What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Frankie Leach, 20, is a student, from Whalley Range. She tells Claire Donnelly about the barriers working-class graduates face - and why her generation has every right to be angry.

There couldn’t be more of a class issue in this country. The system is worse than it’s ever been because there’s no movement anymore.

The idea of working hard and working your way out of poverty, is being tested.

The working class probably work harder than anyone but where does it get you?

(Image: Daily Mirror)

It feels like in Orwell’s time at least you could make some progress, mainly through education, and move up to become middle class.

Now the gap between the classes is too wide, it's hard for anyone to get over it.

People can’t get out of debt and they don’t have any equity to fall back on. My generation will struggle to ever own a property and will probably sell our parents’ properties to fund their social care, so that gap is growing all the time.

You see people talking about the reasons millennials can’t afford a mortgage is because 'they spend all their money on avocado toast’. Are they joking? Do they know how much we earn?

I’ve never had a job that doesn’t pay the minimum wage and I’ve been working for six years.

The minimum wage was meant to be just that - the minimum you could scrape by on but I don’t know anyone who isn’t on it. Prices are going up but wages aren’t.

I’ve always worked hard but without money behind you, it’s hard to get past the internship system.

I recently got an interview for a three-month PR placement, it went really well so at the end I asked about pay and they said, ‘no, it’s just expenses’.

The placement is on rotation, there isn’t even a job at the end of it so what’s the point?

My parents have told me there’s no way they can afford to sub me so

I can’t do the job. Even though I am qualified for it but I need that experience to move on.

These people are leap-frogging me. It’s like I can see this door but I can’t in and they can because they have the key, because their parents have money.

Someone will take that internship and it will be someone who has money.

People say the working classes are bitter and I think, ’is it any wonder?’

It gets you irate watching people who are less qualified walking into these spaces and taking things that are rightfully yours.

We’re being constantly made to feel worthless because we don’t have money. It’s degrading and bad for your mental health.

That’s why riots happen, it’s not because working class people are violent, scary yobs, it’s because people have got no outlet or way of telling people that they’re being discriminated against.

I was talking to my parents about this the other day and they were saying that the progress that had been made in social mobility has gone leaping back, we’re giving that progress away.

All those advances - free university places, a functioning NHS, it feels like a utopia.

If you say anything you’ve got a chip on your shoulder, you’re a rough northerner or a chav.

But is it any wonder I have chip on my shoulder? I’ve got two.

Have Your Say

We are retracing the journey George Orwell made in his book, The Road to Wigan Pier, throughout 2017 to tell modern stories of working and unemployed poverty.

They’ll appear in a regular series in the Daily Mirror newspaper and here on our special anniversary website.

(Image: Â© the estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell)

If you don’t live on the route but would like to share experiences of living on a low income or struggling with welfare cuts, please contact realbritain@trinitymirror.com where we are keen to hear your story.