Click topic for LINK to Dominic Sandbrook's article
The Middletons' forebears are symbolic of social mobility that hastened in the last century. Backbone of Victorian Britain, working class families in industrial England were swept along in the growing ranks of the middle-class that emerged at the end of the genteel Victorian age. This article is an exploration of British social evolution. The Middletons, like much of British society are symbols of steady economic growth, a bouyant manufacturing sector, decent education and targeted state intervention coupled with a culture of hard work and oppourtunity. Voila!
They emerged during Margaret Thatcher's third consecutive electoral victory as entrepreneurs, the epitomy of working class ambition and middle-class self-reliance at the heart of Thatcherism. All that unbridled growth began to slow during Kate's lifetime - the result of complacency, mismanagement and other social maladies. Britain's political debates are centered on a modern society perceived as fluid and open to minorities but ironically it is more closed, exclusive and elitist than ever.
"There is only one cure for poverty and that is social mobility,".....Cultural poverty is the death of social mobility.
The British Royal family have opened themselves up to change but Britain itself has taken a giant step back in stilted time. The lessons of history have been ignored to great peril. Her hard working ancestors and not Kate Middleton should be the role models in today's Britain.
This article is very good. Worth the read.
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