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@deleted
Thanks for setting the record straight with your consistent blandishments and preference for stating the obvious VanUden.
From the time period you're talking about there were no tuition fees to speak of and government grants to rely on. But I'm glad Chris fed you some broken biscuits to add to your tales of sticking it to the man by looting during poll tax riots.
I've worked in enough commercial/public galleries to see first hand what a lot of relationships revolve around, and sadly talent comes quite low on the list of priorities compared to the pre-existing social connections or financial opportunities for them to exploit or get a reach-around off of.
Unlike the FTSE the art market has no kind of moral hazard laws to oblige people to declare conflicts of interest or personal affiliations, creating the nice situation where public funding is used like a slush fund to prime young artists for galleries and to cement the reputations of more established ones and it's ok for curators to go between these institutions and basically buy/sell work and inflate prices for their mates.
Of the two artists you mention-heartwarming and inspiring though their examples may be-there are thousands of other artsist who have sank without trace or lost their way in the daily grind, or, shudder, decided a career in advertising is a desirable career path. Happily for a minority the gamble pays off.
The sad thing is that the huge hike in tuition fees make is more and more difficult for people from modest backgrounds to pursue fine arts as there is less of a guarantee of financial return compared to other subjects. You can be guaranteed that the majority of the YBA's who came from working class backgrounds also went through the system at a time when government grants were still in place-and if you're talking about doing further study somewhere prestigious like the RCA, which is very hard to get into already, you're looking at finding another 9 grand tuition.
This means UK postgrads are increasingly dominated by very wealthy international and domestic students as a result and that's only going to continue unless something changes to restore some kind of parity.