Social mobility has declined in last decade say 3 in 4 Britons

THREE out of four people believe class barriers are tougher to break through now than ten years ago, according to a major research project.

Britons increasingly claim that the constraints of their social class are standing in the way of making improvements in their lives.

The warning follows years of growing evidence that social mobility – the chance for those born into low- skilled and low-income families to haul themselves up the ladder – has been declining.

It came from the British Social Attitudes survey, which has been carried out each year since 1983 and is widely considered to give a reliable picture of the way millions of people think.

The latest findings show 73 per cent of those surveyed say it is fairly difficult or very difficult to move between social classes.

Among people who consider themselves to be working class, the perception that class barriers cannot easily be crossed is now shared by 76 per cent. The high levels of class consciousness and the belief that class limits life chances contrast with optimism until ten years ago that Britain was becoming a more open society with greater opportunities for everybody.

Just before Labour’s 1997 election victory, John Prescott MP – a symbol of working- class ‘ Old’ Labour in Tony Blair’s New Labour – declared ‘we are all middle class now’ while Mr Blair pledged to ‘liberate Britain from the old class divisions’.

But in 2005 the BSA survey said 65 per cent thought it was very or fairly difficult to move between classes. However, concern that class barriers had not melted away began to deepen after 2007 and the arrival of harsher economic times.

Studies began to show that children born after 1970 were less likely to do better in life than their parents compared with children born in the 1950s. This was widely blamed on the abolition of grammar schools in the 1970s and 1980s that gave an intensive education to bright working-class children.

NatCen, the research group that carried out the BSA study, said the findings underlined the belief that a class divide contributed to the European referendum result, in which large numbers of voters outside London and the wealthier areas of the country voted Leave.

Kirby Swales of NatCen said: ‘The class divide is alive and well in Britain and the economic instability and austerity of recent years seem to have sharpened our belief that it is difficult to move from one class to another. Our findings certainly show that people who believe themselves to be working class are more likely to believe in a class divide than those who say they are middle class, and more think it is difficult to move between classes than did in the past.’

He added: ‘Class identity is also closely linked to attitudes in other areas. Those who say they are working class are far more likely to be opposed to immigration, one of the defining issues of the EU referendum, even when they are in professional and managerial jobs.’

The survey canvassed views from 4,328 people who were interviewed in the second half of last year. It found 60 per cent of people consider themselves to be working class, a level that has not changed since 1983.

‘Instability and austerity’