You are mistaken in that joke you make about yourself - perhaps because you subscribe to left wing dogma.
In the time before about 1950. This country was so ridden by classist attitudes that bright and intelligent people came up against an armoured glass ceiling - a CLASS CEILING which largely prevented them from accessing other than menial work. It was almost impossible for them to access the professions or in
most cases to progress into higher managerial roles. The country prior to WW2 and during it, was very far from being a meritocracy.
The term Meritocracy is now self explanatory, but it was coined by Michael young, who wrote a book, 'The Rise of the Meritocracy' in 1958, expressing his concerns about some of the outcomes of judging people on their ability.
The reason for this was of course the inescapable fact that intelligence and capability are not equally distributed in the population and that some people are of below average mental capability, most people are about the average (give or take) and that some are very much cleverer.
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Micheal Young was of the left, though he did not deny these obvious FACTS about the distribution of IQ, and every other physical characteristic in the population. The same is true of height, performance at sport, swiftness of foot in sprinting, or in endurance at marathon running and in musical and artistic ability. The differences between people,are ALL distributed as shown for IQ in the chart above. It is called the Normal Curve, because it shows the norm of how these qualities differ on a population basis.
Going back a little - Pre WW2, thicko rich people ran the army. They were given these positions because of their perceived 'breeding' and the officer class was pretty much entirely made up of such people - not that all of them were stupid, but the stupid were among them.
Was intelligence then a matter of social class?
No it was not. There were plenty of intelligent people in the working class (just as you pointed out) and their still are. Back then, they were PREVENTED from progressing not only in the military, but also in all professions and with very few exceptions in management and industry. It was even worse among women. It was truly a time of the CLASS ceiling.
Post war a massive change occurred, the time of meritocracy was born. Grammar schools and technical schools were at the heart of the 1944 Education Act. Bright boys and girls from whatever class poured into these institutions, went to university and into management roles in business and industry. They poured into the professions.
Did all bright boys and girls do this?
No -they did not, and to a very small extent, this is still the case. Parental attitudes prevent it, as do financial worries. There are still bright boys and girls leaving school early to go to work so that they can contribute to family finances, but the number doing this is vastly smaller than it used to be.
Michael Young who coined the term 'Meritocracy' was most concerned at what would happen to those who did not do well at 'merit'. He could see an unfairness in the fact that the stupid would be undervalued in a society which prized merit. He also thought that people who were intelligent, had actually done nothing themselves to deserve their gifts. An intelligent person has been blessed - it can not be denied. He has not achieved intelligence by himself.
By the way - as a man from an ordinary (poor in financial terms) background and the first in his family to ever attend a place of higher education, I know boys who were cleverer than me who went into trades. Although the gateway to higher education was well open by the time I went to secondary school in 1962, not every bright kid came through that gate.
If I were you, I would not even entertain the idea that a furniture maker must be thick. I would not says so and I never ever thought it. On the contrary, a man who can make furniture not only is possessed of wonderful skills, he has the capacity to make a very good living, way better these days than many who graduate from university. Not only that, but he could not do his work if he had not been blessed with intelligence.
These days, people are noticing that the country has areas blighted by under achievement and there are fears that the time of meritocracy may have ended. WE have sink estates blighted by inter generational unemployment crime and under achievement.
This fact is not the result of some sort of upper class plot. It is what we might have expected, given the rise of meritocracy and the heritability of intelligence. All sensible academic work on this subject (now bizarrely discounted and cancelled by the left) shows that at least 60% of intelligence is purely down to genes. This leaves 40% due to other factors such as, attention given to early childhood learning, cultural transmission of good values - work ethic and so on through family and school. The attention in infancy to language development and concept development are crucial to teh development of the 40% of intelligence not related to genes. Indeed, it is also related to the expression of the 60% which is genetic. A child deprived of stimulation will never achieve its potential.
I make damned sure that the time I spend with my five grandchildren, and my partner's grandchildren, is devoted to talking, listening and showing them the differences between things, so that they rapidly develop a more sophisticated view of the world.
Not all children have these advantages. Society needs to make a proper contribution.
It is completely unsurprising to me that some sink estates show consistently bad outcomes for children and young people and that we now see inter generational crime and unemployment . I and my two siblings were brought up in a home filled with encouragement by bright parents whose prospects were limited by the fact that they were born in 1920 and 1923. They passed on above average intelligence to their children and encouraged - more like insisted, on hard work and decency, and the desire to get on. We lived in a council house. We had no money. I remember my mother sitting on occasion in tears when my father's entire pay packet was handed to her as it always was. All of us children went on to graduate professions. We never occupied council accommodation after leaving home. Just like millions of others after the 1960s we made our own way and though not rich were never poor. Those housing estates once lived in by people with a wide range of intellectual ability - a great many held back by circumstance and the CLASS CEILING, began to be occupied only by those whose capabilities were more limited. I think this is why we see a fall in what is called social mobility. The brighter harder working people have moved out of them once they were not held back by society.
I have no answer to the problem of what to do about sink estates and the rump of people who can not succeed in trades, in management, industry, or in the professions, but it is my honest opinion that no one and no class is holding back those children who come from these families. I think they are held back by the nature and ability of their families.
Michael Young was perhaps right about Meritocracy - that by definition it would leave behind a proportion of the people. How could it be else?
