So by that measure only Iraqis should have been allowed to protest against the Iraq War back on 2003? You can only have an opinion about injustice if you’re the direct victim of it? Nobody is allowed to stand up for the oppressed – they have to do it themselves?

Yeah, right.

Matt, I think you’ve only read the first half of this. It’s a confused post, but the writer is clearly saying we should ignore class differences when someone’s got a good point. I think…

Ah, fair play – I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic – I guess it’s all in the last couple of lines 🙂

Not to mention the fact that hardly any of the self-appointed spokesmen for the working class (especially those who use the phrase “white working class”) actually are working-class themselves. Which fucking estate did Nick Griffin grow up on?

As someone who actually is working-class, I see red whenever right-whingers claim to represent me (because obviously I’m incapable of speaking for myself) in such patronising terms.

[2] I think what FR’s trying to say is that his heart is a workerist but his head isn’t. Do we do group therapy on here?

TBH I think class issues are just another way for the state to keep people divided. Old style class divisions are pretty blurry these days – are you working class if you work in a call centre? Middle class if you’re an IT consultant (apparently they’re not professionals, for the purposes of countersigning passports, and if they work for a company they’re not small business owners, which used to be one of the big markers of middle class membership). There aren’t many miners or car-workers left these days, so who’s working class & who’s middle class?
The real issue isn’t so much working vs middle class so much as capitalist oligarchs vs the rest of us. The effect of the Bush & Blair years has been to reduce the middle class, and their small businesses, to practically nothing, and to drive down the working class, break their unions & create an underclass from the remains. Look at your High Street – where are the family-run businesses? In your cafes, who supplies the soft drinks? See if there’s an alternative to Coca-Cola Corporation’s products – that’s a fair indicator of the lack of diversity.

absolutely no ethnic foodstuffs more adventurous than a Chicken Jalfrezi accepted…

Yeah, its funny that when a bunch of white working class manual labourers protest and shut down parts of our industry, it’s all okay, but when Asian Muslims, however unrepresentative of their community they may be, protest against the parading of murderous soldiers it’s not okay.

Funny that.

For an example of what FR is parodying see –

http://sadiestavern.blogspot.com/2009/04/trustafarians-are-revolting.html

But they are entertaining and you can be sure will have made the rightwards switch – see thread below – before too long!

Lol, it’s a sarcastic post Matt.

Yeah, I get it, Sunny – took me a minute to but I get there in the end 🙂

I agree with the general thrust of the article, and it’s amusing and all that, but I think #6 is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Class matters. Privilege matters. Inequality matters. And we have to recognise that class cleavages, hierarchies etc run through protest movements, the labour movement, etc too. Middle class people aren’t going to have the same instinctual understanding of issues affecting many working class people, and shouldn’t hog leadership roles, elected positions etc. Middle class people are entitled to have an opinion, entitled to demonstrate etc but should play a supportive role in anti-capitalist struggles rather than act as some kind of vanguard (just as men should play a supportive role in feminist movements & white British people should play a supportive role on migration campaigns).

Cheers Andrew, that’s spot on the kind of guff I’m talking about – from the tone of the piece, I take it that Sadie had to take early retirement because of the blacklung, or maybe vibration whitefinger.

Inverted snobbery isn’t much more appealing than the ordinary kind, is it?

Disagree with that; I’d rather inverted snobbery than the ordinary kind by a million miles, much as I disagree with Sadie’s article.

Neither funny nor clever. The sneering contempt (verging on outright hatred) for ordinary people that is so depressingly typical of liberalism these days* shines through, as it often does here. And is reflected, in the usual way, in the oh-so-charming comments. I suppose you’re one of the people that thinks that if someone happens to have light skin and a manual job, that person must be both stupid and a fascist.

The idea that public discourse is dominated by the working class is both laughable and deluded. Have a look at the way the media (note, by the way, their uniformly posh accents. You do not hear working class accents reading the news on telly or commenting on it) is currently covering that ghastly business in Edlington. That place happens to be in the same country that they live in and it’s being treated as though it’s some strange “savage” place half a world away; it’s like newspaper coverage of the slums in the 19th century.

Of course, it’s fairly obvious what this piece has been written in response to, but I think you miss the point of that sort of criticism. There are people who find something distasteful in rich kids smashing places up in order for ordinary working class people to have to clean up at a later date. No banker’s life was made more miserable by smashing RBS’s windows, but it will have, ultimately, added an extra level of unpleasantness to the day of the poor people (and that’s probably true in both senses of the term) who had to tidy away the broken glass. This, I must add, is certainly not a right wing position.

*Hyperbole alert!

I suppose you’re one of the people that thinks that if someone happens to have light skin and a manual job, that person must be both stupid and a fascist.

Are you one of the people who thinks that they have amazing telepathic powers? If so, I have to tell you that they’re malfunctioning. Do people who think all white manual labourers are stupid nazis actually exist, by the way? Outside of your own head, I mean.

The idea that public discourse is dominated by the working class is both laughable and deluded.

Indeed – anyone arguing that would be a fool, so it’s just as well that you’ve just pulled that argument out of your hoop.

Sneering contempt… Outright hatred… like newspaper coverage of the slums in the 19th century…

Boy, this knock-off Yankee culture war rhetoric practically writes itself, doesn’t it?

This, I must add, is certainly not a right wing position.

You’re correct – it is, in fact, a right wing pseudo-populist position, and as such has exactly bugger all to do with any actually existing working class people, and everything to do with throwing shite at “Liberals” for political advantage.

The point of the post is The merit of an argument isn’t contingent on the social background of the speaker. Is there something fundamentally elitist about this that I’m missing?

Flying Rodent @0 and 16:

According to many, yes, there is something fundamentally elitist about that. Victimhood has become the most important arbiter of whether or not a given person is permitted to comment. There must be a specific thing of which you personally have been a victim (this is ime mostly to do with the US media’s need for ‘human interest’ before they will run a political story).

Sara Payne gets to be a major media figure because she lost a daughter. Many people think the murder of children is dreadful: it is a viewpoint that anyone with some empathy can partake of, but if they disagree with Mrs. Payne’s chosen remedies and her personal prejudices, they are automatically discounted as opinions because “they are not the victim here”.

