Watching the English

by Kate Fox

  A Very English Tribute

  One of the things that amused me about media coverage of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales was the reporters’ constant breathless amazement at the ‘un-Englishness’ of the public response. This was (and still is) invariably described as ‘an unprecedented public outpouring of grief’ or ‘an unprecedented public display of emotion’, amid extravagant claims that this extraordinary disinhibition marked a ‘sea-change’ in the English character, that the stiff upper lip was trembling, that we were all now wearing our hearts on our sleeves, that we would never be the same again, and so on and so forth.

  And what, exactly, did this ‘unprecedented display of emotion’ consist of? Look at the pictures and videos of the crowds. What are all those people doing? Queuing, that’s what. Queuing to buy flowers, queuing to lay flowers, queuing for miles to sign books of condolence, queuing for hours to catch trains and buses home after a long day of queuing. Then, a week or so later, queuing to catch buses and trains to get to the funeral; queuing overnight to secure a good position to watch the procession; queuing to buy more flowers, drinks, flags, newspapers; standing patiently in lines for hours waiting for the cortège to file past; then queuing again for buses, coaches, tubes and trains. Quiet, orderly, disciplined, dignified queuing.

  Certainly, there were tears, but we did not scream or wail or rend our clothing or cover ourselves in ashes. Watch the videos. You will hear one or two rather feeble ‘wails’ as the coffin first emerges from the Palace gates, but these are clearly deemed inappropriate, quickly shushed, and not taken up by the rest of the crowd, who watch the procession in silence. The first people to turn up on the day after Diana died laid flowers; this was taken as the correct thing to do, so all subsequent visitors dutifully laid flowers. After the funeral, a few people started throwing flowers as the hearse drove past, and again the rest obediently followed their example. (No one threw flowers at the horse-drawn coffin earlier, of course: however overcome by unprecedented, un-English emotion, we know better than to frighten the horses.)

  So, there were tears and flowers – neither of which strikes me as a particularly abnormal response to the death of a very popular young princess. Nor are the tears even ‘unprecedented’. There were, according to commentators, ‘few dry eyes’ among the crowds watching Winston Churchill’s funeral more than thirty years earlier. And going back even further, the death of twenty-one-year-old Princess Charlotte in 1817 prompted what would now be described as a frenzy of public mourning. Churches were full day and night, many shops in London closed for two weeks (not just a day as some did for Diana), and there was mayhem verging on a riot among the crowds trying to get tickets to see her lying in state. By comparison, the response to Diana’s death seems remarkably restrained. The English paid tribute to Diana in the most English possible manner, by doing what we do best: queuing.

  CAR RULES

  Before we can even start to look at English unwritten social rules about cars and driving, there are a few ‘universals’ about cars that need clarifying. Across all cultures, humans have a strange and complex relationship with the car. The first thing we need to be clear about in this context is that the car is not primarily a means of transport – or, rather, if that sounds a bit too extreme, that our relationship with the car has very little to do with the fact that it gets us from A to B. Trains and buses get us from A to B: cars are part of our personal territory, and part of our personal and social identity. A bus can take you to the shops and back, but you do not feel at home in it or possessive about it. A train can get you to work, but it does not make socially and psychologically significant statements about you.

  These are cross-cultural universals – basic, rather obvious facts about humans and cars. But we can now move straight back into discussions of Englishness, because the English, of all nations, are the most likely to resist or even vehemently deny at least one of these basic facts.

  The Status-indifference Rule

  Specifically, the English like to believe, and will often doggedly insist, that social-status considerations play no part in their choice of car. Even at the height of the BMW’s yuppie-image heyday, for example, upwardly mobile English executives claimed that they bought their BMWs for their excellent German engineering and design, comfort, reliability, speed, handling, BHP, torque, low drag-coefficients and other rational, no-nonsense qualities. Nothing to do with social image. Nothing to do with status. Nothing to do with vanity. Nothing to do with impressing colleagues or neighbours or girlfriends. Oh, no. It’s just a bloody good car.

