Definitions of working class:
1.
a social group that consists of people who earn little
money often being paid only for the hours or days that
they work, and who usually do physical work: The working
class usually react/reacts in a predictable
way to government policies.
2.
The working class are people employed for wages,
especially in manual-labour occupations and in skilled-labour, industrial work.
Working-class occupations include blue-collar jobs, some white collar jobs, and
most service-work jobs. The working class rely upon their earnings from wage
labour, thereby, the category includes most of the working population of industrialised economies of the urban areas
(cities, towns, villages) of non-industrialized economies, and of the rural
workforce.
Owen Jones begins his book by telling the story against
some of his acquaintances/friends. He begins with a joke: "It's sad that
Woolworth's is closing. Where will all the chavs buy their Christmas
presents?" This was uttered by the host of a dinner party attended by the
author in a part of east London that has in recent time been colonised by the
middle class. Liberal views are taken as a given and, though everyone present
has a professional job, not everyone is white, male or straight.
Jones, has a working class background, attended The
University of Oxford, is in his late 20s and has worked both as a trade-union
lobbyist and as a parliamentary researcher for a Labour MP. He doesn't say how
he reacted to this mindless put-down at the time but whatever he did on the
night, seem to have led him, indirectly, to write this book, which argues that
class hatred is one of the last acceptable prejudices.
Chavs is full of reporting and useful
information. Jones singles out the middle-class for their contempt towards
working-class people, those regarded by right-wing commentators such as Simon
Heffer as the "feral underclass". In this caricature, supported by
the predominantly middle class media, "chav" means "underclass",
or people who don't behave 'like us'. Its origins are associated with chavi,
a Romany word for "child" or "youth", which developed into
"charva" – meaning scallywag – used for a long time in the
north-east. Others treat it as an acronym for "Council Housed and Violent".
Its use took off about 10 years ago.
Jones writes, Chavs were portrayed as "Thick.
Violent. Criminal." Travel brochures still apparently promise
"Chav-Free Activity Holidays", while the London fitness chain Gymbox
has felt free to advertise classes in "Chav Fighting".
Jones looks at the facts of increasing inequality, which
has led British society to become ever more segregated by class, income and
neighbourhood. In such circumstances, miscommunication has deepened between the
classes; the Conservatives' demeaning of trade unions has helped to strip the
working classes of what public voice they had, so that the middle class has
effectively become the new decision-making class.
Whilst it is important to keep arguing, that the balance
of power in our social and economic structure has a significant impact on our
ability to understand people from different backgrounds, it has led to stereotyping that will not go
away and is convenient for governments of all leanings to describe the
unemployed, state supported, large
estate residents as “lazy, feckless and responsible for their own
situation”. Jones reminds us that many
of the working class have lost their pride, there no longer the jobs in the
mines and factories and manufacturing that were available to previous
generations of working class people. They do not have the ability to “get on
their bikes” to find jobs in other places, nor the skills that are valued or
easily transferable. There does not appear either that any generation of
politicians can admit that their decision-making has effected this group of
people.
Jones focuses on the case of Shannon Matthews, the child
who disappeared in February 2008, to expose the way the rich and the powerful
define the nature of contemporary working-class existence. Scores of Dewsbury
Moor residents raised money, volunteered and searched for the young girl before
she was discovered on 14 March, drugged and hidden in a divan bed at the home
of a relative. From this moment, the community itself was seen through the prism
of Shannon's mother Karen. Their efforts were ignored as a picture was painted
of a lawless, morally corrupt,
unemployed nation. The press and politicians used the case to shine a
light on a vision of "Broken Britain", dominated by a feral
underclass.
The case of Shannon Matthews gives him his route into a
wider discussion of day-to-day chav bashing and class hatred: Little Britain
and Jeremy Kyle show, Harry Enfield and Shameless; the Little Book of Chavs,
Wife Swap and the website Chav Scum. All ways in which the middle class can
laugh at be entertained by and distance themselves from the working class, by
highlighting just how different we are.
We mostly enjoyed the book. Some frustration was felt at
the factually incorrect portrayal of the voting by the miners for the strike,
the lack of a solution to the problem of this caricature, and his repetition of
the facts to make his point felt. But mostly we struggled with the definition
of Chavs, his being very different to our own. We no longer felt able to define
working class in a changed and ever
changing world and believe the romanisation of life in the UK of the working
classes in the past was to misunderstand the hardship of many of the working
class and their families.
