Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why do we cringe at the term ‘third class’?

Alas, it looks like the return to third class travel won’t happen. The papers had got terrifically excited about what seemed like a rolling back of 56 years, when British Rail finally ditched its working class fare. The story was on the back of the privatisation of the East Coast Line from Aberdeen to London, for which it seemed at least one of the bidders had envisaged another tier of fares, though it appears the Department of Transport has been thinking along the same lines for the last year.

But of course it wouldn’t have happened, a return to third class tickets. At least, not described in that dramatically honest and comprehensible way. What we would have got instead would have been a new Budget Fare, a Saver Ticket, an Economy Option, a Value Seat, anything except a bald description which would have made clear what was on offer. We don’t nowadays talk about third-class anything, even if it is the lowest and cheapest of three options: the coy descriptions for supermarkets’ own-brand cheap stuff is a case in point.

In the last half century what we have seen is a radical obfuscation of language, the inexorable advance of management-speak, particularly when it comes to job descriptions. We have in fact come to the point when it seems like an error of taste to describe things as they are, a kind of agonised embarrassment about anything that seems like a linguistic put-down. In this environment where upbeat language is the norm, politicians will never talk about the future when they can talk about going forward. Orwell knew what to make of all this.

Unlock unlimited access, free for a month

then subscribe from as little as £1 a week after that
SUBSCRIBE

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in