Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Throughout my childhood, my family lived in typical lower and middle-class housing, both rented or bought. Our house in York Avenue looked the same or was similar to other lower-middle class houses in Britain. It was a terraced house, which meant it shared walls with the neighbouring houses. 

This type of semi-detached housing has been immortalised by the television series Keeping Up Appearances. The main character there was Hyacinth Bucket, a snobbish lower middle class social climber. Harry Potter’s childhood home, 4 Privet Drive, also gave the same exposure. The mature British reader will immediately recognize this ‘class society’ in Britain during the post-war period.

Conservatives and the Classless Society

By some peculiar cultural mental gymnastics, society gave more worth to the lower middle class semi-detached houses compared to the working class council houses regardless of similarities.

For so long, the Conservative government allowed for the rentals of council houses. It continued on until the time of the Thatcher government (1979-1990). We can surmise that Conservatives utilized it to establish a classless society. Highly ironic because Thatcher’s ideologies seem to oppose those of Karl Marx’s. Absurdly, the idea of a ‘classless society’ became one of the aims of the Conservative Party in Britain. In the middle class point of view, living in a so-called ‘council house’ bore a certain stigma. More so, this also extended to state ‘working class’ schools called the ‘secondary moderns’⁸¹.

Stigma and Class Divide

Roughly speaking, my father came from a lower middle class family, and my mother from the lower class. Thus, my mother placed great significance to the fact that we lived in a house that wasn’t a ‘council house’ or a cheap market rental just like Hyacinth Bucket did.

I even remember my mother telling me not to play with those ‘dirty’ and ‘diabolical’ lower class boys in the street behind us⁸². Another irony considering she was born in 81 Plantation Street, Govan, Glasgow, bordering on the Gorbals. People notoriously described it as one of the worst working class slums in twentieth century Europe. Her family later moved to another working class district, 6 Vulcan Street in Springburn, Glasgow. Finally, the family then moved to 29 Scotia Street when she was 15.

Personal Effects

Given all these preconceived notions and misconceptions about that time and the people in York Avenue, I have chosen to put a spotlight on the memories that I could remember. These stories will talk about how these social classes may have affected the relationship dynamics in the family. More importantly, I’ll discuss how these may have been surpassed due to children’s innocence and disregard for the adults’ biases. I will use a simple retelling of the little stories that I could think of, or imagine, as time had gone by.

⁷⁹  Strictly speaking, the lower middle classes, such as the Potters and the Buckets, lived in semi-detached, not terraced houses. A semi-detached house is a single family duplex dwelling house that shares one common wall with the next house. A terraced house is a dwelling in a row of attached dwellings that share side walls. A single-detached dwelling is a free-standing residential building. In southern England, this sort of dwelling often denotes that its inhabitants are of a ‘higher’ class than the lower middle class. They often belong to the more ‘solid’ middle class; that is, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and so on.

⁸⁰  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38553797 Read: 2 March 2022.

⁸¹  Those children who failed their 11-plus exams were relegated to the stigma of a social dustbin – otherwise known as secondary modern schools.

⁸²  The phrase ‘‘diabolical lower classes’ is quoted from a letter written to me by my younger brother Gavin, when he was writing about my mother’s ‘typical’ views. The ‘letter’ is in my ‘archive’, but I forget the actual date. I have several of Gavin’s letters in my ‘archive’.