KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

Henry Porter reveals how

the middle classes have coped with their sudden impoverishment

A FEW months ago my wife sat next to a Conservative MP at dinner. I could not hear what he was saying to her but it was clearly of great interest, for he held her attention for almost an hour. What was he talking about — the date of the election? His doubts about European integration? Or, was he simply making a pass? I could not tell.

Towards the end of the dinner I picked up the words, 'filters all the bugs out', and a few minutes later, 'transforms your chil- dren into geniuses'. It was puzzling. Only later as we walked home did I learn that the MP had been describing his own wife's new occupation. She was an agent for what seems to be a pyramid sales operation, marketing water purifiers and a high-speed Japanese education programme for young Children.

The MP had been very insistent, almost zealous, about the quality of these oddly coupled products. He said that his wife expected to make £17,000 from commis- sions this year, and that there were limitless possibilities next year. He had asked if my Wife was interested in buying a water puri- fier and whether she thought she could sell Water purifiers among her friends. It was as if he were trying to recruit her for some more sinister operation.

I have since heard of three or four peo- ple calling their friends about water puri- fiers. They live in different parts of the Country but they all have in common this extraordinary insistence. They go on and on about the impurities of the public water supply, and the benefits of the device you fix under the sink. One wonders whether they have been away to the same mind- Warping sales course. Or is it perhaps that they are just short of cash? The upper middle class has been hit by this recession much more severely than it was during the downturn of the early Eighties. It has fallen further, losing busi- nesses, salaries, company cars, sometimes homes and always visible status. Clearly not all the people selling water purifiers have been affected by the recession, but some- thing is going on: last month I was asked by a person I barely knew whether I'd like to

buy a de-ionising machine.

Genteel salesmanship has sprung. from genteel poverty. While the upper middle class may not be poor in the way that peo- ple are poor on huge housing estates that surround our cities, its circumstances have been radically and speedily reduced.

It is a peculiarly British phenomenon which is unmatched on the continent. Although recession has been deep in Euro- pean countries, the well-to-do classes have not suffered nearly as much as in Britain. This is simply because the British upper middle class chooses to commit itself to large expenditure on houses and school fees, expenditure which is regarded as a sacred and grim priority to be maintained, whatever the condition of the economy and whatever the circumstances an individual finds himself in.

The British upper middle class seems to know no other way. It is a sort of cultural fixation which periodically plunges thou- sands of people into serious trouble, a fact which the equivalent classes in France, Italy and Spain find quite baffling.

Take the following couple (I have changed their names) who were sailing along in the Eighties and doing pretty well for themselves — in fact, they were down- right rich. Simon earned between £100,000 and £150,000 in the City, and although he had two boys at preparatory school and a girl in private day school, he had easily enough left from his salary to take out a mortgage of £100,000 on a large house in Fulham. Things were considerably helped by his membership of Lloyd's of London, which began by producing cheques of between £10,000 and £15,000.

His fall is familiar. Interest rates rose, he lost his job and could not find another. But the school bills kept rolling in — £10,000 a year for each of the boys, who had by this time moved to public school, and £3,400 a year for the girl. Then came the big wave which knocked him off his feet: a demand for £20,000 from Lloyd's.

Simon and his wife, Joanna, are now liv- ing off the capital and assets that were used to gain his membership of Lloyd's; their house is on the market for a price which represents a loss of £75,000 and their mar- riage is very shaky indeed.

If they had been able to reduce at least one of these big overheads immediately he had lost his job, they would probably be all right now. But they were bound to the house and to the schools and, more disas- trously, to Lloyd's. A Lloyd's member can opt to leave but he cannot opt to evade the costly obligations of unfortunate underwrit- ing (such as the losses incurred by the Outhwaite syndicate), which may last for years. Among other recent disasters, the storm damage across northern Europe in 1988 means that 12,000 names, like Simon, must pay over £20,000 this year. Similar amounts are predicted when the 1989 and 1990 insurance accounts are closed, and those involved in the riskier London Mar- ket Excess will be expected to write cheques for over £50,000 this year. Many upper middle class families must rue ever entering the great shiny Lloyd's casino, for the insurance market is often the factor which has taken them from dis- comfort to penury.

What makes the state of this class even more miserable is the great inequality in circumstances. Not everyone has fallen 'from the ladder, which means that friends who were once on a par no longer mix as frequently as they used to. It is vaguely embarrassing for both sides. Among the hard-up there is a profound desire not to burden their friends with their own difficul- ties. They cannot bear to offer diminished hospitality and less than buoyant company.

On the other side, there is the problem of what you talk about. It is well known that the upper middle class seldom talks about anything except schools, jobs and property, and these are all money subjects, which must be avoided. In fact, every topic you can think of is fraught with questions of cost — holidays, nannies, interesting new clothes, shops, cars and so on.

Those that have fallen on hard times tend to see only their close friends, shop at less expensive supermarkets, make do with a familiar wardrobe and never go out to eat. The genteel poor spend all their time thinking about money: how to save it, how to make it and how to return to that won- derful state of affairs when money seemed effortlessly to arrive in the bank account.

It is a grinding strain, this business of being decorously poor. Many in London manage to disappear completely from view. Others go to ground in the country, while their children continue at the same schools, perhaps only a little aware of the depress- ing, pinched life that their parents are lead- ing.

