The strangest ethnic group

The strangest ethnic group in Britain is the upper class. Most of us in this country spend our lives without meeting an aristocrat, let alone attending an expensive private boarding school, the royal enclosure at Ascot, or any of the various other places that the upper class gather. But every so often our paths cross at a distance, and we have a chance to observe them, and note their outlandish forms of behaviour, dress and speech.

One example from my own life shows how this can happen. In the late 1960s, I was a very poor student in London. Without money, my only entertainment at weekends was to walk. I walked hundreds of miles across London, and at the end of the summer term on a Saturday afternoon one year (I forget which one), I arrived in Knightsbridge. In those days, posh shops closed on Saturday afternoon, and the streets were quiet. I entered a narrow street with a church at one end. Suddenly, the doors of the church opened and a wedding party emerged. The groom and most of the male guests were in the military uniform of officers in the Guards, and they walked, almost marched, arm-in-arm with their wives along the street to a hall at the other end where, I assume, the reception was to take place. Far from the noisy family weddings I was used to, this march took place in complete silence. The only discrepant sight among the military and Georgian buildings was a single scruffy student - myself. This experience, with its discipline, conformism and utter lack of spontaneity, reminds me of the scene at Royal Ascot in the film My Fair Lady.

I was raised in a left-wing working-class family, and so I inherited a suspicion of the upper class, and even a hostility to them. But, looking back, I think these ideas were wrong. There was no reason to believe that the people in the wedding party lacked kindness, consideration or charity towards others. Judging by the performance of the British Army, the men I saw did not lack courage. We should instead regard the upper class as one of many different cultures that may be incomprehensible to each other, but can live together in harmony. Rather than judging people by accent or appearance, we should assess their personal virtue as shown by their deeds to others, their skills, and their opportunity to occasionally bewilder the rest of us.