Ditto middle-class kids (who have debts out the ass if they made it into uni and, in this climate, no better job prospects than their less educated fellows) who may well be right about something, but get ignored because they’re privileged in the education stakes by having parents who also went to Uni.

The middle classes will usually be present in any serious protest (Greenham Common, anyone? Aldermaston? Poll Tax?) because they can afford it. The middle classes produce people young enough to take serious physical risks, educated enough to be able to communicate well, politically aware enough to be able to make informed judgements on issues and wealthy enough to be able to give up a few weeks of earnings while they recuperate from a head-wound [1]. I wasn’t at the demo because it was my birthday but I wouldn’t have made it anyway because I also worked a full day. I can’t survive if I get my wrist broken by a cop at a demo; I wouldn’t be able to do my (heavily manual) job, and statutory sick pay wouldn’t even cover my rent, let alone living money.

It’s not a sin to be educated and young and angry. I’m glad there are people who care enough to put their blood on the line for my children’s future.

[1] Bizarrely the French have it better organised than us. Young people (by which I mean 14-25) are expected to be politically active and informed, to go on strike in support of political measures (as in, on strike from school), demonstrate in town squares and (if necessary) riot in Paris. Once you get a real job, you’re expected to follow the political debates and vote when the opportunity arises.Because of the student political culture, a much higher percentage of French adults are properly engaged in politics (rather than merely having some opinions they can pass off as politics).

Could everyone read the last 5 paragraphs again, please, before posting a comment?

Tim,

That holds true if you see the G20 protests (etc) as purely anti-Capitalist. What’s your agenda? Communist? Anarchist? There were a lot of people there protesting against a raft of other issues, many of which affect business owners & the reasonably well off as much as the working class & working/unemployed poor. F’rinstance, none of us particularly agree with the War on Terror, the suppression of civil liberties, globalisation & the possible death of all life on the planet.
Where globalisation is concerned, that directly affects the middle class most of all since it means their businesses are having to compete directly with the likes of Walmart/Asda, Coca-Cola Corporation & their ilk, & when the multinationals come to town the local businesses die.
I think we all have a right to protest about being denied our civil liberties & about climate change – we all suffer equally there too. And where it concerns the War on Terror, we all have a moral obligation to protest on behalf of those oppressed by the state.
I may not want a revolution, but there’s a LOT I’d like to see change in my lifetime.

“Are you one of the people who thinks that they have amazing telepathic powers?”

Of course not, me duck. Of course not. Just an ability to make basic observations and a certain amount of skill when it comes to hyperbole. Some of the comments here (no. 7 is a good example) provide ample proof that such attitudes exist and are disturbingly common in some sections of society. See; you don’t even have to look outside!

“Indeed – anyone arguing that would be a fool, so it’s just as well that you’ve just pulled that argument out of your hoop.”

Curious. Did you not write the following…

“See, I’ve no clue when this idea that only the nation’s car mechanics and bus drivers hold valid opinions began”

Curious indeed.

“Boy, this knock-off Yankee culture war rhetoric practically writes itself, doesn’t it?”

You can’t be as familiar with American culture war rhetoric as you think, if you think that “like newspaper coverage of the slums in the 19th century” is an example of it.

Try again.

“it is, in fact, a right wing pseudo-populist position”

I don’t see how concern for working class people and irritation at said people having to clean up a mess needlessly produced by middle class people is a right-wing position.

“and as such has exactly bugger all to do with any actually existing working class people”

Apart from, you know, the working class people who will have to clean up the broken glass and Lord knows what else.

“The merit of an argument isn’t contingent on the social background of the speaker.”

There’s some truth to that, but you can’t seperate people from their baggage.

“Not to mention the fact that hardly any of the self-appointed spokesmen for the working class (especially those who use the phrase “white working class”) actually are working-class themselves. Which fucking estate did Nick Griffin grow up on?”

He dropped out of Cambridge didn’t he? And then followed the well worn path from socialism to national socialism. He’s still part of the Left family. History is full of well educated, middle-class politicians using socialism to motivate, but yet betray and eventually subjugate the lower classes.

The white working-class as a tool of the Left has long since been dropped. Instead, the Left in their alter-ego within the Arts and Media prefer to degenerate and humiliate them.
There are some good books on the subject. Michael Collins’s, The likes of Us, I recommend. It explains how the Left hijacked immigration and found new pets for their dogma.

I’m pleased that this subject has come up, as it shows just how sensitive the Left are to the fact that they are now almost exclusively middle-class and white. It embarrasses them. The patronising and sarcastic tone of this piece just proves what a bunch of tossers they are.

Watching the G20 protests, London has not seen such a gathering of white people since…errr…. the last anti-capitalist protest. When will the Left ‘diversity’ campaign start? Do they not see the irony of a police force more ethnic than them?

When the Left is identified as middle-class they normally try to argue there is no such thing as class anymore. Sure, social mobility has blurred the rigid class structure of yesteryear, but class is still significant in culture, identity and education. Any denial is deluisional.

Asquith. I agree partly. However, it is also the left that patronises. I think you need to transcend class to full appreciate the significance. You don’t need to live on a council estate to be working-class. I consider myself working-class, despite owning a nice house and having a fairly decent job. My upbringing and my accent is part of my identity. Many aspirational working-class people are quite happy to deny (and probably have been encouraged to deny) their roots. When you’ve got several siblings stuck on a council estate, with problems directly related to immigration, crime, education, housing, unemployment – and you hear your socialist peers extolling the virtues of present policies, whilst they cream the fat and send their kids to selective schools, you’d fully appreciate why I despise most of the white, middle-class Left.

#19

I’m not claiming that none of the issues you identify affect the middle class, but you’re wrong to say that we all suffer equally from being denied civil liberties or from climate change – working class people suffer disproportionately and the poorest suffer the most.

I do think the primary objective of left movements should be advancing the interests of the working class (I disagree with chavscum about left views on immigration, gender etc being a distraction or a betrayal of the white working class), and it can’t be done with a mainly middle class leadership. Middle class people have to be aware of their privilege and look out for potential working class leaders rather than always trying to take positions of leadership (whether informal or formal) for themselves.

