Big Al, it is no use hankering after a past which is gone. And would be gone, EU or no EU, globalisation or no globalisation. Its no use being working class if all you want to get out of it is stagnation. My grandfather was a coal miner. In the 1920s the coal mines were closing down in his area. But he didn't sit on his backside moaning that he had been left behind. He crossed the country, looking for different work, and found it. And his children, who were denied a decent education by a combination of poverty and needing to fight in WWII, well they worked their way up into what you might call middle management jobs. But all of them impressed upon myself, my sister, and my cousins, that we could achieve what we wanted to achieve by never turning down an opportunity for education. And sone of our achievements have involved moving countries or even continents. Are we still working class? Of course we are. But we have made successes of our lives in our different ways by working and not moaning. That is the lesson of my grandfather's generation.