Why Do People Pretend to Be Working Class? (Your Radical Questions with Sophie Pender)

**Amol Rajan** (0:08)
Hello, and welcome to Your Radical Questions. This is where I put your questions to one of our supreme Radical guests. And this is my last Radical guest on this podcast, and it's a really special one. It's your chance, by the way, to engage really directly with the super smart, interesting, influential people that we have on this podcast, and ask them about their Radical ideas for the future. And here, on my last day, I'm thrilled to report, you've probably heard her on Thursday's episode, if you haven't, you've gotta go back and listen to it, it was fantastic. It's the founder and chief executive of the 93% Club, Sophie Pender.

**Sophie Pender** (0:43)
Hello.

**Amol Rajan** (0:43)
How are you?

**Sophie Pender** (0:44)
Back again.

**Amol Rajan** (0:45)
Back again for more, can't get enough. The 93% Club is named after the approximately 93% of the British population that is educated in state schools rather than in private institutions. Its aim is to basically empower that 93% of people in the same way that alumni of private schools have traditionally done by providing career networks, a supportive community, social capital, to help people break into top professions and perhaps as a result to make the idea that we should phase out and eventually abolish private schools go from being radical to mainstream. If you want to hear us talk about those issues as well as bigger things around class and family and privilege and networking and education and Sophie's amazing story, please do go back and listen to Thursday's episode. But now for the last time for me, I would like to say to my guest, Sophie, are you ready for some radical listeners?

**Sophie Pender** (1:35)
Ready for it.

**Amol Rajan** (1:36)
Well, our first question, this is special because this comes from someone that I didn't even know he was going to send in this voice note, but that's how joined up we are. Someone, a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, very influential academic who I mentioned on Thursday's episode.
He is the author of two books, co-author of a book called The Class Ceiling and co-author of a book called Born to Rule. It's a professor at the London School of Economics who I featured in my documentaries. It's Sam Friedman, whose book Born to Rule does some data analysis tracking the British upper class from the 1890s to the present day, and this is Sam Friedman.

**Sam Friedman** (2:10)
Hi, Sophie. Hi, Amol. Thank you, Sophie, for all your great work in this space. My question is about the disconnect between class and social mobility is something we measure and monitor, and class and social mobility is something we feel as an identity.
Britain's really interesting in this regard, despite people like us revealing the various barriers that those from working class backgrounds face in getting on, working class identities remain really popular. In fact, we know that even among people in middle-class professional jobs whose parents also did similar middle-class jobs, around a quarter still curiously see themselves as working class. And this is even more acute among our elites in our recent book. We found that over 40% of people who told us they're from working-class backgrounds actually come from solidly middle-class backgrounds. Now some of this obviously reflects the messiness of class identities, personal histories. But my question is whether Sophie thinks that this also maybe partially reflects a tendency among many in the UK, whether conscious or not, to deflect or downplay their privilege, to cast their own trajectory in a more meritocratic light. If so, whether she thinks this might skew our understanding of the state of social mobility in the country.
Thanks.

**Sophie Pender** (3:28)
He's just got that gorgeous lecturer voice, doesn't he?

**Amol Rajan** (3:31)
Sam is such a smart guy and his two books, I mean, you'll know I recommend them because my name's on the front, but at least one of them, I think maybe the back of the other. It's a really interesting thing about how people project themselves. Let's just pick up the end of that, this idea that basically there's a tendency among many people in the UK, whether conscious or not, to deflect or downplay their privilege to cast their own trajectory in a more meritocratic light. Have you seen that?

**Sophie Pender** (3:57)
I think the unkind answer would be that we're just a little more interested, aren't we, background-wise. No, that's the unkind answer.

**Amol Rajan** (4:04)
Well, it's changed historically. The point of Born to Rule, which I really recommend, Sam's book, is that it used to be that you kind of talk up your kind of credentials, you talk up your kind of class appurtenances, whereas now quite a lot of people talk them down and say, well, I'm into football too.