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| Enough of the patronising myths about the ‘white working-class’ | Enough of the patronising myths about the ‘white working-class’ |
| (11 days later) | |
| Al Barrett, parish priest for Hodge Hill in Birmingham describes the estate where he lives as being exactly the kind of place that politicians have in mind when they talk about the “genuine concerns” of the white working-class people. It’s an economically deprived area – Birmingham city council’s figures say that 43% of the children in the constituency are living in poverty. It has also undergone rapid and recent demographic change, with a shift from being a mostly white-British area to one with a high immigrant population over a period of only seven or eight years. | Al Barrett, parish priest for Hodge Hill in Birmingham describes the estate where he lives as being exactly the kind of place that politicians have in mind when they talk about the “genuine concerns” of the white working-class people. It’s an economically deprived area – Birmingham city council’s figures say that 43% of the children in the constituency are living in poverty. It has also undergone rapid and recent demographic change, with a shift from being a mostly white-British area to one with a high immigrant population over a period of only seven or eight years. |
| The people there aren’t the “hostile” tribes in Hope Not Hate’s survey of English attitudes to race. They are the economically insecure and the “culturally concerned”. The stories they tell to explain their large-scale unemployment are of factory closures, not of the new arrivals “taking our jobs”. | The people there aren’t the “hostile” tribes in Hope Not Hate’s survey of English attitudes to race. They are the economically insecure and the “culturally concerned”. The stories they tell to explain their large-scale unemployment are of factory closures, not of the new arrivals “taking our jobs”. |
| Barrett does tell another story of the estate, though. Deprivation and austerity has meant a loss of “community infrastructure” – libraries, pubs, cafes, and other places where people can simply physically inhabit the same space as their neighbours. This leads to what he calls a thinning of “the fabric of community” with people living “parallel lives” that don’t intersect. | Barrett does tell another story of the estate, though. Deprivation and austerity has meant a loss of “community infrastructure” – libraries, pubs, cafes, and other places where people can simply physically inhabit the same space as their neighbours. This leads to what he calls a thinning of “the fabric of community” with people living “parallel lives” that don’t intersect. |
| He describes his work as being a “community builder”, emphasising the importance of not “doing things to people”, but rather utilising the resources at his disposal to recreate those spaces where neighbours can come together. Creating space has meant people who otherwise wouldn’t interact at all have been able to connect, and has humanised minority groups, such as Afghan refugees, whom the white British residents might otherwise have previously understood only through the media. By taking the time to actually get to know the people in his parish, he’s been able to see what they really need. | He describes his work as being a “community builder”, emphasising the importance of not “doing things to people”, but rather utilising the resources at his disposal to recreate those spaces where neighbours can come together. Creating space has meant people who otherwise wouldn’t interact at all have been able to connect, and has humanised minority groups, such as Afghan refugees, whom the white British residents might otherwise have previously understood only through the media. By taking the time to actually get to know the people in his parish, he’s been able to see what they really need. |
| Barrett’s experiences contrast with the story told by the booming “prole whisperer” industry: the serious grownups who make good money telling Londoners that they don’t understand the abstracted wastelands of the north. In their telling, liberal commitment to “Islington values” such as tolerance and equality is a slap in the face to the struggling underclass who don’t have time for such luxuries as feminism or human rights. | Barrett’s experiences contrast with the story told by the booming “prole whisperer” industry: the serious grownups who make good money telling Londoners that they don’t understand the abstracted wastelands of the north. In their telling, liberal commitment to “Islington values” such as tolerance and equality is a slap in the face to the struggling underclass who don’t have time for such luxuries as feminism or human rights. |
| These contrasts make for a fine and simple narrative, but there’s something missing. The stereotypical “working-class” person in these stories is white, male, either working in or having lost a job in a traditionally masculine position like a steel works. Our idealised working-class stereotype glosses over someone like Stephanie Velinor, Britain’s first McDonald’s striker. It has no room for, and thus ignores, women like Alba Pasmino, the cleaner whose sacking galvanised the successful strike action at London School of Economics earlier this year. It is hard to position cleaners and fast food workers as being economically anything other than “the working class”, but somehow they don’t fit our narrative as neatly as an old white man shouting about ‘benefit cheats’. | These contrasts make for a fine and simple narrative, but there’s something missing. The stereotypical “working-class” person in these stories is white, male, either working in or having lost a job in a traditionally masculine position like a steel works. Our idealised working-class stereotype glosses over someone like Stephanie Velinor, Britain’s first McDonald’s striker. It has no room for, and thus ignores, women like Alba Pasmino, the cleaner whose sacking galvanised the successful strike action at London School of Economics earlier this year. It is hard to position cleaners and fast food workers as being economically anything other than “the working class”, but somehow they don’t fit our narrative as neatly as an old white man shouting about ‘benefit cheats’. |
| Those who talk about the white working class in the media are very sympathetic to material and economic concerns, of course – but only if doing so means talking about immigration. This laser focus sharply falls off in the absence of foreigners to blame. The sensible grownups rend their clothes over the impact of migration on wages, but apparently can’t see the contradiction in then turning around and telling fast-food workers that a living wage is an absurd demand. | Those who talk about the white working class in the media are very sympathetic to material and economic concerns, of course – but only if doing so means talking about immigration. This laser focus sharply falls off in the absence of foreigners to blame. The sensible grownups rend their clothes over the impact of migration on wages, but apparently can’t see the contradiction in then turning around and telling fast-food workers that a living wage is an absurd demand. |