The trouble is that because left movements are proportionately more middle-class than the rest of society it gives views like chavscum’s some credence, even though he’s wrong on a number of levels (in that he’s exaggerating, in that he doesn’t seem to regard eg migrants as working class whatever job they do and background they have, in that he seems to think there was a golden age when the left wasn’t disproportionately middle class, and in that he seems reluctant to admit that other political movements tend to be even more middle class).

Hatred of the masses by the lefty elite is nothing new

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0571169260

Tim,

Fair enough, the poorest do suffer, but I’ve always been skeptical of distinctions between working & middle class. My grand-dad was an Irish immigrant who came here in ’29 – he started his own business, a shoemaker’s shop, which I’ve seen for myself & it’s a wooden hut. As a business owner, that makes him middle class, but his youngest daughter was born in the work-house, and they lived in a wooden hut where rats would go scurrying around the walls. When my dad was little, the next street over lost all its children to diptheria inside of a week. Hardly born with a silver spoon in his gob. My dad’s down on my birth cert as a Managing Director – he owned a number of businesses one after the other (not a bunch at once) in Birmingham, yet when the pub bombings occurred he was arrested because he was Irish. It’s only a matter of luck that the police found 6 other guys who fit the frame better & didn’t beat a false confession out of him.
Actually the police wanted him to move to a different area because the council of the time liked the idea of convenient racially organised ghettoes – an Irish area, an Indian area etc – he was in a Pakistani area (Balsall Heath) & got on well with the neighbours. This policy later backfired when Handsworth erupted in violence in the early & mid 80’s. So TBH I dunno whether my dad & his were properly in one class or t’other – they had the markers of both.

Matt (19): sorry, but how does globalization effect the middle-class ‘most of all’? Walmart, Asda and the like push working-class wages down. Their bosses wages are pushed up. That’s global capitalism in a nutshell.

And the issue for me isn’t about who holds opinions, it’s about SPEAKING ON OTHER PEOPLES’ BEHALF. It’s about stealing other peoples voices and thereby DROWNING THEM OUT.

There might well have been working class people at the G20 protest but reporters seek out their own kind; the broadsheets know their readers only respond to a particular form of articularcy; and the issues are only examined from one point of view.

That’s why we have eco-hate campaigns against those who fly to Prague for the cheep booze but not against those who visit the vinyards of France and Italy.

Shatterface (25) – simple if you think about it: by putting us out of business through unfair business practices & economies of scale that a family business simply cannot compete against. Once local businesses are dead & gone, then all those ill-effects you describe become possible, but if there’s alternative employment available (because of locally owned businesses) and alternative places to shop (see earlier), then the multinationals have to offer good value & comparable wages. Once they have no competition, it’s time to put the squeeze on the working class, so they suffer.

The bosses of places like Walmart, those whose wages get massively inflated, they’re not what I’d call middle class – the ones whose wages – sorry – salaries – go up when they take over are the VPs, the CFO, CEO & so on, far, far fewer than the branch managers & the like, and mostly based in the US. They’re the capitalist oligarchs that I spoke of, & their lackeys, who’re living off the rest of us & laughing at our infighting.

Matt @24:

As a business owner, that makes him middle class

Actually, I don’t believe that’s true. I think part of the issue that exists is that ‘middle class’ means, depending on who you ask, ‘people who own businesses’, ‘people who own their own home’, ‘people who went to university’, ‘people who live in the Home Counties’, ‘people who read the Daily Mail’, ‘people who got to finish school’, ‘people who ride bikes instead of driving cars’, and ‘people like me’ (or ‘people who I don’t like’, depending).

Someone stop me if I go wrong, but as I understand it ‘middle class’ (which is absolutely not identical with ‘bourgeois’) is defined in the modern era as a combination of being educated beyond the mandatory level for one’s country, as well as owning either business or property (or both). It is also considered an indicator if these things were true of your parents.

That means people in Britain who’ve completed A-levels and either own a business or own a house (or both) could be described as middle-class but someone who left school at 16 and bought a house probably wouldn’t be categorized that way.

My boss is a middle-class man; both his parents are university graduates, he graduated from university himself (and then did post-graduate work), he has owned both a house (outright) and then a business. One of the barmaids who works for me is not a middle-class person. She lives with her parents, she left school at 16 and she does not own any assets beyond a quite remarkable pirate movie collection.

50 years ago, very few would be in a grey area within these criteria. Almost anyone who owned land and business had been educated. Almost anyone educated owned, or had reasonable prospects to own, land and business. All well and good, but that’s not true any more. There’s a huge number of people in this country who’ve been through higher or further education (thus giving them middle-class expectations) but who have no realistic prospect of ever owning a house or a business. And so on, and so on.

‘The middle class’ might be better described as the educated poor; but that doesn’t work, because some (by no means all) of them have considerably more money than people who are really poor. The idea of upper and lower middle classes was invented to try and cope with this, but it doesn’t work either; almost no-one would self-describe as either.

My own family background is of a strong tradition of education dating back to my grandparents, and no money at all. I was in the last generation of student grants, and I got a full grant because my parents’ combined assessed income was less than 8kpa. I will still be judged ‘middle class’ by virtually anyone because I completed my A-levels and an undergraduate degree, but the poorest times of my childhood were when we were in England. I’ve held all of the following jobs: removal man, carpenter, gardener, silver-service waiter, chemical plant labourer, kitchen porter, barman, security guard, bouncer, fast food attendant, secretary, receptionist, retail counter operative… I don’t own land or business, so why do I keep getting accused of being middle class? Because I have an education.

The class war was not won by anyone. What happened is that the expansion of opportunity for upward mobility started to break the lateral sense of cohesion within our system. Again, 50 years ago, anyone rich and educated would have self-identified as being like all the other rich, educated people; anyone who wasn’t would have self-identified as being like all the other poor lads who had to work for a living. Didn’t matter if you were in Edinburgh or Gerrards Cross, Glasgow or Salford; the poor saw themselves as more like each other than they were like the rich.

Now, you have so many combinations; rich but not educated, poor but educated, business owner who rents their flat, house-owner who’s a wage slave at McDonalds. There is no longer any sense that the poor in the south are connected to the poor in the north. Many of the (from my point of view) filthy-rich would self-describe as lower- or middle-class because to them ‘upper class’ means ‘aristocrat, inherited money’ and they see themselves as ‘self-made’: the fact that they have a huge pile of cash and four houses is irrelevant, for them, compared with the fact that their dad didn’t go to Uni and worked in a factory.

