Crossing the Class Divide

Born and raised on Chelmsley Wood, an ‘overspill’ estate in Birmingham, the writer Lynsey Hanley has experienced what a politician would call social mobility. In her books on housing estates and the British class system, she uses her own life to think through the psychosocial dimensions of crossing the class divide.

In the third episode of our special series on class, she talks to Juliet Jacques about whether anything like social mobility is possible in Britain today. They discuss autodidactism, the political impact of ’80s pop, and how squats, grants and the dole briefly subsidised a flowering of working class art and culture.

Listen to the previous two episodes in the class series, with Juliet speaking to co-hosts John and Nihal about what class means now, and with writer Kenan Malik on the historic roots of identity politics.

Photo by Nico Hogg/Flickr.