I like to think that taking pot shots at sacred cows is something of a hobby of mine. I just love to seek out those ubiquitous opinions which have become so implicit in our thinking that we don't even notice them any more, which nobody ever challenges or even thinks of criticising; and when I find them I make it my mission to shoot holes in them and find their flaws, whatever my personal feelings may be (or whether I even have any). I guess I'm just what you might call an awkward b~'#}*d. The latest sacred cow that I have set my sights on is the idea that the social class system is discredited and undesirable, and the unchallenged ideals of universal aspiration and equality of opportunity that have replaced it. I would like to argue that an entrenched class system, in which people are born into a particular well defined social class and generally stay in that social class all of their lives, is a good thing. This, I know, is a highly controversial position to take, and many people will think that I am a bit suspect for even considering it, let alone arguing it, but then as a committed controversialist that is really the reason why I wanted to.

In a way it is ironic that the opinion that the class system is utterly wrong has become one of the west's major sacred cows, given that the Hindu culture who gave us the sacred cow is also notable for having one of the most rigid class systems ever created.

I think it was John Lennon who said that "a working class hero is something to be". I sometimes wonder what happened to that sentiment, and I am rather inclined to mourn it's loss. People (in Britain at least) used to be proud to be working class, but outside of the socialist movement that is rare today. In Britain the pas few decades have seen politicians in universal agreement that we should be moving towards a 'classless society', that we should be adopting the american dream that anyone can be anything regardless of where they begin. One result of this is that people don't grow up wanting to be working class any more, they all grow up wanting to be rich and famous. Many people would say that this is a good thing - that people should aspire to something more and have every opportunity to be succesful - but I firmly believe that it has also had dire unintentional consequences.

Decades of struggle have succeeded in all but destroying the working class. But there has also been a paralell trend - the birth of a new social group that has come to be called the 'underclass' - and the two things are most definitely related.

The problem, as I see it, is that not everyone can be rich, famous or successful. You can make opportunities available for everyone to get to the top, but most people will never get there, and somebody still has to be at the bottom. By encouraging aspiration at all levels of society, by teaching people to aim for the stars, the British have destroyed the social value, culture and pride that used to be attached to being working class. Being at this level of society is no longer seen as something good itself, but something that everyone should be trying to escape from. People employed in low paid working class positions, deprived of this pride and feeling of social value are left feeling like failures. People are conditioned to expect more from life than they are likely to acheive, and this leads to unhappiness, whilst others, seeing that they cannot get the social position they are taught to feel that they deserve, and not having the cultural conditioning to value the role in life that is open to them, simply drop out of society. This is what has created the so called 'underclass' which is characterised by economic ghetto's, entrenched unemployment, crime, and violence which are all passed down in families of 'sink estates' in the same way that working class values used to be. These people, their place in society having been taken away by middle class poilticians who think that everyone should want to be like them, have literally dropped out of society. This underclass also exists in America.

The struggle for a classless society has failed. The high level of gang culture, crime, and entrenched economic ghetto's, which Britain now shares with the US after adopting the 'American dream', can only be tackled by a return to a traditional class system in which a working class hero is, once again, something to be.