  English women, and some English men, will admit to aesthetic and even emotional reasons for choosing a particular car. Men will say that their flashy Porsche or big Mercedes is ‘a beautiful car’; women will tell you that they want the trendy new Mini or Fiat because it is ‘so cute’; both will even confess that they ‘fell in love with’ a ‘gorgeous’ car in the showroom, or that they have always had ‘a passion’ for MGs, or that they are ‘sentimentally attached’ to their rusty old banger.

  We might even go so far as to acknowledge that we choose cars that we feel express our individual ‘personality’ or some aspect of our self-image (cool, sophisticated, stylish, fun, quirky, eccentric, sporty, sassy, sexy, honest, understated, down-to-earth, manly, professional, serious, etc.). But not our social status. We will not admit to buying or wanting a particular make of car because it is associated with a social class or category to which we wish to be seen to belong.

  Class Rules

  The ‘Mondeo Test’

  But the truth is that car choice, like almost everything else in England, is mostly about class. If you are conducting research – or just have a mischievous nature – you can trick English people into revealing, albeit indirectly, the real social-class reasons for their car choice. You do this not by talking about the make of car they actually own or would like to own, but by asking about the brands they do not like and would not buy. If you don’t mind causing offence in the name of science, try saying ‘I’d guess you probably drive a Ford Mondeo?’ to some older members of the middle-middle or upper-middle classes. ‘Mondeo Man’ was for many years the generic euphemism for a lower-middle-class, suburban-salesman type, so class-anxious middles and upper-middles will be highly miffed at being ‘demoted’ to this social category. Many upper-middles may be too polite, or too squeamish about appearing snobbish, to show their annoyance in any obvious way, so you will have to watch their faces carefully for the indignant micro-signals – the raised eyebrows, brief wince, nose-wrinkle, or little moue of distaste. Among the higher or more secure reaches of upper-middle, the reaction is more likely to be mild, benign, somewhat condescending amusement,75 and the genuinely upper class may simply have no idea what you are talking about. I found that the Mondeo-test can be a pretty good indicator of class-anxiety: the more huffy English people are about the suggestion that they drive a Mondeo, the more insecure they are about their own position in the social hierarchy.

  This is not a question of price. The cars driven by Mondeo-despising upper-middles may well be considerably cheaper than the reviled Mondeo, and the almost equally ridiculed Vauxhalls and other British-made ‘fleet’76 cars. But however inexpensive and lacking in comfort or luxury features, the Mondeo-despiser’s car will be a foreign, preferably Continental make (or possibly, among the environmentally concerned, a ‘green’ Toyota Prius). The only exceptions to this anti-British rule are Minis, Jaguars and big, four-wheel-drive ‘country’ vehicles such as Land Rovers and Range Rovers. Those who regard themselves as being a class or two above Mondeo Man may well drive a small, cheap, second-hand Peugeot, Renault, VW or Fiat hatchback – but they will still feel smugly superior as Mondeo Man glides past them in his bigger, faster, more comfortable car.

  I noted in a footnote in the 2004 edition of this book that the Mondeo example ‘might be out of date by the time you read this’. As it turns out, although sales reps, aspiring middle-managers and other lumpen-lower-middle types
are now just as likely to be driving bottom-of-the-range BMWs, the Mondeo is still remarkably popular, and the term ‘Mondeo Man’ is still quite a common euphemism for this social category. As the Mondeo is now regarded as slightly more downmarket, the Mondeo Test might now be slightly more insulting.

  The ‘Mercedes Test’

  Upper-middles who pass the Mondeo Test – those who are merely mildly amused by your suggestion that they might drive a Mondeo – may still reveal hidden class anxieties over the Mercedes. When you’ve had your complacent little chuckle about Mondeos, try saying ‘Now, let me guess . . . I’d say you probably drive a big Mercedes.’

