White Working Class

"And as I was standing by the edge
I could see the faces of those led pissing their selves laughing
(and the flames grew)
Their mad eyes bulged their flushed faces said
The weak get crushed as the strong grow stronger"
- Funeral Pyre - Paul Weller

David, the wind's blown,
The wind's blown
All of my dreams away.
And I still say,
"Where is our boy?
Ah, we've lost our boy".
But I should know
Why you've gone,
Because again and again you've explained
You're going to the National...
Ah, to the National...
There's a country,
You don't live there,
But one day you would like to.
And if you show them what you're made of,
Ah, then you might do.
But David, we wonder,
We wonder if the thunder
Is ever really gonna begin,
- The National Front Disco - Steven Patrick Morrissey

The working class can kiss my arse,
I've got the foremans' job at last.
I'm out of work and on the dole,
You can stuff the red flag up your hole.
The working class can kiss my arse,
I've got the foremans' job at last.

- The Red Flag - Traditional arr.Ron and the Rude Boys

There's something wonderfully ironic about the 5Live message board discussing the fact that the English white working class feel under represented in society. The mainly white male middle class chin strokers, apologies to PPG and David among others, discussing something they've been a part of the death of and seeking to blame everybody but themselves. The discussion it could be said reached its ironic apogee when the lyrics of John Lennon's Working Class Hero were quoted. Lennon, the only member of The Beatles from a middle class background, wrote the song about social and economic alienation as a romantic vision even then, back in 1969, proving as most Beatles fans already knew that he was the most cynical fuck ever to have a number one and possibly the most callous and bitterly twisted wanker ever to be given an MBE - he was of course a hero to me, so what does that say about me?

The English White Working Class are of course a twentieth century phenomenon. In fact I would go so far as to pin point exactly their beginning and their end. 1879-1979, that's the lifespan of the EWWC, from nine years after the 1870 Education Act to the election of Mrs Thatcher. Two points exactly one hundred years apart. Now I know it's easy for a leftie like me to blame everything that's happened in the world since 1979 on Mrs Thatch. but her economic policies destroyed the safety net that existed for the majority of the working classes - nationalised industries. The great thing about the 1870 Education Act was that it finally created a class structure where previously there had only been this great homogeneous mass where those who were poor tugged their forelocks, said "Gawd bless you guvnor," and paid mill owner permission to go to work. The EWCC were those who were left floundering on the bottom by the Education Act weren't they, the ones who couldn't read or write, the ones too stupid to work in 'proper' jobs. No, of course they weren't, the EWCC formed the backbone of the country, they built things, they fought and died in wars, the came home after the 1939-45 war and found that the Labour government had decided to kill off the 1948 Dock Strike by sending in the troops.

Of course the BBC get part of the blame. i.moore, a Tory boy (or woman) who is such a dyed in the wool Conservative he must have his house wallpapered with the Daily Telegraph and pictures of Gordon Brown on his toilet paper laid the blame fairly and squarely at the door of the 'metrosexual corporation.' Yeah of course it's there fault, the BBC, you know that organisation who for most people born before 1970 was so resoundingly middle class that if you wanted to display any working class credentials you didn't admit to actually liking Blue Peter. It's people like i.moore who are actually hastening the end of society as we know it, spending every second of their online lives blaming the Government for things which are really the failure of a weak and ineffectual opposition. People who if they were football supporters would be phoning 6-0-6 to complain it was all the refs fault as their team conceded six away from home.



The BBC get blamed for everything on the 5Live boards, it's amazing really that people want to spend so much time banging their heads against the wall only to discover once they've stopped that it still hurts. Span made the valid point in response to a PPG post that people feel vindicated about complaining because of the way the BBC is funded, that's true and there's nothing wrong with that - however the BBC gets blamed because there's a lack of political inertia and will from anybody else. Look how small the readership of the Guardian and Independent are compared to the Times, Mail or Express, or even the dead readers of the Telegraph. Look how small the audience is for the the Today programme. It's not the Engish White Working Class who are dying, it's the English White Male Middle Class - dying because of the lack of balls. Dying because it's easier to write rubbish on a message board than it is to take to the streets, which of course they would never do unless it was to protest about the BBC or anti-hunting bills. I suppose much as I write this blog, writing rubbish on the message boards is the 21st century equivalent of taking to the streets, its the equivalent of clearing your throat, of using a spittoon - you feel better for having done it, knowing that those who agree with you will sagely nod in agreement and post a smiley or a thumbs up and those that don't will be sticking pins into a piece of paper with your name on it. The rise of the message board is in some respects the death of democracy, the death of the working class - you don't have to interact anymore you can moan and moan and moan and then go down the pub. Surely if you are working class by economic definition you can't be in a job where access to the internet is part of your daily ritual, therefore dozens of middle class Paxman's debating the decline of the working class is a bit like ornithologists discussing how to save the Dodo they day after it became extinct.

That's the real problem. The Working class are under represented, whatever that means, because they have relied for too long on the State to support them rather than to do what my parents, grandparents and great grandparents did, so I didn't have to (to some degree) and that is better themselves. Danny Baker once said that he was proud of his working class roots, his Dad was a docker in Surrey Docks, but that he didn't want to be working class he wanted social mobility. Don't we all and haven't we enjoyed that. There's some romantic notion that scraping by, 'making a living' are the acme of ambition - they aren't. The welfare state in this country has been such a roaring success that there are areas of Glasgow where two generations of some families have never worked, failed by the education system in some respects but supported by the social security system.

I'm proud of my working class background, not the poverty, not the working 17 hours a day in the London Docks, not the going to school in hand me downs. No, the part of my working class background that I'm most proud of is the fact that it's gone, done and dusted. The Great grandparents quoted by Charles Booth as being among the poorest four families in London, the family who had to be rehoused three times in ten years because they lived in a slum that was demolished, the great great grandfather who spent a year in the workhouse, the great grandfather who rented out three rooms of the five room family house so he could send my Grandfather to extra tuition which in turn led to Grammar School, my great grandfather who moved from Suffolk to the East End of London in 1890's so he didn't have to rely on charity from the parish and ended up owning two businesses. I can't forget those people, my love of West Ham, of pop music, of bread and butter pudding, of gardening, of saveloy and chips all come from them.

When you think of the working class today you don't think of the docker, the miner, the train driver - you think of a chav, of somebody who drinks white cider, watches Coronation Street and has a takeaway three times a week because they weren't taught how to cook at school. As the country moves further and further away from its 19th century industrial heritage the working class will become more disenfranchised, more under represented because it will become less visible, less economically viable and to be honest less needed. In an ideal world it is something we should be celebrating, a hundred and fifty years of progress, the great forward thrust of white hot technology would have made us all our own bosses. A world where service industries and five year plans are the norm, where capitalism in its purest form has won.

The working class are under represented not because of the Labour Party, Mrs Thatcher, the BBC, the Unions but because of all of those, because of us with our 24/7 Tescos, our disposable lifestyles, our desire to better ourselves. Somewhere along the line we have lost our sense of compassion, of community, the sense that collectivisation can work, that everybody in society has something to contribute, that every opinion is valid.

As Liverpool's greatest hypocrite and lyricist once wrote:

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Oh by the way: the photograph at the top of the page is of a place called Newton Rents in Stepney. The photograph was taken in 1922 and when it was published there was such public outcry that people could still be living in such conditions that the area was demolished within a year. My paternal Grandmothers family lived in Newton Rents.