The Old Man’s Song of Class-Consciousness

I’ve read so many aristos
Who praise their caste in verse or prose,
While self-admiring sons of toil
Talk up their closeness to the soil,
And claim profoundest virtues grow
Among the lowest of the low.
But the bourgeoisie? They’re sneered at,
They’re belittled and they’re jeered at;
Above all, socialists and snooty
Join in making it their duty
To chuck insults like confetti
On the bourgeois classed as petty.
That’s why I must declare it loud —
I’m lower middle-class and proud

They’re the stalwarts of the nation
Who get but grudged appreciation —
The hardy self-employed who fight
Against a grim financial plight,
The shopkeepers who won’t repine
Despite the High Street’s long decline.
They’re the bureaucrats whose cunning
Keeps local government running,
They’re the nurses who absorb the stress
Of our beleagured N.H.S.
I stand by them, with head unbowed.
Yes, lower middle-class. Yes, proud.

Every intelligent officer knows
That wars are won by the N.C.O,s,
Who props morale on threatened flanks?
The solid dependable middle ranks.
And who keeps England going? Those
Brought up in semis or bungalows
Whose gardens are kept trim and neat,
The ones who stand on their own two feet,
Brought up by sensible mums and dads
Immune to fashions and media fads,
And to the panics of the crowd.
I am lower middle class, and proud.

Thrift, graft, responsibility,
Common sense, punctuality...
Now — those who know me well may hoot
Such virtues aren’t my strongest suit,
That I have, through my long existence
Shown smallish evidence of persistence,
And that I mostly snarl and yawn
When it’s suggested I mow the lawn.
True, true, and I admit the fact is,
I’m more than fallible in practice —
Still, let me claim, if I’m allowed,
To be lower-middle class. And proud.

So when the time does come for me
To be called to the great majority
(Let me face that fate with bourgeois phlegm)
Before you bundle me to the crem,
Embroider this upon my shroud:
‘He was lower middle-class — and proud.’

George Simmers

 
If you have any thoughts on this poem, George Simmers would be pleased to hear them.