THERE was a time when this country had a proud and honest working class.

But as traditional industry has closed and with it the loss of traditional jobs, where people got sweat on their brow and dirt on their hands, the working class has virtually disappeared from society.

We now have an aspiring have it all middle class and, a million miles beneath it, an underclass that has bred ghastly creatures like Teresa Bystram, the mother who thought an 800-mile round trip to Raoul Moat’s funeral better value than Legoland for her kids.

A visit funded, naturally, by the taxpayer. She had never met Moat, but was excited by his notoriety and decided his funeral would be a good day out.

What hope is there for children growing up with parents like Teresa Bystram? What human values are being inculcated?

Miss Bystram is not the only example of the sub-culture in action. Remember Karen Matthews, the mother who was complicit in her own daughter’s apparent abduction when she was hidden under a divan bed as police and neighbours frantically searched.

Worse still have been the stories of children beaten and starved to death by uncaring, selfish, ignorant and cruel parents. We can’t blame social workers, over-stretched by heavy and stressful case loads and bureaucratic paper work, for everything that goes wrong in society.

My parents were working class. My maternal grandfather died at a comparatively young age from cancer. He left a large family effectively penniless.

My mother got a job in a factory which necessitated a 40-mile round cycle trip every day, and then worked in the local cinema at nights selling ice creams. She once told me the family was so hard up she and one of her younger brothers went round the bins outside the grocery and fruit shops at night looking for items that had been thrown away, but which could be washed and scraped into life again for the supper table.

It could hardly have been a tougher upbringing. But working class people didn’t think the world owed them anything. They didn’t have a benefits system to fiddle in my mother’s youth. They had to get on with it. They didn’t resort to vandalism and crime. They had precious little other than their pride and integrity.

I don’t advocate a return to those days. But people did get their hands dirty doing tough jobs. There was a feeling that they were contributing to society.

All that has been lost. These days everybody is looking for work in technology or in call centres. The great British industries have closed down, never to return. Production is cheaper in countries where a blind eye is turned to the sweat shops and the exploitation of children.

This is where the gap has come. There is hardly any real working class Britain left. And as a nation we are the worse for it.

JUST GIVE CODGERS THE SUICIDE PILL

“OVER 50 and on the scrapheap” screamed the headline in one national newspaper earlier this week.

Government plans to abolish the official retirement age and allow people to work on into their 70s might be fine for some, but we already have 170,000 job seekers over 50 who have been out of work for a year or more, according to research by the charity Age UK.

So, if people are to work on after 65, where are all the jobs coming from? Already older workers have been the victims of the recession and cost-cutting by businesses.

It all seems at variance with the happy picture presented by the coalition Government of a future where older people continue working as long as they like.

Employment relations minister Ed Davey says older workers have a “vital contribution” to make to Britain’s economic recovery. More likely we are going to see a rash of age discrimination cases. It’s true that older workers are sometimes the best. They bring a wealth of knowledge and experience.

But it’s also the case that a lot of employees who look forward to a rest now wonder if the official retirement age is gradually going to be increased so that they never do get a life after work.

It’s not so much a case of the Government valuing older workers as not having the money to finance pensions as people live longer. Work ’til you drop. And the official cyanide pill for over-65s can’t be far off.

REHAB. REVOLUTION SOUNDS SOFT ON CRIME

KEN Clarke calls it the “rehabilitation revolution”. Stiffer community sentences replacing prison in a bid to reduce the prison population.

This Government is beginning to sound a bit like the discredited lot before it when it comes to gimmicky sound bites and policies made up on the hoof.

I’m not sure, and I doubt that Mr. Clarke is sure either, just what form these stiffer community sentences will take and who is going to supervise them.

One rather hoped the new Government would get a grip on law and order, but despite some rhetoric from Home Secretary Teresa May, the opposite seems to be happening.

It is getting rid of Asbos which were a toothless enterprise of the last government. Young offenders quickly realised nobody got jailed for breaking them. As a result they became an obligatory badge of honour.

You can bet that whatever the coalition comes up with to replace the Asbo, it will be equally ineffective. All our political parties seem to have given up on crimes like shoplifting, vandalism and everyday thuggery.

When it comes to crime they talk big and act pathetic because they don’t really have a clue what to do with offenders. Soon cuts could mean fewer prison officers to deal with an already over-stretched service. Already £2 billion worth of cuts in the justice system is being forecast.

Taking away the threat of prison won’t bring about a decrease in crime, despite Kenneth Clarke’s promise of a rehab. revolution. But it might give the disturbing impression that once again we have political leaders who, for all their fine talk, are soft on crime.

THE DAY NAOMI GOT HER MARCHING ORDERS

RECENT events surrounding supermodel Naomi Campbell, blood diamonds and the “inconvenience” of a war crimes trial, suggest that Keswickian in New York Pete Myers was absolutely spot on a few years ago when he gave Miss Campbell her marching orders from his Greenwich Village store.

A good judge of bad character, he wasn’t taking any queue jumping nonsense. And when Miss Campbell played the “don’t you know who I am” card Myers, whose regular customers include far bigger celebrities than she, told her in no uncertain manner to sling her hook.

Miss Campbell is known for her vile temper, abusing her staff and now for her disappointment that diamonds given to her on behalf of African despot Charles Taylor were not all shiny and in a box.

This week, no doubt prompted by publicity people, she grudgingly conceded her “inconvenient” comment was a “poor choice of words.” Taylor is on trial for his part in a war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and involved unspeakable acts of mutilation that make the Taliban look like pussycats. How dreadfully inconvenient.