Posted on 02/13/2005 2:10:10 PM PST by quidnunc
The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class
Michael Collins
Granta Books, 2004.
South-East London has never enjoyed a good press. Guidebooks treat it as an afterthought, an appendix to the real business elsewhere in the capital. Historical Greenwich is mentioned, of course, and a handful of other tourist-friendly sights, but that's your lot. The days when the South Bank theatres were surrounded by syphilitic brothels and murderous backstreets are long gone, yet the stigma persists. This corner of the capital remains a world apart.
In modern times, this imaginative distance was reinforced by the way the area was cut off, not just by the Thames, but also from the Tube system. Public transport long consisted of unreliable trains and buses, and even taxis were famously reluctant to venture 'south of the river'. The prevailing attitude among other Londoners was 'ignore it, it might go away'.
But there was a corollary: if South-East London hadn't existed, then someone would have had to invent it as a symbol of everything the cosmopolitan metropolis across the river was not. And in a way, that is exactly what did happen. Over the years, a caricature of this hinterland emerged, summed up in the phrase 'Sarf London' — a phonetic stab that fittingly bears no resemblance to the local pronunciation. The bottom right-hand corner of the London map became the modern equivalent of 'here be dragons'.
-snip-
Collins' blind spots have consequences for his own project. He is conscious of a shift in attitudes, resulting in the 'salt of the earth' becoming the 'scum of the earth', but he cannot really answer the question of why this change occurred. A political perspective would have helped explain the cultural issues that interest him.
Forty years ago, the working class appeared to have both political clout and cultural cachet. The trade unions had taken their place at the top table, and governments consulted closely with them. Consensus politics ruled, people from working-class backgrounds were making inroads into all aspects of public life, and the 'classless society' was widely believed to be round the corner. (There were dissenters and snobs of the Evelyn Waugh school, of course, but they were viewed as an eccentric and old-fashioned minority.)
Yet by the end of the 1960s the political consensus was already beginning to break down, leading to the turbulence of the seventies. The unions were crushed in the eighties, and by the time Labour came to power 1997, Tony Blair could afford to ignore his party's traditional voters and focus on the preoccupations of the middle classes.
Today, the white working class has neither political power nor cultural cachet. One consequence of this is that the rest of society sees no reason to hide its distaste when discussing it. In these politically correct times poor whites are just about the only section of society that it is permissible to insult. The council estate, once a symbol of progress (albeit of a bureaucratic penny-pinching variety), is now regarded as the British equivalent of the American trailer park, and its inhabitants, once the harbingers of a coming classless age, are derided as 'white trash'.
Such prejudices loom large in The Likes of Us, often to amusing effect. Collins tells the story of how a woman at a media party complained that she had moved to the Elephant and Castle and couldn't buy aubergines locally. The area was 'very white', she explained. The fact that she and her friends were all white didn't strike her as a problem — they were clearly not the sort of whites she had in mind. 'Her multiculturalism made her colourless; her class made her superior', says Collins [1]. Since the book was written, a more blatant manifestation of this prejudice has arisen: the fashion for mocking the baseball-cap-wearing 'chavs', who are pilloried for their accents, clothes, eating habits, ignorance and general lack of taste. The popularity of this pleb-baiting can be seen in the success of the relentlessly misanthropic ChavScum website, which has already spawned a cottage industry of spin-off books — buy one for someone you really hate [2].
One irony of this unedifying chav-baiting is that the mockers themselves are hardly standard-bearers for civilised values. The tabloid mentality is by no means the exclusive preserve of the poor and uneducated — 'dumbing down' is, after all, a phrase coined to describe the decline of cultural standards among the upper reaches of society, not those at the bottom. Why, then, are people queuing up to heap derision upon the hapless chavs?
There is a paradox in society today. The middle classes are enjoying a period of dominance in public life, but it is a hollow ascendancy. They are uncertain and anxious: they no longer have a highbrow culture to aspire to, and social status can be bought by anyone who can afford the price of admission. These days, Jack is as good as his Mastercard, and there is no going back to the days when deference was taken for granted.
Social and cultural boundaries might have become blurred, but the urge to enforce them remains. When one's sense of superiority is fragile, it is reassuring to have someone else to look down upon, and despising the chavs is thus an easy form of middle-class self-flattery [3].
On the face of it, this contempt is nothing new. Early twentieth-century writers such as Virginia Woolf and EM Forster also poured scorn on the masses for their supposed fecklessness, sentimentality, mawkishness, credulity, vulgarity, and lack of discrimination (then, as now, associated with mass-produced goods and processed foods) [4]. Yet there is one major difference between their snobbery and that of today, and it casts a revealing light on the state of the modern middle class.
In the past, the middle classes copied the upper class and repudiated the lower orders. They aspired to highbrow culture and an education featuring dead languages, classical music and literary greats. True, this culture was fully appreciated only by a minority, and there was never a shortage of philistines. Nevertheless, erudition — or a public-school education, at least — could be worn as a badge of honour, and this shared culture helped to cement a sense of common purpose. (It also helped to keep the lower orders in their place: autodidacts were often despised just as much, if not more, than the uneducated masses.) [5] Today, by contrast, the middle class has no serious cultural aspirations and no strong sense of identity.
