<P> The "class system" in the United Kingdom is widely studied in academia but no definition of the word class is universally agreed to . Some scholars may adopt the Marxist view of class where persons are classified by their relationship to means of production, as owners or as workers, which is the most important factor in that person's social rank . Alternatively, Max Weber developed a three - component theory of stratification under which "a person's power can be shown in the social order through their status, in the economic order through their class, and in the political order through their party . Besides these academic models, there are myriad popular explanations of class in Britain . In the work Class, Jilly Cooper quotes a shopkeeper on the subject of bacon: "When a woman asks for back I call her' madam'; when she asks for streaky I call her' dear' ." </P> <P> The United Kingdom never experienced the sudden dispossession of the estates of the nobility, which occurred in much of Europe after the French Revolution or in the early 20th century, and the British nobility, in so far as it existed as a distinct social class, integrated itself with those with new wealth derived from commercial and industrial sources more comfortably than in most of Europe . Opportunities resulting from consistent economic growth and the expanding British Empire also enabled some from much poorer backgrounds (generally men who had managed to acquire some education) to rise through the class system . </P> <P> The historian David Cannadine sees the period around 1880 as a peak after which the position of the old powerful families declined rapidly, from a number of causes, reaching a nadir in the years after World War II, symbolised by the widespread destruction of country houses . However their wealth, if not their political power, has rebounded strongly since the 1980s, benefiting from greatly increased values of the land and fine art which many owned in quantity . </P> <P> Meanwhile, the complex British middle - classes had also been enjoying a long period of growth and increasing prosperity, and achieving political power at the national level to a degree unusual in Europe . They avoided the strict stratification of many Continental middle - classes, and formed a large and amorphous group closely connected at their edges with both the gentry and aristocracy and the labouring classes . In particular the great financial centre of the City of London was open to outsiders to an unusual degree, and continually expanding and creating new employment . </P>

The upper class elite of the british colonies included the