@Alun ; “The merit of an argument isn’t contingent on the social background of the speaker.” There’s some truth to that, but you can’t seperate people from their baggage.

Of course you can separate people from their baggage. If I tell you the sky is blue, it’s an accurate statement regardless of whether I’m a bus driver or Baron Rodent of Balamory. Similarly, I don’t see why people can’t protest over any issue they like. Whether it’s the 9/11 Campaign Against Zionist Space Lizards marching against flouridation of the water supply or the Countryside Sheep-Worriers’ Alliance protesting the fox hunting ban, they can be right or wrong, but it doesn’t hinge on their class status.

Did you not write the following… “See, I’ve no clue when this idea that only the nation’s car mechanics and bus drivers hold valid opinions began”

I did indeed. What do you think I meant by that – “ZOMFG the plebs have seezed teh BBC and are making teh Gardian put Jade Goody on the front page :(“ or Lots of internet blowhards say this?

I also said that there’s a wide swathe of political issues you can’t rationally discuss because within minutes some joker will be along to condemn your revolting elitism in blisteringly self-righteous tones.

And sure enough, here I am watching a load of commenters mounting their high-horses over the elitist contempt of the left for the working classes.

I reckon only one of two proposals can explain this – either a) I’m Little Lord Fauntleroy, actively pissing in the working man’s ear or b) the internet is full of blowhards who think playing Prolier-Than-Thou is an ingenious rhetorical A-bomb.

You might think it’s option a), but you’re going to have to do better than pointing at one anonymous commenter to be convincing.

John

Well said!

Actually the business-owning thing would have made him middle class back then, I should have said, though not particularly elevated in finances or education. Neither my dad nor my granddad went to Uni or did A-levels but they both owned their houses – mainly it was that they distrusted the establishment so much that they felt they had to provide for themselves & not rely on employers or state for anything. 🙂

I’m middle class because I did a degree (which involved a fair bit of French history & politics, so I know what you’re on about with the French student thing) but I’m a wage-slave (or rather a debt-slave) with no savings or assets to speak of. I own my home, but I owe probably about the whole value of it right now.

Matt @29:

Thank you 🙂

I may be a cynic, but if I’m reading you correctly, surely a bank owns your house, not you? It’s ok, a bank (northern rock) owned mine, too, for all it was my name on the deeds. They took it away again after a clerical error on their part led to them taking no money from me for 10 months. I got it back (though I had to pay them a ridiculous legal fee on top of the back payments on the mortgage) but then had to sell it to get out of debt, which didn’t entirely work.

People who own a house on a mortgage do not own their own home. This is a modern fallacy propagated to try and get people to believe that home ownership has been distributed out into society. It hasn’t, really. A very small number of people, namely the directors and shareholders of banks, own most of the houses in this country. Mind you, I guess that technically ‘we’ (the people) own the house of anyone whose mortgage is with RBS, or at least 80% of their house.

When I own land outright, then I will say I own land. While I can be put out by someone else’s word I don’t own it. The same is true of business, btw, though people would rather we didn’t wake up and notice. My boss technically owns this pub but in practice, a bank owns the floor, the bar, the furniture and so on (because of the rennovation loan we had to take out to restore a burned-out building into a working pub). They will own those things for another 20 years or so. Only the floor and the bar may still be the same when we’ve bought them; the rest will be long gone.

Brilliant post. On…er… so many levels.

But, on a few levels, I also agree with Sadie. Funny that.

[30] When I worked in Housing Aid in the early 70s, one of my clients was a very laid back Afro-Caribbean guy. I asked him if he owned his home. “No.” Who was his landlord, then? “I rent it from the Building Society.” And indeed, with the original mutual Societies, you did just that – they held the deeds until you’d paid them off. This form of tenure, called “rental mortgage” was I think prohibited in the 1960s because it was being abused as a way round the Rent Acts.

#24 –

I wouldn’t ever claim that working class people are the only people who can be oppressed.

A majority of people in Britain still define as working class. They may be more of a grey area between working class and middle class than a hundred years ago, but it’s a description that is still pertinent to our society and always will be under capitalism.

In terms of there being “no longer any sense that the poor in the south are connected to the poor in the north”, I’m not sure there ever was. There were connections between, for example, Wales and Yorkshire based on mining. There was never a strong connection between working class communities in the North and South of England. Witness the lack of support for the miners strikes in the South of England as a prime example (fair enough that was only 25 years ago, but it was a time when there was arguably more class consciousness than today).

But, on a few levels, I also agree with Sadie. Funny that.

Presumably not the bit where she says “And as for the stories of police brutality – get a bloody life! ”

Or the bits where she cites comments from LC which seem to support her point but ignores the fact that the vast majority of what has been says here on the subject proves she is talking nonsense.

TBH what i think was far more pernicious – empowered as it was by dominant cultural tropes – were the constant sneering references to protestors being unemplyoed – as though these 2 million people are not a part of our democracy, with a right to go out onto the street and make their voices heard.

“Of course you can separate people from their baggage”

Can you? Or, perhaps more to the point, should you? After all, people’s views are always shaped to an extent by their baggage (which can, obviously, include attempts to reject their background). Mine certainly are. I’m not talking about obvious facts here (the-sky-is-blue and so on) but political views, attitudes towards other elements of society and so on. I realise that there’s a danger of this turning into a pathetic attempt (is there any other?) at Vulgar Marxism or a sort of Class Nationalism, but that’s not where I’m trying to go.Obviously, a valid point is a valid point. But I’d have to question whether an angry, almost directionless, outburst by the privileged children of the privileged is really a valid point. That’s not to say that it *can’t* be of course, but…

“What do you think I meant by that”

Well, actually I wasn’t at all sure. But there seemed enough resentment towards working class people to set alarm bells ringing.

“And sure enough, here I am watching a load of commenters mounting their high-horses over the elitist contempt of the left for the working classes.”

Mmmm… I don’t think that I attacked “the left” for holding the working class in contempt. Liberals, sure (some of them). Many good Socialists are certainly not liberals and plenty (most, frankly) liberals can hardly be considered lefties, except in a highly relative sense. But I make no apologies for getting on a proverbial high-horse about elitist contempt for ordinary people.

