How A Caste System Destroyed Others

In my later years, especially since moving to the desert 10 years ago, I have become a ardent BBC Show fan. I have watched many BBC series borrowed from the excellent collection at the Palm Springs Library.

As I have watched many dramas, comedies and murder shows (who would EVER want to live in Midsomer?), mostly top rate and much better than mainstream American TV shows, you can't help but see the caste system, a medieval attitude, alive and well in the UK. And today,  if you are British, you treat Irish, Scottish and Catholics "differently" and set it out there for all to see. I won't even dwell on East Asian or Africans.

The main character in MURDOCK MYSTERIES worries aloud about a promotion because he's Irish and Catholic. He lives in Toronto, Canada! That he is an excellent detective and introduces the audience to Edison, Tesla, Harley & Davidson, Mary Pickford plus many inventions of the day and future, his religion and heritage are up for discussion?

Along with Lords and Ladies come a long list of perks seen maybe during the Antebellum period in the slave holding South where, as in Europe, people were considered property prior to our Civil War. Many plantation owners were of English, Irish and Scottish heritage and copied what they knew and admired. Nearly every founding father owned slaves.

The biggest perk, one probably originated from the Norman Conquest of 1066, was the amount of land the royalty seized. On that land farmers labored paying rents with a portion of what they produced and villages sprouted on the same lands with merchants paying rent. We are introduced to this in detail with DOWNTON ABBEY, one of the most popular shows BBC ever produced here and abroad. 

You saw firsthand how the "locals" lived and the grand manner the Lord and Lady lived in stunning houses maintained by a cast of, often, 100 servants. DOWNTON begins with the tragedy of the Titanic's loss and death of the heir to this entire estate.

While the story is compelling it shows how by the early 20th Century this style of living was already beginning to crumble. You see servants leaving and not being replaced. One servant tries for a better position only to land in an estate near collapse. In HEARTBEAT the local lord, in the 1990's now, has let all his staff go and is doubling rents of those on his estate just to stay afloat. He fervently defends the fish and game as "his" on land held by his family for generations. They quibble over inches of land lost or gained 100's of years ago.

The same story follows the young laird in MONARCH OF THE GLEN when a medical event calls him home only to find that his sweet but addled father has left the 400 year old, 39,000 acre estate in near bankruptcy. In this series you see the locals agitating for distribution of the land and a gamekeeper forever chasing poachers off the estate that's rich with salmon, deer, and many types of edible birds. The land is beautiful beyond belief, the castle overwhelming.

THE CROWN

However, for me, the lifestyle that proves my point was clearly shown in THE CROWN, the history of Queen Elizabeth II. Talk about medieval. The royal family lives in a style not all that different the Queen Elizabeth I  in the late 1500's. There are servants for everything ... waking up, getting dressed, cooks creating sumptuous meals barely touched, drivers, butlers, valets in a way King Henry VIII would surely have approved. The cost of all this, in the millions of pounds yearly, is bourne by the English people. I can only wonder why? The queen raced her horses, for example, and kept the winnings though they were boarded, groomed and fed in the royal stables.

It was this hard held belief of Europeans about the ownership of "things," like land, that set the conflict between Europeans on a violent and catastrophic collision course with Native Americans. While native tribes often fought over the 'use' of the land they never imagined 'owning' it. Their lifestyle and religious beliefs held the land in awe and were ever aware of how fragile that balance could be. Settlers on the other hand felt the land was 'unused' and couldn't wait to develop it often discovering what natives already knew.

To me, the irony of English colonization was their breaking down of local governments and replacing them with their own without any context. The most famous case, one we studied in school, was their attempts to dismantle the Indian caste system. They tried valiantly to reform India's political structure and succeeded somewhat but old habits die hard. What was so amazing was their inability to see and reform their own caste system.

There isn't a single BBC show where some lord or lady isn't deferred to before a commoner. Truly, is a Lord or Lady any different from Joe or Mary down the street? If anything it could be they are wealthier but in today's world you don't bet on it. Even in poverty royal deference is still given.

Monarch of the Glen

There are many who say we have a caste system here, one defined by wealth. While nothing new, it has been with us since the first colonists. While we praise democracy, the revolution of 1776 only involved at most 10% of the population. At war's end, well over 100,00 left for England or Canada.

Nathaniel Philbrick's MAYFLOWER recounts the Pilgrims journey from England, Holland and finally Plymouth Rock, how the natives helped them survive that first winter. He also notes the clash of Pilgrim beliefs with Native Americans and a missed opportunity to create something new in an already settled, land.

After all, our Constitution begins:

We the people of the  United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, Insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It does NOT state, as at the end of Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, "Some animals are more equal than others!"

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