Blood Brothers #1

Did you ever hear the story of the Johnston twins?
As like each other as two new pins.
How one was kept, and one given away,
And they were both born, and died, on the very self-same day.

I went to see Blood Brothers again the other week, and remembered why it is possibly my favourite musical. It’s not really for the dancing. Rather, great tunes... and a story about real things.

The gist is that a wealthy lady persuades her cleaner to give her one of her twins, as the wealthy lady hasn’t been able to have children. We then follow the two boys as they grow up, and see how the simple fact of growing up in different backgrounds makes their lives turn out tragically differently. The narrator closes with this thought:

And was superstition to blame for what came to pass?
Or what the English have come to know as ‘Class’?

There is a lovely moment in The West Wing, when the young Jed Bartlett comments to his father’s secretary, “In our family we don’t talk about money.” To which she replies, “That’s because you have money.” I think class works similarly. If you don’t think you have a class, if you don’t think it’s an issue, that’s almost certainly because you’re middle class, like the majority of people in the UK.

A great easy way to find out the blind spots in your own culture is to ask people from other countries what they are. They will be able to think of a few! One which often gets mentioned for us in the UK is this issue of class. In America, a millionaire and a hot dog salesman will talk the same way, watch the same sports, have the same values and wear the same clothes. Think about millionaires and men on burger vans in this country! Someone said class is in the UK what racism is in the US.

Now just because Trade Unions and working class political heroes seem to have faded from the TV since the 70s, it doesn’t mean the working class have gone anywhere. In fact, I would guess that life is tougher for people from a working class background now than ever. Consumerism, snobbery in popular culture, the export of industrial jobs, the decline of ideas how to do life through rejection of tradition/authority/values, and hopeless corrupt administration of welfare policy by the civil service have completely disempowered working class people. 20% of the UK population is now overwhelmed by unemployment, addictions, broken families, isolation, lack of education, depression, anxiety, low self esteem, crime and criminal records. This is an issue worth thinking about.