Although the lower orders were kept at arm's length wherever possible, there was also a well-established tradition of intervention in their affairs. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, a section of the working class believed that it had both the power and motive to transform society, and began to organise accordingly. In response, politicians and missionaries of all sorts sought in their different ways to reconcile the more passive elements to the existing system. One-nation Tories tried to appeal to the patriotism, respectability and traditional values of the most conservative among them, and the archetypal 'working-class Tory' was born. The Fabians espoused their moralistic brand of watered-down socialism. The Christians tended to their inner-city flocks with scriptural blandishments, charity and soap.
-snip-
Collins talks to old people in Southwark who feel that their story — the working-class world of yesteryear — has been airbrushed out of history. One of them shows him a promotional brochure presenting Southwark to outsiders. It stresses the cosmopolitan nature of the borough, and talks of the immigrant groups that have lived in the area for centuries. It boasts that a third of the present population is from an ethnic minority and that more than a hundred languages are spoken in the area. 'They don't mention us English', says the pensioner. 'You wouldn't think we'd ever existed, would ya?'
It would be easy to point out that two-thirds of the population is not from an ethnic minority, and that it is unnecessary to draw any special attention to them. But the pensioner has a point. The authorities are uneasy about white working-class people, and sometimes give the impression that they would rather they didn't exist. The old working class doesn't fit the multicultural agenda — too many uncomfortable echoes of 'rights for whites'.
Even an issue as innocuous as recognising St George's day is a hot potato for most councils, who shun it not because of its irrelevance, but because they see the small band of campaigners for its celebration as the equivalents of fifth columnists for fascism. And it goes without saying that whenever fascism is invoked, there is an unspoken assumption that the white working class is involved. 'They were racist, xenophobic, thick, illiterate, parochial', says Collins, summing up the prevailing view. 'They survived on distant memories of winning one World Cup and two world wars… . All they represent and hold dear was reportedly redundant in modern multicultural Britain.'
Collins is on to something here. Multiculturalism, for all its talk of respect and tolerance, is nevertheless a divisive philosophy, which alienates significant numbers of white people. Yet Collins doesn't take on the arguments. Instead, by default, he adopts a position of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'. His main objection to multiculturalism seems to be that it is a middle-class folly that excludes whites, and his implied solution is to rectify this oversight by celebrating their culture.
-snip-
Ah dunno --- I've walked about London quite a bit and never experienced anything like what you guys have described.
The sad thing about the UK is the way they've almost lost their own kultur and ape the worst of American culture -- with skateboarding, graffiti, McDonalds -- why, every main street in every town I've been to over here looks the same -- a Debenhams, an M&S, a McDonalds, a Burger King etc. Lewes though is still pretty traditional and so is Stratford on Avon.
The sad thing about the UK is the way they've almost lost their own kultur and ape the worst of American culture -- with skateboarding, graffiti, McDonalds -- why, nearly every main street in every town I've been to over here looks the same -- a Debenhams, an M&S, a McDonalds, a Burger King etc. Lewes though is still pretty traditional and so is Stratford on Avon.
See here for more details. The elephant is a symbol of a medieval guild and the site of the pub has a connection with a guild member.
Of course, I was there a long time ago, in the early 80s when the pound was down against the dollar and IIRC the Brixton riots had just happened (still in the papers - huge front page photo of buildings burning with the headline "RED SKY AT NIGHT - BRIXTON'S ALIGHT"). Checking Google, looks like it must have been 1981.
I think the general economy and the civil unrest must have contributed to more violence than is usual now.
I couldn't agree more. If you get a chance, look out for a book called 'Crap Towns', it has pretty much the same philosophy.
Unfortunately, you have to look very hard for individuality these days. There are still some gorgeous places in Cornwall, Cumbria and outer Yorkshire, but the larger they get, the more uniform they become. Bit of a shame really.
Thanks! The Brits have such a great sense of the absurd I was never quite sure how it got it's name.
America has its hillbillies, rednecks, PWT, swamp Yankees, cedar choppers, goat ropers, etc., as much as the English have the equivalent. Keep in mind that it is all right to post these slurs. Were I to post similar denigrative terms for, say, African-Americans, I would be considered a pariah. Obviously, a double standard exists.
All that said, America's working class whites are more strongly motivated by religion and patriotism than are their English counterparts. The blue collar and rural white has been the backbone of the U.S. armed forces, unless there is a World War II-type draft in place. At least in the South, you will find a church, usually Baptist or pentecostal, on every street corner in white working class neighborhoods. Additionally, greater economic freedom permits increased ability for Americans to improve themselves than it does for their English counterparts. As a result, America is more fortunate than the mother country.
What we now have is a new version of the deserving and undeserving poor - the noble new British working class, who are ethnic, and the thoroughly swinish old working class, who are white. And I honestly can't think of anything worse for race relations in this country than for its indigenous proletariat to be lectured on how lacking they are in comparison to the country's immigrant population, and how grateful they should be to have them here.
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