“I reckon only one of two proposals can explain this – either a) I’m Little Lord Fauntleroy, actively pissing in the working man’s ear or b) the internet is full of blowhards who think playing Prolier-Than-Thou is an ingenious rhetorical A-bomb.”

Neither of those is true, I think. Want to try again?

Perhaps one reason for workerism is the fact that as soon as working-class hero(ine) is elected to Parliament, they become middle class. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Militant Tendency Labour MPs of the 1980s recall that they only took a skilled manual worker’s wages (not so many expenses available under the Tories, either) and thereby embarrassed the rest of Old Labour, which took a collective if unconscious (or at least, unspoken) decision to ignore the fact that on this point if no other they were the only honourable men (they were all men, alas) in the House.

Another reason is the point, well made in previous posts, that economic class and cultural class have become detached. It was, and I guess still is, a longstanding Tory theme to detach property ownership from political power by creating a “petty bourgeoisie” who had enough wealth – ownership of a terraced or ex-Council house and a few grand in the bank – to fear political change but not enough to wield political influence. It was, and I guess still is, a longstanding Labour theme to provide working-class kids with the education to provide them with white-collar or even “middle-class” jobs.

And then there are people like my friend Ron whose class position I have no idea of whatsoever. He makes bespoke furniture and other craft items – a horny-handed son of toil perhaps, except that his hourly rate exceeds that of many middle-class freelancers because he’s very good at what he does. What, exactly, is the class position of a musician, come to that?

@ Alun: Can you? Or, perhaps more to the point, should you?

You can. A person’s social background can provide an insight into their motivations and preconceptions, but certainly shouldn’t automatically render their opinions irrelevant. Plus, just because an issue particularly fires up one social class rather than another, doesn’t mean we’re dealing with a non-issue. Shuggy (linked in the post) made the particularly good point last month that, while it’s mostly middle-class people who get upset about massive increases in police powers and databases, it’s inevitably working class people who will wind up with the foot of the state up their arses if the police misuse them.

I make no apologies for getting on a proverbial high-horse about elitist contempt for ordinary people.

Nor should you. I’m still having difficulty working out which generalised “Liberals” who hold ordinary people in contempt we’re talking about, though. So far we’ve got a) some anonymous commenter and b) “Liberals” rather than socialists.

Neither of those is true, I think. Want to try again?

Uh, I think the Prolier-Than-Thou gambit is probably the second most prolific rhetorical dodge used on political blogs, and often by politicians themselves. Since the ordinary-man-in-the-street constitutes the majority of the electorate, that’s not really surprising. What is surprising is the fact that so many people seem to believe that unsupported shouts of You lot just hate the people, you horrible bunch of nasty elitisses are a sure-fire argument winner.

They’re not – they’re on about the same level as No, YOU are the fascistest. Plus, as has been observed above, I tend to find that the people who are quickest to claim the mantle of the offended working class are usually least suitable to represent their interests – I’ve been ticked off on this score by a corporate lawyer in the past, for example.

Mike @32:

Aye. I’m not making a legal comment; I’m making a conceptual one. The idea that mortgaging, even under current legal protections, allows one to own one’s home prior to paying it all the way off is a piece of highly effective propaganda, and I’m arguing that we should be honest about that, even if the slow, nasty route of paying someone else money they never earnt is the only way to achieve security and land in this country. One does not own one’s house; one is in the process of buying it on Hire Purchase. If the landlord, i.e. the bank, makes a mistake they can take your house away. They can also do so if you make one, but the fact that they can punish you, legally, for their mistake makes it in any realistic assessment their house.

TimF @33:

Yes, but I’m talking about the Chartists. I’m talking about early activism in the Yorkshire mill towns and the Scotch Cattle and the Luddites (who were nationwide). Captain Swing and the machine-breakers.

Your reference to the miner’s strikes is apposite, though. 20th Century industrial activism between 1936 and 1968 worked well in part because much of Britain’s industry was government controlled. Everyone in: steel, coal, much of ship-building, road-building, house-construction and so on all worked for the same employer (HMG) and were therefore fighting the same boss (HMG) and the same boss’ rules and pay problems. That fostered a genuine sense of pan-Britainic working-class solidarity which was exploited by the revolutionary and commited communist elements of the political trades-unions (and the parliamentary Labour party). It was a solidarity against the bosses which also promoted solidarity against the ruling elites (in both parties) and the Establishment.

This starts to erode through the 70s as more and more industries are moved out of the planned economy. Then comes the miners failing to get agreement within their own industry in ’81. It was the perception (partially accurate, partially skilled Thatcherite propaganda) that the Yorkshire miners under Scargill were over-reaching themselves in a kind of slow-burning coup rather than actually campaigning about work (Look! The Lincolnshire miners don’t support the strike… etc.) that accelerated the erosion of solidarity. The Conservatives enhanced that breakdown by further privatisation and considerable ‘upward-mobility’ propaganda.

The re-definition of Britain into purely vertical lines of contact, with as little as possible lateral connection between people on any given rung of the ladder, is entirely a modern phenomenon and mostly happened during the 80s.

Reuben @35:

According to our plutocracy they aren’t. They’re a resource drain.

Alun @37:

Can you? Or, perhaps more to the point, should you? After all, people’s views are always shaped to an extent by their baggage

I understand what you’re trying to do here; it’s the process historians describe as ‘provenancing’. You examine any source within the context of its provenance, because bias can be detected by deduction. But that isn’t actually what you’re doing.

What you’re doing is systematic ad hominem. You’re using the youth, education and class of (some of, not all of) the protesters as an excuse to not even examine their points at all, because you have prejudices against that class and cohort. You feel that educated young people are intrinsically wrong: or at least, you write as if you felt that way. You seem to have missed that one thing young, educated people are really good at is figuring out what “Enlightened Self-Interest” means.

You also seem, like many others, not to have realised there were more than one protest on a single day. Climate Camp, for example, was making a different (though related) point to the Horsemen of the Apocrypha. [1] You refer to “an angry, almost directionless outburst by the privileged children ” as if that’s what actually happened, I’m not sure why, and then go on to discount the protests’ validity on those grounds alone, with no differential analysis.

