Conclusion: Another geography - The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure - page 290

Such education as there was did not include the dangerous subject
of geography; even in the National and British schools of the period
(to say nothing of the workhouse schools) there was such a prejudice
against the teaching of geography that in many cases the school master
was forbidden to hang any maps on the walls of the schoolroom.
(Redford, 1976, p. 96)

The social conclusions of the research underlying the examples used in this
topic are that British society had become sharply divided by the late 1980s
(Figure 10.7). The divisions were most obvious when viewed on a fine spatial
scale, when the cartographic microscope of a detail cartogram could be employed.
It was at this point that it became evident how people were socially herded into,
or could not escape from, many areas - for many reasons. 10 It was evident back
then that there was little reason to think that these divisions would not widen in
the future. There appeared to be nothing likely to curtail this 1980s polarisation
quickly once it had begun, particularly when the people in more prosperous
places held the political power.
Even if in the late 1980s we could not easily have changed what was hap-
pening, we could at least have shown it better for what it is. 11 Nothing ever
changes while people cannot sense what is happening. People can be hidden in
the detail of conventional maps. Many of the origins of our current malaise were
not seen in traditional equal-land-area cartographic images of British lives lived
in the 1970s and 1980s.
It is perhaps the extent of the problem of current social inequality that often
helps prevent its full appreciation and dissuades us from taking action. 12 Images

10 Within a single London borough barriers were rising: 'As the gap between them grows, some-
thing fundamental happens to insiders' sense of their place in society. The outsiders become to look
less and less like the kind of people insiders mix with at work and socially. They become less
recognizable as members of the same society, with a similar right to claim a decent standard of
living. At best they are an unsettling embarrassment to be treated with charity. At worst they are
an unwanted burden ... ' (Leadbeater, 1989, p. 51). From being a regular contributor to Marxism
Today , Charles Leadbeater went on to become an advisor to Tony Blair.
11 The extent of British inequalities in wealth in 1989 were truly staggering: 'Noble argues that:
“About 500 000 people, one per cent of the population, own just over a third of all private wealth in
contemporary Britain and receive just over half of all the personal income derived from possession
of wealth”. Within this stratum the very rich 50 000, 0.1 per cent of the population, are the most
important group' (Scott, 1989, p. 74). In hindsight, however, they were nearly at a historic low point.
An inequality in wealth is described here by John Scott that has since soared so that 'staggering' is
now too small a word to describe it. John is now PVC (Research) University of Plymouth.
12 To appreciate such huge differences requires more than words alone can provide: 'Britain is a
deeply divided society, and the deepest division of all is the inequality in the ownership of wealth.
That the inequalities have persisted for so long helps in itself to legitimate them, to make them
more acceptable; the status quo is an influential public relations officer for the rich. And the very
extremities of wealth inequalities somehow deprive the statistics of credibility or meaning' (Pond,
1989, p. 189). Chris Pond entered parliament as an MP in 1997 and left it in 2005.