The losing half the population regarded the winning half with pity and, more often, disdain. This was a class matter: suddenly it was OK to believe that there was something fundamentally wrong with people worse off than you. Snobbery was respectable again; a dangerous development.
I have never found many conscientious objectors in the class war. My brother once mentioned a "How to Tell You're from Shippensburg" sheet that a cousin found circulating among her students. She taught then in Mechanicsburg, a perfectly good place, but one I never mistook for the Main Line.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that Brexit invented anything new in the way of snobs. Mashing one's thumb with a hammer might make one swear louder than usual, but doesn't teach one to swear.