| Part of the issue is that, for all our obsession with it, we lack a well-developed vocabulary of class. We like to keep things vague and homogenous, and a more accurate understanding is necessarily more complex. It needs to include within it Jayaben Desai, who led the Grunwick strike in 1976, as well as the migrant women who fought against LSE this year. It needs to include the LGBT people who make up a disproportionate amount of the low-waged and precariously employed, and the younger working class people who thought they could escape the poverty of their upbringing by getting a university education, only to find themselves back on their old estates as part of the precariat, bouncing between zero-hours contracts with only unpayable debt to show for their efforts. | Part of the issue is that, for all our obsession with it, we lack a well-developed vocabulary of class. We like to keep things vague and homogenous, and a more accurate understanding is necessarily more complex. It needs to include within it Jayaben Desai, who led the Grunwick strike in 1976, as well as the migrant women who fought against LSE this year. It needs to include the LGBT people who make up a disproportionate amount of the low-waged and precariously employed, and the younger working class people who thought they could escape the poverty of their upbringing by getting a university education, only to find themselves back on their old estates as part of the precariat, bouncing between zero-hours contracts with only unpayable debt to show for their efforts. |
| Even the abstracted white working class of popular imagination is complex, stratified along intricate lines of power and status, the splits between “common” and respectable manifesting in your nan’s sudden discovery of her home counties accent when the doctor comes round. | Even the abstracted white working class of popular imagination is complex, stratified along intricate lines of power and status, the splits between “common” and respectable manifesting in your nan’s sudden discovery of her home counties accent when the doctor comes round. |
| Gillian Evans at Manchester University argues that the economic and social conditions of working class community formation in the period around the second world war still has resonance today. Far from being a golden age, as it is often presented by professional nostalgists, workers in this period faced “appalling poverty and insecurity”, which could only really be mitigated via “social wealth” – the creation of tight networks of mutual dependency, which also acted as gatekeepers for jobs and housing. | Gillian Evans at Manchester University argues that the economic and social conditions of working class community formation in the period around the second world war still has resonance today. Far from being a golden age, as it is often presented by professional nostalgists, workers in this period faced “appalling poverty and insecurity”, which could only really be mitigated via “social wealth” – the creation of tight networks of mutual dependency, which also acted as gatekeepers for jobs and housing. |
| Evans describes the result as “place-ism”, a fierce protection of territory that led to suspicion of “outsiders of all kinds”, be they immigrants from the commonwealth, bureaucrats telling them what to do, or even other working-class people from different areas. | Evans describes the result as “place-ism”, a fierce protection of territory that led to suspicion of “outsiders of all kinds”, be they immigrants from the commonwealth, bureaucrats telling them what to do, or even other working-class people from different areas. |
| As industry shut down, and these areas transformed into “post-industrial communities”, the social wealth of these old networks has been all-but abolished in many places. Jobs are now increasingly in the service sector, deeply insecure, un-unionised and low-waged. This loss of social capital and community infrastructure has produced a sense of alienation ripe for exploitation by the far right. | As industry shut down, and these areas transformed into “post-industrial communities”, the social wealth of these old networks has been all-but abolished in many places. Jobs are now increasingly in the service sector, deeply insecure, un-unionised and low-waged. This loss of social capital and community infrastructure has produced a sense of alienation ripe for exploitation by the far right. |
| Nationalist sentiment has been encouraged by middle- and upper-class politicians, in part because they appeal to the casually white supremacist chauvinism of elite society, and in part because it stops people blaming them for things that are the fault of politicians – not immigrants. | Nationalist sentiment has been encouraged by middle- and upper-class politicians, in part because they appeal to the casually white supremacist chauvinism of elite society, and in part because it stops people blaming them for things that are the fault of politicians – not immigrants. |
| The faux populism of the prole whisperers falls apart under scrutiny. It’s nothing more than elite populists projecting their own bigotries downwards. Xenophobia and racism are real, but not congenital. They can be overcome by treating working-class communities as places of worth and value, investing in them over the long term rather than through a constant churn of here-today-gone-tomorrow interventions. | The faux populism of the prole whisperers falls apart under scrutiny. It’s nothing more than elite populists projecting their own bigotries downwards. Xenophobia and racism are real, but not congenital. They can be overcome by treating working-class communities as places of worth and value, investing in them over the long term rather than through a constant churn of here-today-gone-tomorrow interventions. |
| The complex reality of the working class is that it’s white and brown, Muslim and Christian, builds cars and works at McDonald’s. Only by having a broad, nuanced understanding of this, and rejecting simplistic just-so stories, can we find solutions that will improve material conditions for everyone. | The complex reality of the working class is that it’s white and brown, Muslim and Christian, builds cars and works at McDonald’s. Only by having a broad, nuanced understanding of this, and rejecting simplistic just-so stories, can we find solutions that will improve material conditions for everyone. |
| • Phil McDuff is a freelance journalist who writes on economics and social policy | • Phil McDuff is a freelance journalist who writes on economics and social policy |
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