Class

In the sixth form at school we did a non- examination subject called Current Events. In the days before league tables for schools, one criterion for judging them was how many pupils made Oxbridge every year, so I guess they were preparing us in case we wanted to study PPE. The careers department in any case consisted solely of advising you about which university to go to.

And in Current Events we were told that the class system no longer existed in Britain. Five years down the line I would read the only Jilly Cooper book I would ever read - well so far - 'Class'. Thus I discovered that class was indeed alive and kicking.
Sad to say that experience down the years has led me to continue to believe that the trashy novelist was correct and the blue stocking - well just wishful thinking.

Rab Butler, architect of the 1944 Education Act which raised the school leaving age to 15 and gave free secondary schooling to all, certainly changed things in Britain, it was a deliberate step towards equality and I can see that class wasn't what it was before the war.
Education, and not money, has always been the key to class mobility in Britain. It's why we don't truly value celebrity. We will revere our great actors for their skill, and we look down our noses at those we consider unskilled, though wealthy.

It's difficult for those who haven't grown up in Britain to fully grasp how deeply ingrained this is in us. And it is equally difficult for those of us who did to grasp the ideals of a largely classless society. One where wealth itself is what people value and not class and education.

All of this preamble is an attempt to explain one level in the British class system. Not the chav, that's relatively easy to describe, a way of dressing, of behaving, beautifully depicted by Miss Vicky Pollard.

No, what I want to define is the 'Pikey'.

The working class in British society is essentially seen as just that, not that everyone who works is working class, and you can be working class and not work. British soaps such as Eastenders and Corrie are about working class people.

The Pikey isn't working class. They are lower class, but they are not decent and honest. The word is synonymous with 'gypo' although not in the sense that these people are actually gypsies. Some may be settled travellers. They may be part of large families, known by name who are responsible for petty crime and whose honour, if any exists, is 'among thieves', they will call upon members of the larger family but have no honour per se.

Anyone who would like to help me in this attempt to define the term pikey, please do, I am struggling.
You just know when someone is one, somehow, you just know, and you wouldn't trust them as far as you could throw them.