  If your subject looks hurt or annoyed (watch for the same micro-expressions as in the Mondeo Test) or responds with a forced laugh and perhaps a bit of barbed humour about ‘flashy rich trash’ or ‘wealthy businessmen’, you have hit the adjacent-class insecurity button. Your subject has made it into the upper-middle ‘intelligentsia’, ‘professional’ or ‘country’ set, and is anxious to distinguish himself from the despised middle-middle ‘business’ class (or nouveaux riches) with which he almost certainly has some family connections. You may well find that his father (or even grandfather – these prejudices are passed down the generations) was a petit-bourgeois middle-class businessman of some sort – perhaps a successful shopkeeper or sales manager or even a well-off car dealer – who sent his children to smart private schools where they learnt to look down on petit-bourgeois middle-class businessmen.

  Many English people will tell you that there is no longer any Jane-Austenish stigma attached to being ‘in trade’. They are mistaken. And it is not just the tiny minority of aristocrats and landed gentry who turn up their noses at the commercial world. Upper-middle-class people in ‘respectable’ professions, such as barristers, doctors, civil servants and senior army officers, can often be equally snooty – and the upper-middle chattering classes (with their ‘nice work’ careers in the media, the arts, academia, publishing, charities, think-tanks and so on) are the most disparaging of all. Very few of this last group will drive a Mercedes, and most will regard the Mercedes-driving classes with at least some degree of disfavour, but only the insecure will get all huffy and heated and scornful at the thought of being associated with such a vulgar, business-class vehicle.

  Again, the price of the car is not really the issue here. Mercedes-despisers may drive either equally expensive, more expensive or much cheaper cars than the Mercedes they find so abhorrent. Nor is wealth per se the problem. Upper-middle Mercedes-despisers come in all income brackets: they may make as much money as the ‘vulgar rich businessman’ driving the ‘Merc’ (as he would call it), or even more, or much less. The class issue concerns the means by which one acquires one’s wealth, and how one chooses to display it. A Mercedes-despising barrister or publisher might well drive a top-of-the-range Audi, which costs about the same as a big Mercedes, but is regarded as more elegantly understated. This is presumably why the Royal Family all drive Audis, and have done for many years. Cynics claim that this is only because Audi gives the royals very favourable ‘VIP’ discounts, supports their charities and sponsors their polo matches, but it seems naïve to assume that other luxury-car manufacturers have never offered them similar terms. I suspect that their choice of respectable, discreet Audis, rather than flashy, wealth-displaying Mercedes or BMWs, was a judicious one.

  At the moment, BMWs are tainted, to some extent, with the same business-class image as the Mercedes, although generally associated with a younger, City-dealer, ‘yuppie’ stereotype (and now, at the lower end of the BMW range, with the same lower-level managers and salesmen who drive Mondeos). Jaguars have also suffered a bit from a vulgar ‘trade’ connection, being associated with wealthy used-car dealers, slum-landlords, bookmakers and shady underworld characters. But Jaguars have also been for many years the official cars of our prime ministers and important cabinet ministers, which to some lends them an air of respectability – although others feel that this only confirms their inherent sleaziness. In both cases, however, these associations may be fading, and I did not find either Jaguars or BMWs reliable as a class-anxiety indicator. Should you wish to replicate my highly scientific class-anxiety experiments – or if you just fancy tormenting some socially insecure upper-middles – use the Mercedes test.

  These rules and tests apply to normal saloon cars – SUVs are a different category. The upper classes and many upper-middles tend to look down upon SUVs, particularly the huge, brash, ostentatious ones, which they regard as the height of vulgarity, although they still buy the more traditional ‘country’ four-wheel-drive cars, such as Land Rovers and Range Rovers. For the snooty higher classes, driving a Mercedes SUV would put you even lower down the social scale than a normal Mercedes saloon car – you would be seen as a ‘chav with money’ rather than a rich bourgeois businessman. Even the new Bentley SUV is viewed as a vulgar monstrosity and a disgrace to a grand old name.

