49 Up: Oral History as it Happens

Forty years ago Granada TV in Britain broadcast a documentary, Seven Up, about the lives of twenty children, then aged seven. It was to be a narrative about class, showing how class was destiny. To make the point absolutely clear they anchored the show around three boys and three girls. They showed us three dreadfully conceited boys from a fancy London private school and three charming working class girls from the East End of London.

Last month in Britain they broadcast 49 Up, interviewing the same children at the age of 49. Jonathan Freedland reviews it in The Guardian. Here in the United States we will probably have to wait for the DVD. You can get the DVD of the previous five episodes, The Up Series, at Amazon.

Of course, the hoary left-wing narrative about class has been utterly demolished, not least because Britain has become overwhelmingly middle class in the last half century. Instead what emerges unbidden in every frame is a completely different narrative: “The Consequences of the Welfare State.” You can say, roughly speaking, that the closer each child lived to the welfare state, the more their life suffered. All the middle-class children that went to private school have done well. But the kids that went to government schools, or bust up their marriages and went on welfare—they have not done so well.

So the question is: what was all the money and all the promises and all the social programs about? When it has all led to blighted lives and social decay?

But that is a conversation the producers of The Up Series are not willing to have. They may not even be aware that it is a conversation it is possible to have.