Let’s look at the actual point the Climate Camp protesters were making. The world has been fucked by ignorance, arrogance and short-term thinking. The people who did it, and who are making current decisions, will all be dead by the time the bill comes due. We, the young, will have to live with what you do today: world leaders, please start thinking long-term.

Anything in that you can disagree with rationally?

Mike Killingworth @37:

that economic class and cultural class have become detached. It was, and I guess still is, a longstanding Tory theme to detach property ownership from political power by creating a “petty bourgeoisie” who had enough wealth – ownership of a terraced or ex-Council house and a few grand in the bank – to fear political change but not enough to wield political influence.

Worth quoting in detail. Excellent summary, thank you.

The note, of course, is that like the working class, their political influence comes entirely from banding together; but because of the enhanced likelihood of higher education and the relatively large slice of pie per person (compared to a manual worker) you don’t need as many of the middle class in one place to have an effect. That’s simple capitalist economics. You only need one plutarch; you need say a hundred thousand of the middle class: or perhaps a million working men and women. Mind you, even a million isn’t enough to get the government to listen these days. [2]

Regarding craftsmen and musicians: the social respect for craft skill disappeared with the Guilds, but you can still earn money at it. Less than you could, because most will not wait for craftsmanship these days. Musicians: if you’re talking popular music, the fact that they’re musicians is not perceived as impacting on someone’s class regardless of how much cash they make. Paul McCartney is still thought of as a working-class boy made good. With classical music, you have to have been so well taught, for so long, and to have been able to afford such ridiculously expensive instruments from relatively early in your life, that you’re practically guaranteed to be middle-class or above by extractions plus having been in full-time education for long enough to qualify on one’s own account.

Flying Rodent @38:

This is American politics, btw. That’s why you’re having trouble contextualising it. They, having been very proud from very early of having turned their aristocrats into robber barons, have a 200-year political tradition of precisely prolier-than-thou politics, but the real hey-day is in the modern era. Since the War, the media and government propaganda surrounding the concept of ‘the Average American’ (particularly from the Republicans) has been so thorough and overwhelming that over 80% of the country think ‘average American’ is a compliment. Add in the history of victimhood politics since the 80s and you can see how this got properly started. As President Bartlett [3] once said, “The only problem when they de-mystified the Presidency is they gave people the idea anyone could do the job. Surely there’s nothing wrong with the idea that a smart guy should run the country?”

Of course, he’s saying this because he was being accused of being an elitist academic by his political opponents.

[1] No, this is not a typo, it’s a joke. Sorry.

[2] Please note, I’m not saying I like it, or that the effect (that the middle-class have more power) is good. I’m just saying that’s the way it is. The educated are better at both campaigning and persuading. Those wealthy enough to take time off work after being beaten up by a cop are more likely to campaign before you need a bloody revolution, because they are cushioned from some of the risks.

[3] In the West Wing.

#39

I agree with part of what I think you’re saying that it is often a good idea for working class and middle class people to team up and campaign together – partly because they sometimes share interests, partly because culturally and in some small sections of the economy there are grey areas between what is considered working class and middle class (though I think many people in this thread have overplayed the extent of those grey areas).

However, your argument seems to be leaning towards the idea that middle class people should lead movements and make the important strategic decisions because they have more institutional power and are usually better educated, and I think that’s a recipe for left movements never getting beyond a certain size and limiting the overall scope for change.

Also, it’s my wish (it may not be yours, as your political philosophy seems to be more based on a view of what proper arrangements for political society are, than on a view about how power should be distributed) that the working class should take power, and if we allow middle class people to be the drivers of our movements, people are entitled to ask how the working class can run society if they’re not even running left movements.

Tim, I think it’s worth pointing out that the Labour movement in this country from say 1800 to at least the formation of the first Labour government if not also for a generation after that was led by educated men (and a few, a very few, women). They were, of course, self-educated and this was formalised through Mechanics Institutes etc. (Even when I was active in the Party in the 1970s and one of my most enjoyable tasks as a Branch (Ward) Secretary was inviting people to meetings to give talks and discussion. Frequently two dozen people would turn up – the large front rooms of the bourgeoisie were most welcome – from each according etc etc)

But they didn’t want to be self-educated. They saw that as necessity – they wanted their kids to go to good schools, colleges and, yes, universities. And municipal improvers of the Joe Chamberlain type were anxious to supply them, too.

Elsewhere William Morris and others sought to repair the problem that JQP mentioned in his long and thoughtful post at [39] – the decay of respect for craftsmanship. It is a persistent idea, muddleheadly held even by Gordon Brown when he talks about the value of work – comes of having a father who had to get his satisfaction from what he did, rather than from how much he was paid for doing it, I guess. And I suspect my own dad was happier in the bit of his career when he was a metallurgist rather than later when he was a manager, although the latter provided the goodies.

The problem with calling for “working-class” leadership to-day is that those leaders will either be people who have had a university education but chosen not to apply it to their career choice or those who are simply not suited to such an education. It’s unclear to me why the former should have any preference over those of their peers who go into white-collar work, while the latter view seems to imply that the country is full of “mute inglorious Bevans” whose political ambitions are being suppressed by a wicked system. I doubt it, somehow. Mind you, I’m not saying there aren’t any – FWIW I suspect they’re almost all female.

TimF @40:

partly because culturally and in some small sections of the economy there are grey areas between what is considered working class and middle class

Hmm. As I pointed out earlier, what is considered middle or working class, and the actual definitions of these things, are radically at odds. Most people use ‘middle-class’ as a term which means a smorgasboard of different accusations depending on the context from which they hurl it. It’s an insult, like ‘liberal’ in America. People who clearly fit the description will wriggle and writhe to avoid being tarred with the middle-class brush.

As I pointed out above, the grey areas are in reality, not in the definitions. The criteria defining the discourse about our class system were composed in an economic world for which the criteria chosen worked. Those criteria no longer work because reality has shifted under them. We’re not an industrial nation any more; we’re a post-industrial one and we need a completely new understanding of social division and cohesion to be evolved. No-one’s currently trying very hard because the language of the old world makes for such nice flame-wars.

