'The great abdication' of the middle classes

One recent survey demonstrated that two-thirds of the population now consider themselves to be working class. Given the fact that Britain is now wealthier than ever before, with home ownership, car use and holidays abroad all at record levels, this is a patently absurd figure. But it shows how terrified people are of being labelled as middle class.

Rather than upholding their own role models, they revel in the unedifying exploits of downmarket celebrities like Wayne Rooney and his fiancée Coleen McLoughlin, the royal couple of Chav Britain. Where once the middle class strove to understand the higher aspects of culture, an outlook that led to the huge success of TV series like Kenneth Clark's Civilisation in 1969, today, they delight in following the inanities of Channel Four's Big Brother.

The ultimate middle-class film of the pre-1960s era was Brief Encounter, an intense drama about a doctor conducting a doomed, unconsummated affair with a married woman. The central theme was the conflict between their respectable values and their illicit love for each other. In the end, their middle-class morality triumphed. But it would be unthinkable to make such a movie today, when any restraint on passion is seen as ludicrous. In films, as in life, anything that smacks of restraint or dignity is seen as unduly repressive and out of touch.

To me, this social cowardice amounts to nothing more than an abdication of responsibility. There is nothing shameful about being middle class. Respectability is something to be proud of, not a cause for embarrassment.

So who are the middle classes today, and why have they casually abandoned what was once their central role in guiding and civilising society? The first question is far harder to answer than the second. The writer Patrick Hutber said that "motivation" was the key distinguishing quality of the middle classes. He used the word to describe a set of "virtues, aspirations and attitudes". This presents difficulties in defining the middle class of today, as it is my contention that these qualities have been largely and sometimes deliberately abandoned. We are left with broad qualities - education, income, occupation - which they have in common. But in short, you need only look around at Britain's comfortable majority to see that there is a middle class that is thriving as never before. The problem is that it doesn't act like one.

One reason is self-indulgence. Moral rigidity is demanding, especially in terms sexual and financial matters. In a society which places so much emphasis on personal freedom, it requires real toughness not to give in to the siren voices of licence and luxury.

This is particularly true in our climate of aggressive secularity, where the ethics of Christianity have been replaced by the code of individual rights.

The great 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke wrote, “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites”.

In modern Britain, few people would even know what moral chains are, never mind be inclined to wear them. As a result, those who should know better feel reluctant to say anything condemnatory about the ease of divorce, or having children out of wedlock, or smoking dope, or fiddling benefits - after all, such activities all too often happen in their own families.

Other factors have encouraged the middle classes in this direction. One is the enervating embrace of the bloated welfare state, which has all but destroyed the middle-class belief in independence. Social security used to exist for those in genuine poverty: now it covers almost every family in the country. There can be no greater indictment of the absurdity of the current regime than the fact that even a couple earning £64,000-a-year is eligible for means-tested child tax credits.

Another problem is the decline in educational standards. This has happened partly through the ideological destruction of the grammar schools, which used to inculcate middle-class values into pupils, and partly through the loss of authority by the teacher as a result of child-centred progressive teaching methods and the abolition of any kinds of discipline in the classroom.

But once more, the middle class have colluded with this disastrous revolution. In fact, many well-off parents have actually welcomed the dumbing-down brought about by grade inflation and the expansion of universities, because it feeds the illusion that their offspring are performing well.