George Orwell wrote about the sacrifices that the middle classes in Britain endure for the sake of the education of their chil- dren in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Little has changed since he published it in 1936:

Since the Comstocks were genteel as well as shabby, it was considered necessary to waste huge sums on Gordon's 'education', What a fearful thing it is, this incubus of 'education 1 It means that in order to send his son to the right kind of school (that is a public school or an imitation one), a middle class man is obliged to live for years on end in a style that would be scorned by a jobbing plumber.

The plumber is probably less well off now than he was then, because he has almost certainly saddled himself with a mortgage, but the main point is still true. A child at public school costs about £10,000 a year, a great deal to find after you have already paid Lloyd's, the Abbey National and the Inland Revenue.

For the first time private schools are reporting significant numbers of parents who cannot pay. At the start of the summer and autumn terms, most headmasters were faced with requests for a term's delay in payment of fees. Parents also wondered if they could divide payment between the

beginning of term and half-term, or sug- gested a monthly arrangement. Schools find ways of keeping pupils until after their exams, but clearly they too are beginning to hurt. There is no other explanation for schools like Queen Ethelburga's College advertising in Harpers & Queen, a forlorn exercise indeed. Never before have schools found it necessary to produce glossy prospectuses publicising their new science lab.

It makes one wonder if the British upper middle class could not find a less burden- some way of educating its children. A state education system involving the energetic and dedicated parents who at the moment send their children to private schools would be unrecognisable. But the upper middle class is more canny, and it recognises that state schools, however well run, would do much to eliminate the differences which set it apart. Thus the class perpetuates itself, each well-educated generation making sac- rifices for the next. It is a noble and rather eccentric aspect of British life.

Oddly enough, the upper middle class has been most hit by its constant expecta- tion of the recession ending. These predic- tions encouraged people to cling to their companies beyond the point where it was sensible. They committed themselves to that last crippling debt in the hope that business would pick up this autumn. Well, it hasn't in any significant way, and' there are going to be many bankruptcies this win- ter. Many houses will be lost and many children will suddenly find themselves hav- ing to make new friends at the day school a few miles away.

Research published by the Skipton Building Society in August shows that of all repossessions in the country over the past year, 33 per cent occurred in the South East. More surprising were the occupations of the people who had lost their homes: 11 per cent of all repossessed homes in Britain belonged to accountants, 8 per cent to doc- tors, 8 per cent to architects and 9 per cent to surveyors. It is rather shocking that just four middle class occupations were respon- sible for over a third of all repossessions.

The more common story is not of catas- trophe, but rather of people grimly making ' ends meet, cutting holidays and entertain- ment, drinking plonk and making do with runabout second cars, the first one having been returned to the leasing company. These people particularly the wives - are often enterprising and adaptable in their impoverishment, which accounts for the sellers of water purifiers and Japanese genius programmes. They let out their basements, do part-time jobs and cut the nanny's hours.

Things are not what they were in the London nanny market. At the end of last year there were more vacancies for nannies than girls to fill them. Nanny wages rose steadily until February 1991. Suddenly the rise stopped, and there were more nannies than jobs. Where a job interview once attracted one or two girls, it now draws as many as ten. But nannies will continue to be employed because they free the wife to work, and the difference between what she can earn and what she pays the nanny still makes it worthwhile, particularly in hard times.

More upper middle class women are tak- ing jobs, which is one of the interesting developments in this recession. Women who have not worked for years are appar- ently discovering that they are able to earn much more than they had dared to hope.

I know of a man made redundant from a television company two years ago and whose wife, an Italian, decided to train as a secretary. In no time at all she has become assistant to the chief executive of an Italian company in London, and is expected to go much further. Her husband loafs about at home, contributing very little to its organi- sation or its income. He has lost his confi- dence and drinks too much. Were it not for the tact and sweetness of his wife, their marriage would be in trouble.

This is a problem which is beginning to surface in the marriage guidance organisa- tions. The sudden prominence of women in so many upper middle class households means that the men are suffering a loss of identity and pride.

Penny Mansfield of the One Plus One counselling organisation says, 'Over the last 20 years people have tried to pretend that men and women are the same, but at last everyone is coming to realise that they are not. What makes a man a man is that he takes a large part of his identity from his job and his pride from his role as the breadwinner of the household. When he loses his job he loses a sense of being in control and that is very dangerous.' It is the sort of thing which we had grown used to reading about the working classes during the last recession.

The notion that the upper middle class male is just like any other man may offend, but it seems to be the case. The upper mid- dle class man in this recession is apparently succumbing to violence, abusive language and breaking furniture. None of this is helped by the fact that his sex drive — so mysteriously associated with his position of Control — is depleted. When sex goes, so does a great healing agent.

The upper middle class is good at hiding these shaming eruptions. Wives rarely con- fess to the difficulties of home life. They maintain a façade which at all times is gen- teel. 'The other thing', said Zelda West Meades of the marriage guidance organisa- tion, Relate, 'is that it takes a lot longer for an Upper middle class couple to reconcile themselves to separation. They are usually both determined to hold on to the house that they have worked for.'

One constantly has to remind oneself that all this is happening under a Conserva- tive government and that the recession, which has so deeply affected this group of Unwavering Tory supporters, is not the inheritance of a Labour government's eco- nomic policies. It would, however, be wrong to blame the genteel impoverish- ment of the last two years entirely on the recession.

Were it not for the twin expenditure on houses and education and the curious desire to gamble in the Lloyd's casino, the upper middle class would be much more flexible in recession. It is piquant that the homes and schools which this class value as defining and preserving its status are also the things which have got them into trou- ble. The upper middle class will recover quickly in any future boom. But it will also suffer exactly as it is now in any future recession.