disrepair and finally the money has run out land like me always call ourselves asset Rich income poor for class in Britain during this time it really changed what it meant originally middle class and Merchant class it was

kind of like an interchangeable term But as time would pass there would be more distinctions between like what level of middle class you are the new Industrial Revolution created new jobs new types of jobs managerial jobs lawyers doctors these kind of more professional roles that weren't quite as high earning as being like an industrialist but certainly separated you from being a manual worker and so bear in mind that in the UK education wasn't free until 1891 this more defined middle class started to form where families that had some money could send their kids to school

and they would become the bankers the lawyers the managers Etc during the Industrial Revolution the middle class really became a force in British Society leading us to the 1832 Reform Act where the middle class really cemented its power as they were able to expand the rules on who could vote no longer was Parliament completely ruled by aristocracy I have got inate breeding but I have not got any money so sometimes I look up to him I still look up to him because although I have money I am vulgar the free Main classes in Great Britain

which is the upper class middle class and working class they have three very different belief sets and three very different ways of living and then you shook hands for neille chamber just how do you do and then Lord Lander would be very nice too and say hello you have got to come out and fight Juni your Three Brothers Four Brothers Here want to fight for you on a very service level we can look at things like accents the working class will have very Regional accents like very thick accents I've got grandchildren day I'm afraid to

talk to him because they're So Posh here hello grandfather how are you then obviously you'd have the Manchester accent Liverpool accent and then the ones that no one understands which is Welsh Irish and Scottish particularly for some of our colleagues who have a disability sorry must be something to do with my antii and background could he please repeat the question because I didn't follow it but like the historic stereotype of a workingclass person would go as follows they would work in low pay manual jobs their behavior is maybe a little less profer he's having a

love you know they might spend their free time in pubs drinking beer with a boys watching footy probably they're living in tightly packed Urban environments maybe limited education importantly they would rent accommodation probably accommodation they would never really own it they didn't have enough money to buy a property so this very importantly meant they never had any economic stability if they got fired or got ill or maybe their landlord just didn't like them they had no power in those situations if they were kicked to the curb they their life was and so when it came

to the attitude of the working class it was very much defined by survival to be honest Barry I'm just trying to get by mate but then you have the middle class is a slice of pomegranate in there as well no darling it's not pomegranate what do you actually think it is give it another game it's a graef fruit yes so he is I don't know my fruits typically these boys worked in more sort of expert jobs they're managers they're doctors they're lawyers they come from good education they speak and quite a clear you can maybe

hear some Regional accent but it's probably more neutral than the working class if they go to a pub it's probably more of a middle class cozy Country Pub very importantly they own property they're not renting and they're probably living in more Suburban rural areas and so the middle class have a degree of economic stability and so this affects their attitude to life they're aspirational they deeply believe in meritocracy if I just work hard and if I show my talents life will reward me Thomas Richard John Long chaler third Baron gizbar age 41 went from Eon

to the Welsh guards the chalena family goes back to the 12th century but then you have the upper class their accent is ridiculous it sounds probably like this typically their accent doesn't have any Regional twang to it it's just this kind of madeup accent very importantly they don't work no no no no no worky for me I'll just put my money into some industry and hope that Damian knows what he's doing with it genuinely think you are sitting on a gold mine I really do I don't say that likely Point competing with a hotel I

know we are not a hotel it's not strictly true that they didn't work I'm kind of playing they were in politics most often and they're considered like the ruling class they make the laws they were of course own Mana houses vast Estates of land their behavior is very formal very reserved they'll do lessons in like decorum and elocution I think is the word God I'm a peasant they'll literally care about what Ang with forkid on a table because that is very important obviously the aristocrats will go to Elite schools I'm talking like Eon Oxford Cambridge

most interesting to me is their attitude their their attitudes historically was was not meritocracy it was aristocracy it was the belief in a Birthright I am just sick because I have clean blood in me that's why all these marriages between the aristocrats were so important and you'll see it in every perod drama because they wanted to keep their bloodlines pure I don't really know what that means but it it sound sounds [Music] Hitler come on come on crack those atoms you turn out those pockets as time had passed the merchant class just kept getting bigger

and bigger cuz they were actually making money in many situations outpacing aristocracy but despite these Merchants humble beginnings despite the fact that they were once upon a time one of the boys they basically turned their back on the peasants and just absolutely them over awful working conditions low pay little advocacy for their right to vote and this wasn't just happening in Britain this was happening all across Europe and so something started to happen in the same way that the middle class the merchants they gained power through collective bargaining of the guilds the working class made

their own cool fun Collective of Bros and that would be called workers unions originally they just set out to sort of argue for better pay better working conditions and eventually they kind of LED bloody revolutions all around Europe where even they would literally kill off the aristocrats like they did in France or if it failed in killing them like in Germany and Austria in order to appease these kind of enraged working-class people slowly the aristocratic classes would sort of lose their power you see whil all this madness was was going on Britain took a different

approach BR never had some bloody Revolution we didn't decapitate any Kings or Queens we did something very different so what Britain did specifically to its Aristocrats was basically we nerfed them a series of laws throughout the 1900s took away the aristocratic Powers originally they would have a seat in the House of Lords just by the fact that their dad did and so we'd get the parliament act in 1911 all the way up until the House of Lords act in 1999 literally 1999 they still technically had power up until then and this basically removed the automatic

right for the aristocracy to sit in the House of Lords and also we can look at our monarchy and the way that that changed all of the royal power now in 2024 is just it's symbolic it's a a symbol of tradition like for instance the Prime Minister has to ask the king if he can lead the country and the King has to say yes or I don't know what yeah what does happen if he doesn't say [Music] yes and so throughout the 20th century through things like inheritance tax and changes to land ownership laws basically

the sit back and chill lives of the aristocrats slowly started to come to an end still Aristocrats exist but it's just far fewer and they have to actually you know kind of earn their money and many of the very large historically important Estates are now in the hands of a charity The National Trust I think there's a few others and so all of this leaves Britain in a very weird and particular scenario because we never consciously destroyed the class system like many other European nations did social class still exists in this very strange way in