  Car-care and Decoration Rules

  But class distinctions, and class anxieties, don’t stop with the make of car you choose to drive. The English will also gauge your social rank by the appearance and condition of your car – the way in which you care for it, or do not care for it.

  The unwritten class rules involved in car care are even more revealing than those governing our choice of car, as we are less consciously aware of following them. The English all know, although we won’t admit it, that our car choice is a class indicator; and we all know, although we pretend not to, exactly which cars are associated with which classes. But many people are unaware that the state and condition of their car may be broadcasting even more powerful class signals than its make.

  How clean and shiny – or dirty and scruffy – is your car? As a crude rule of thumb: spotless, shiny cars are the hallmark of the middle-middle, lower-middle and upper-working classes while dirty, neglected cars are characteristic of the uppers, upper-middles and lower-workings (or in many cases ‘not-workings’ – the deprived, unemployed underclasses). In other words, dirty cars are associated with both the highest and very lowest ends of the social scale, clean cars with the middle ranks.

  But it’s not quite as simple as that. More specific class distinctions depend not only on the cleanliness of your car, but also on precisely how it got that way. Do you wash and polish the car yourself, lovingly and religiously every weekend, in the driveway or street outside your house? Then you are almost certainly lower-middle or upper-working. Do you take it frequently to a car-wash? Then you are probably either middle-middle or lower-middle with middle-middle aspirations (if you are upper-middle, your car-care habits betray middle-middle origins). Do you simply rely on the English weather to sluice off the worst of the grime for you, only resorting to a car-wash or bucket when you can no longer see out of the windows, or when people start finger-writing graffiti in the dirt on the boot? Then you are either upper class,77 upper-middle or lower-working/underclass.

  This last rule might seem to suggest that one cannot distinguish between an upper-class car and an underclass one. In terms of degree of neglect, it is indeed impossible to tell the difference, but this is where one has to take the make of car into consideration as well. At the higher end of the social scale, the filthy car is more likely to be a Continental make (or, if British, either a ‘country’ four-wheel drive, a Mini or something grand such as an old Jaguar, Bentley or Daimler); at the lower end, the grubby vehicle is more likely to be British, American or Japanese.

  More or less the same principle applies to the state of the interior of the car. A scrupulously tidy car indicates an upper-working to middle-middle owner, while a lot of rubbish, apple cores, biscuit crumbs, crumpled bits of paper and general disorder suggests an owner from either the top or the bottom of the social hierarchy. And there are still smaller clues and finer distinctions. If you not only have a tidy car, but also hang your suit-jacket carefully on the little hook thoughtfully provided for this purpose by the car manufacturers, you are lower-middle or
possibly at the lower end of middle-middle class. (All other classes simply sling their jacket on the back seat.) If you hang your jacket on a coat-hanger attached to the little hook, you are definitely lower-middle. If you also hang a neatly ironed shirt on a coat-hanger from the little hook, to change into before arriving at your ‘important meeting’, you are lower-middle of working-class origins, and anxious to proclaim your white-collar status.

  There are minor variations to the interior car-care class rules, relating mainly to sex-differences. Women of all classes generally tend to have somewhat less tidy cars than men – they are rather more prone to scattering sweet-wrappers and tissues, and leaving stray gloves, scarves, maps, notes and other paraphernalia strewn over the seats. Men are usually a bit more ‘car-proud’, a bit more anal about keeping such things in the glove-compartment or side-pockets, rather less tolerant of clutter and muddle. Having said that, the upper and upper-middle classes of both sexes have a high tolerance of dog-related dirt and disorder (an immunity they share, again, with the lower-working/underclass). The interiors of their cars are often covered in dog hair, and the upholstery scratched to bits by scrabbling paws. The middle-middles and lower-middles confine their dogs to a caged-off section behind the back seats.