The other day, while on a plane flying out of the UK, I spotted an article about the most British thing created for the internet since cyclist v motorist videos. I read that 8,000 of the UK’s super-elite use a classified, invitation-only network where they trade grouse-shooting tips, let out lavish holiday homes and funnel paid internships to their kids.
Dubbed “Gumtree for the posh”, but known by the decidedly less sexy name Radio H-P, the advertising site and online club was founded by truffle entrepreneur (not a fake job) Nigel Hadden-Paton, who personally invites each new member and vets the suitability of prospective candidates by asking about their background.
If you needed evidence that the British class system is still in full effect, there it is. If you thought we had reached peak classism with the bedroom tax, Asbos and Tatler’s resurgence in popularity, you were wrong. Essentially, this website was created to save those in the upper echelons the trauma of having to privately message the proletariat to sell their stuff online. It has the effect of preventing posh money from falling into the hard, chapped hands of the riffraff – lest we get a taste for it and invest it in revolutionary weapons or something – and protecting and preserving a social elite.
A site such as Radio H-P prevents trickle-down wealth (not that it ever really existed) and entrenches the margins of class. The chasm between the haves, the silver-spooned and the haven’t-got-a-pot-to-piss-in-let-alone‑any-silverware will eventually become so wide that we will speak to one another only through specially trained translators, funded by the landowning elites, who will be tasked with creating a lingua franca for the purpose of mass executions – sorry, evictions.
Obviously, Radio H-P exudes smug privilege from every digital pore, but it also highlights our embarrassing collective fixation with class, which transcends generations and is more visible now thanks to TV and technology. I like to think of classism as a social ill that plagues older demographics only, but young people are as preoccupied with it as our parents and grandparents – we just can’t admit it.
You see it in the way that Made in Chelsea is still going strong. And how, when twentysomething Peckham-based artist Hetty Douglas mocked two builders online for “looking” like they had “one GCSE”, she was vilified, but also defended. It is why, after a group of young Tories made jokes about gassing “chavs” on WhatsApp, nothing really happened. And it is why, when I asked two friends who work in finance if they would date someone who wasn’t also fairly middle class, I wasn’t surprised me when they said no, they couldn’t possibly.
Modern-day, millennial classism results in working-class students being afraid to apply to top universities and perpetuates the less discussed fear of social mixing. For people of colour, it deepens discrimination and burdens them with two sets of stereotypes to shed. It pits us against each other.
It is 2017, so we shouldn’t be bothered about who is related to whom or what accent the person we are dating has. But when it comes to eradicating class barriers, nothing has really changed since our parents’ youth, so it is not our fault that it still affects us. Class is still integral to our entire political system, after all: the foundations of British democracy are a contradiction in terms, linked to royalty, privilege and oppression of the working class.
This is too much for us to dismantle alone, so maybe we should start with boycotting sites such as Radio H-P that perpetuate privilege and rob us of a diverse, interesting society. That would be a good place to start.