Britain where quite literally it makes zero sense what class are you I I think it is for others to to do I'm um a man of Somerset I mean I would say this will probably hurt you I would say sort of upper middle rather than upper well I'm certainly not part of the aristocracy that's definitely true so we settle for upper middle I'm a man of the people Vox popular Vox day what I mean by that is you know take David Beckham as an example the boy is worth more than 400 million he's he's culturally

important he's he's even got a royal title of OB but yet David Beckham is workingclass he's always going to be working class there's no way he can't no amount of money nothing will stop David being a working class boy we're very working working class be honest car did you get your dad to drive it depends no no no no no okay in the ' 80s my dad had a Rolls-Royce but then let's say rishy sunak who's worth 700 million not that much more than David Beckham he's the Prime Minister of England but due to the

fact that he is kind of like a self-made man in a way he didn't just inherit his position like Aristocrats do rishy sunak has no titles no inherited social standing he doesn't talk in the Royal Regal accent he just talks in a wellp spoken accent so technically rishy sunak is upper middle class class really makes very little sense here and it makes less sense every single day as the world changes one example would be like manual workers manual Working Class People like a buildar type of thing they can be very wealthy now they can make

more money than a lot of white color jobs and so you can have workingclass Steve and he's earning 80 grand a year as a manual worker owns a house owns a cars married has kids but in Social terms he could be considered working class where you might have a a Michael working a office job he pays rent he makes 30 grand a year but he is considered middle class so I mean you you you try and explain it to me cuz I'm I'm lost all home but the architecture of that very different era could be

hiding behind its doors the risk of Britain slipping back to a time of two Nations that Victorian age gap between mainstream society and an impoverished underclass not some tiny minority either but more than 13 million people the reason that social class is so much harder to kind of Define now is because of after World War II where social Mobility was more flexible than it had ever been but all this history now leaves these strange impacts on the way that the general British public thinks about things but but now I just feel like some people are

having benefits as a life child's choice and I've just read an article about an Afghan family that come over the woman now has another child on the way so that will be 12 the man is working but only as a delivery driver look at the moment 40% of claimants of Universal Credit are in work the bigger question is not why people should or should not be getting benefits but why work doesn't pay enough so that the state has to supplement employers if we take from the aristocratic era the idea of born privilege Birthright they considered

poor people the workingclass The Peasants they were just inherently bad the merchant industrial era challenged this way of thinking it B in the ideas of meritocracy the idea that every man is equal and we all have equal rights to go and make something of our own lives these two attitudes in my opinion have left a passive belief amongst lots of the British public where quietly they see poverty or people of the lower class as being like just a bit lazy or work shy they're unmotivated and kind of being poor is sort of their fault Suella

Braverman has floated the idea of limiting the use of tents by homeless people and described life on the streets as a lifestyle choice on social media but the problem with this way of thinking is it just doesn't account for how different the world is right now than it was 50 or so years ago for a good period postwar there was a lot of opportunity for social mobility and so meritocracy did exist if you worked hard you probably could elevate your life and that's because equivalent to the amount of money you would make the world was

significantly cheaper there was tons of support for the working class you know social housing welfare state cheaper education and so there was more social mobility and there was an opportunity for meritocracy to th but things are very different for the younger generation now and I think slowly people are starting to realize it as they see that the British middle class and many middle classes all around the world are shrinking I've made millions of pounds betting that the average British family will collapse into poverty desperate poverty I'm talking about Charles Dickens Oliver Twist that is the

future of this country if we don't deal with growing inequality that is what I see we've seen government debt explode we've seen living standards collapse for all NW working people at the same time the biggest and fastest ever increase in the wealth of millionaires and billionaires nowadays we live in this era where the ruling class isn't the aristocracy it's more middle upper class people this class built their lives on hard work they were raised in private Elite schools they worked hard in their lives and achieved good things in their profession my hat goes off to

them so in their lives meritocracy does exist but this is where like the disconnect happens and I think you can see it in this clip hi I'm richy what's your name what what do you have it but you do you work in the business do you want some I'm homeless I'm actually a homeless person the truth is there is always exceptional people who can kind of come out of the worst scenarios and Achieve tons but for every one Allen sugar you have you have thousand I think how many thousands you have of people who just

do what everyone else does in their scenario most people aren't exceptional most people are normal and most people don't Thrive worrying about whether they can put food on the table afford heat in afford rent and so lots of people at the bottom are forced into like a survival mode survival mode for for most people isn't the best conditions to come up with some cool business idea on a banana cooler that you can control with an app on your phone and so sometimes when class gets so divided you even create what some people call an underclass

these are the people that don't work at all and often this can become more criminal more violent Etc that really isn't very good for anyone so when I finally think about what do I think class will look like in the future I do think we're in this kind of make or break position where I think class divides could get far worse far more problems far more criminality and perhaps we might have this like arbitary symbolic middle class based on things like what their accent is but I think as that Gap gets worse and worse first

we're going to see the living standards of people who aren't ultra wealthy becoming more and more similar and I can't see it getting better unless something changes I'll be really excited to hear your opinion on this on my Discord come join that links in the description like this video subscribe to the channel and I'll catch you in the next one peace