However, your argument seems to be leaning towards the idea that middle class people should lead movements and make the important strategic decisions because they have more institutional power and are usually better educated

Yes, I can see how you’d read that in but I did try to put in as many caveats as I could to indicate this isn’t what I think, including a whole footnote. What I’m saying is that the middle-class having more institutional power is a result of them being better educated and richer, as well as a cause; self-sustaining cycle there.

I don’t think they should lead movements by some sort of divine mandate; I’m saying that if you look at the history of protest movements from the French Revolution [1] onwards they pretty much always have, and trying to explain that fact. The middle class were heavily involved in organising the fight for women’s suffrage, for a Labour movement, for nuclear disarmament, for the end of apartheid in the USA… I’m analysing, not proposing a political strategy.

The internet is beginning to break this. If nothing else, when engaging in public debate depended on getting a newspaper to publish you, the middle class had a huge advantage. Nowadays, people like myself, CouncilHouseTory and Chavscum are able to engage with a national debate because the price of entry into that endeavour has become so low. I’d be very unlikely to ever get published by a newspaper. I don’t think in their boxes.

This, in my opinion, is an entirely unmitigated Good Thing. I come from the grey areas; my parents background is middle class but I am poor, I’m educated but I do a manual job, I’m in debt and have no savings but I have at one point been a homeowner and a director of a company. I believe in broadening autonomy to the widest levels in society that we can. That starts, for me, with education and information and leads to financial and political empowerment.

@41: and if we allow middle class people to be the drivers of our movements, people are entitled to ask how the working class can run society if they’re not even running left movements.

You’re right, that’s not my goal. I don’t want any class to rule society. I want to distribute autonomy outwards towards the edge; to decentralise the world as it globalises.

I think this not for any ideological reason but because I’m an historian. Britain industrialised first. Britain’s industrial phase ended first. For the last 300 years the rest of the world have benefited hugely by learning from our mistakes; we’re the first to hit every wall, and will be for the forseeable.

We’re post-industrial. Our economy is still changing, but in any realistic analysis the apex of our industrial phase was before WWII. The traditional ‘working class’, which 60 years ago were between 60 and 80% of the country, now constitute less than 20%. Note the difference between ‘working class’ and ‘lower class’: working class means skilled and unskilled manual labour in primary and secondary industry. You know how little primary and secondary industry we actually have left in our GDP? White Van Man is not, by the technical definition, working class; delivering things is tertiary industry. A barman or McDonalds worker is not working class; service jobs are tertiary industry. As I said, a whole new discourse needs to be evolved.

This is a change as significant to society, economics and politics as the mass migration of 80% of Britain’s population from rural to urban living which happened between 1775 and 1875. It is my analysis that our state and economy cannot survive if its political future remains tied to an industrial worldview; i.e. working class rule. Back then, working class == most of your country, so giving rule to them would have been a good idea. Now that’s just not true.

I’m not an ideologue, I’m an analyst. Britain can’t afford to fuck this up. We will fall, and we will implode, if we don’t redefine our understanding of the world. We have in the last 20 years gone through a technological change in society which is as significant as the Industrial Revolution. Therefore you’re right; my goals are completely different from yours. I want to get organised for the future we’re actually going to have, which is as alien to the industrial viewpoint as the industrial world would have been to the Tudors.

your political philosophy seems to be more based on a view of what proper arrangements for political society are, than on a view about how power should be distributed

That’s not quite true. I have very strong views on how power should be distributed, and my primary view is ‘totally’. I believe power should be distributed through the fabric society in a manner which allows no-one, ever, to gain enough of it that they can influence a wider audience by any means other than persuasion. I want to see scarcity eradicated, so that its economics no longer allow capitalists to build up huge wealth and use it to tilt elections. I want to see politics stop being representational at all, so we can get rid of the bloody stupid party system. I want to see lots of things, but none of them come from the past. I want to see the future.

Most of the things I want, however, are much too far away for me to be able to make out the details. I don’t know how to get an educated electorate, but I’ve got some interim ideas. How we get from here to there; what smaller changes can we make now that will lead to a better future? Those are the places where you and I can come together. You want to see the working class rule society. I don’t, [2] but I’d like them to have exactly as much power per head as the middle- or upper classes, which I acknowledge they currently do not. I’m angry about that and want to see it change. Can we agree on that, as an interim measure?

[1] And, arguably, considerably earlier. The Reform movement in Britain under Henry VIII was led by the middle class against their aristocratic over-lords; the revolution in 1649 and even such working-class movements as the Diggers were led and shaped by middle-class scholars, priests and school teachers.

[2] Any watching right-wing trolls should take note; if this statement doesn’t rule out accusations of my being ‘a leftie’, what will?

Mike Killingworth @TheAnswer:

the latter view seems to imply that the country is full of “mute inglorious Bevans” whose political ambitions are being suppressed by a wicked system. I doubt it, somehow. Mind you, I’m not saying there aren’t any – FWIW I suspect they’re almost all female.

I tend to agree with you. One of the things I’m angriest with my species for is not figuring out that cutting 50% of your creativity pool off from the freedom and resources needed to create is bloody stupid until just recently.

#42

There are plenty of people from working-class backgrounds doing working-class jobs who have had some form of further education. They might not have gone to Oxbridge, but so what?

I reckon there are more of your “mute inglorious Bevans” than you imagine – many of whom will be female as you point out – or/and migrants. But the country doesn’t need to be full of them – even a handful can be incredible catalysts for change. One Bevan did a great deal of good.

Sorry, I’m a bit behind in this debate (how some of you manage to spend all day on here, I don’t know), but in response to the earlier points.

The reason why the white middle-class domination of Left politics is a major issue is because it is they who in recent times keep pushing the diversity agenda (to everyone but themselves) and, the struggle of the working class/poor to gain better conditions, right and representation was the main focus for Labour since its inception.

“he seems to think there was a golden age when the left wasn’t disproportionately middle class,”

The Left has always had major middle-class input and influence, but since the 60s the working-class have gradually been pushed out and now are just an isolated few, usually a rent-a-mouth stereotype for the Media’s amusement. Once the Left discovered race politics, the focus on the working-class was abandoned. In recent times, globalisation – not just corporate, but global travel and global media – has shifted their focus even further away to internationalism or universal socialism. As well as being more fashionable and exotic to champion the poor in South America, it’s a more pleasurable experience to pat exotic Bolivian Indians on the head than visit the local council estate, where the locals are ugly chavs and they hate your accent. That’s why the middle-class Left have not just abandoned the less well off in the UK, they actually promote policies that shaft them. Hence, the support for mass immigration to the UK (as long as they are immune from the downsides).

“The trouble is that because left movements are proportionately more middle-class than the rest of society it gives views like chavscum’s some credence, even though he’s wrong on a number of levels (in that he’s exaggerating, in that he doesn’t seem to regard eg migrants as working class whatever job they do and background they have”

You’ve made that bit up, as I’ve not said that. I don’t follow the Left’s reasoning where immigrants are automatically seen as victims, and are deserving of help and assistance denied to poor long term residents. Most migrants to the UK are from the higher echelons of their own societies, if not from the ambitious and upwardly mobile classes. Even those from the West Indies, a large portion of whom the Left’s multi-cultural, education and welfare policies have reduced to the poorest and most troubled within a generation or two.

Its true all political persuasions are middle-class dominated, even the Tories, despite Cameron’s stupid selection of too many Etonians. Yet, its the Tories who attract the aspirational working-class because what does the Left offer them, except for disdain and disgust?

“Now, you have so many combinations; rich but not educated, poor but educated, business owner who rents their flat, house-owner who’s a wage slave at McDonalds.”

Educated poor is usually a temporary position. These days, uneducated poor is a permanent position. Social mobility has declined after 12yrs of Labour. The underachievement and loss of social mobility for the white working-class is a disgrace and a burden of years of socialist policies and now race politics. There is a sneering jealousy and disdain of the uneducated wealthy from the educated middle-class, which I can detect in John the Publican.

“There was never a strong connection between working class communities in the North and South of England. Witness the lack of support for the miners strikes in the South of England as a prime example (fair enough that was only 25 years ago, but it was a time when there was arguably more class consciousness than today).”

Its forgotten that London and other cities suffered from massive industrial decline in the 60s and 70s; the docks had gone by the time Thatcher came along. Working-class Londoners had already started to adapt to this situation, characterised by the stereotype self-employed tradesman, so detested by the middle-class Left. The Tories tapped into their ambitions. The left, using their over representation in the Media and Arts sought to portray such people as vulgar and selfish. Blair & co took advantage of this with their cliché rhetoric and fucked you all over.

“A person’s social background can provide an insight into their motivations and preconceptions, but certainly shouldn’t automatically render their opinions irrelevant.”

Oddly enough, I don’t actually disagree here. I just don’t think you should remove people’s opinions from their motivations and the like; if you do that you can easily end up missing the point. As no one makes a political argument from an objective standpoint, no political argument should ever be looked at as purely an argument.

“while it’s mostly middle-class people who get upset about massive increases in police powers and databases, it’s inevitably working class people who will wind up with the foot of the state up their arses if the police misuse them.”

This is true, of course. There’s an even more interesting fact hiding away behind there, actually, though making much of it would be a digression too far.

I’m still having difficulty working out which generalised “Liberals” who hold ordinary people in contempt we’re talking about, though. So far we’ve got a) some anonymous commenter and b) “Liberals” rather than socialists.

Ah, so that’s what you were getting at. Well that’s fairly easy; you only need to look at the coverage the more liberal branches of the media give to working class areas when they bother to cover events there at all. You can also look at the way quite hateful stereotypes of working class people flow freely and thoughtlessly from the keyboards of liberal (or liberal-ish) commentators from time to time (not that this is a purely British phenomenon; there are, for example, some nice rants by Irving Howe on the subject). And so on and so forth.
Of course, this is largely a class issue. A statement on the inability of many liberals to escape from their baggage, rather than a statement on liberalism as such.

Uh, I think the Prolier-Than-Thou gambit is probably the second most prolific rhetorical dodge used on political blogs

Is it? I wouldn’t know, to be honest.

@ Alun : Uh, I think the Prolier-Than-Thou gambit is probably the second most prolific rhetorical dodge used on political blogs”

Is it? I wouldn’t know, to be honest.

Well that was kind of the point of the post – it’s just some silly bullshit that needs to be called out for what it is.

And I’m not being funny, but I think I’ve asked you about four times whether you could clarify which liberals you’re talking about here. Your last attempt – the more liberal branches of the media and liberal commentators is probably the most specific yet, but it’s still incredibly vague.

It’s not like there aren’t a lot of annoying, condescending tossers you could’ve pointed at. I find Yasmin Alibhai Brown incredibly patronising, and I’ve never much seen the point in George Monbiot. Even if you’d just said Those jokers at Comment Is Free, you’d have made a better case, since there’s guaranteed to be at least one loopy post there every day.

OTOH, vague generalisation and hand-waving You-know-who’s aren’t very convincing, especially if you want to accuse me personally of –

…sneering contempt (verging on outright hatred) for ordinary people that is so depressingly typical of liberalism these days…

…And especially if you want tell me I’m –

…one of the people that thinks that if someone happens to have light skin and a manual job, that person must be both stupid and a fascist…

Because I can’t help but notice that, when I asked you to justify those statements, you pulled up a quote that didn’t back it up at all.

I’m taking your points about class baggage on board here, but this kind of wild, unsupported assertion isn’t really helping your case.

There were definitely some middle class people at the G20 protests. We didn’t take a representative survey to see what percentage, but as long as there were some, that’s as many as we need.

Being middle-class clearly means you have no legitimate opinions to express. As does being foreign, being super-rich, being poor, being notably young or old. Blonde doesn’t help much, either.

Essentially, we can take anyone and pick on some personal aspect, preferably one they cannot change, and use it to imply every thought they have is worthless.

This underscores the message that the only people whose opinions are valid are the ones already talking loudly in the media. Which is fine, because we all know the best of all possible futures will occur this way. Our best interests are identical to those desired by the people who own the media.

I couldn’t agree more with Merrick above – too many people take “class solidarity” to the ends of absurdity.

Seriously – would people really rather the G20 protesters were joining the Young Conservatives and protesting against the welfare state? Would that make the natural order of things OK again, with each class behaving according to its allotted role?

It’s largely for this reason I’d define myself really as a liberal and not a socialist – despite agreeing with socialists on most issues.