Chavs - The Demonization of the Working Class Read online

  Chaves: The Demonization of the Working Class

  'A trenchant exposure of our new class-hatred and what lies behind it'

  'Alively,well-reasoned Sean and informative eounterblast'

  'A work of passion, sympathy and moral grace'

  New York Times

  The working class has become Media and politicians alike dismiss and ignorant a vast, underprivileged an object of fear and ridicule. as feckless; crirninalized swathe of society whose members have become stereotyped by one hate-fined word: chavs.

  In this acclaimed investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from 'salt of the earth' to 'scum of the earth',

  Chavs is a powerful, illuminating inequality and class hatred in modern and disturbing portrait of Britain.

  OwenJones84 ' www.owenjones.org

  'Chavs is persuasively argued, and packed full of good reporting and useful information ... [Jones] makes an important contribution to a revivified debate about class.'

  Lynsey Hanley, author of Estates: An Intimate History

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  'Jones's analysis of the condition of the working class is very astute ... A book like this is very much needed for the American scene, where the illusion is similarly perpetuated by the Democrats that the middle class is all that matters, that everyone can aspiretojoin the middle class or is already part of it.'

  Huffington Post

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  'A blinding read.' Suzanne Moore, Guardian

  'thought-provoking examination of a relatively new yet widespread derogatory characterization of the working class in Britain ... edifying and disquieting in equal measure.'

  Publishers Weekly

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  'A fiery reminder of how the system has failed the poor.'

  Peter Hoskin, Daily Beast

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  'Seen in the light of the riots and the worldwide Occupy protests, his lucid analysis of a divided society appears uncannily prescient. '

  Matthew Higgs, Arrforum

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  'A passionate and well-documented denunciation of the upper-class contempt for the proles that has recently become so visible in the British class system.'

  Eric Hobsbawm, Guardian Books of the Year

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  'Mr. Jones's book is a cleareyed examination of the British class system, and it poses this brutal question: "How has hatred of working-class people become so socially acceptable?" His timely answers combine wit, left-wing politics and outrage. '

  Dwight Garner, New York Times

  CHAVS: The Demonization of the Working Class:

  OWEN JONES

  VERSO

  london. New York

  This updated edition first published by Verso 2012 First published by Verso 20II

  Veno

  UK: 6 Meard Street, London WIFOEG US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.versobooks.com

  Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for thisbook is available from the British Library

  Library of Congress Cataloging-iii-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset inFournier by Mj Gavan, Truro, Cornwall Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY

  Created by Tshirtman

  Contents

  Preface to the New Edition

  Introduction

  1. The Strange Case of Shannon Matthews

  2. Class Warriors

  3. Politicians vs Chavs

  4. A Class in the Stocks

  5.We're all middle class now

  6. A Rigged Society

  7. Broken Britain

  8. Backlash

  Conclusion; A New Class Politics?

  Acknowledgements

  Preface to the New Edition

  Nobody expected Chavs to attract half as much attention as it did. And if it had been released even three or four years ago, Idoubt that it would have done so well. But the book's impact had less to do with the provocative title and everything to do with the fact that class is back with a vengeance.

  During the boom period it was possible to at least pretend class was no more-that 'we're all middle class now', as politicians and media pundits put it. As chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown had pro- nounced the end of 'boom and bust', and it seemed as though a future of rising living standards beckoned for all. At a time of economic chaos, this period looks like a golden age-even if we now know our sense of prosperity was built on sand. Yes, it was true that real wages stagnated for the bottom half and declined for the bottom third from 2004 onwards--that is, four years before the economic collapse began. But the availability of cheap credit helped paper over Britain's growing class divisions, which, despite the hubris of the political and media elite, were as entrenched as ever.

  Chavs was my contribution to ending the conspiracy of silence over class. But, unexpectedly, it pushed at an open door. Economic crisis helped to refocus attention on the unjust distribution of wealth and power in society. Throughout 2011, living standards for the average Briton were declining at the fastest rate since the 1920s. The Child Poverty Action Group warned that poor faced a tripple whammy' of benefit, support and service cuts, families faced a 'triple stating that the coalition government's 'legacy threatens to be the worst poverty record of any government tor a generation .But it remained boom time for the people at the top. In 2011, boardroom pay for Britain's top one hundred companies soared by 49 per cent; the previous year, it had shot upby 55 per cent.' The wealth of the richest 1,000 Britons, meanwhile, increased by a fifth, after leaping by 30 per cent-the biggest increase ever recorded-in 2010. Shortly after arriving in office, the Conservatives' austerity Chancellor George Osborne had claimed 'we're all in this together'. As the statement veered between ludicrous and offensive, few were now making the case that class division no longer mattered in Britain.

  Although I wanted to encourage a broad debate about class, the title I chose proved contentious. For some critics, the book failed to acknowl- edge that the object of demonization was an identifiable subgroup of undesirables--a workless Burberry-wearing underclass--rather than the working class as a whole. Sometimes, said these critics, I got bogged down in discussing the origins and definition of the term' chav', Given that I had plastered the word across the book's cover, it would have been brash to refuse to engage in such a debate. But the book wasn't simply about the word. It aimed to challenge the myth that 'we're all middle class now': that most of the old working class had been'aspirational' and joined 'Middle Britain' (whatever that was), leaving behind a feckless, problematic rump. This was often racialized and described as the 'white working class'. 'Chavs' was the term- encompassing a whole range of pejorative connotations--that best summed up this caricature.

  Shortly after Chavs was published, a study by polling working-class organization identity had Britain'Thinks revealed just how demonized become. As Chars pointed out, most polls have consistently shown between 50 and 55 per cent stubbornly self-identifying as working class, despite the 'we're all middle class' mantra being drummed into us. But BritainThinks revealed that 71 per cent self-Identified as middle class, with just 24 per cent opting for working class. Undoubtedly the contrasting results had much to do with the
fact that, while only one 'working-class' category was offered, there were three 'middle-class' options to choose from (lower, middle and upper). But there was a more profound and disturbing explanation. According to Britain Thinks's Deborah Mattinson, a former pollster for Gordon Brown:

  There was a strong feeling in the focus groups that the noble tradition of a respectable and diligent working class was over. For the first time, Isaw the 'working-class' tag used as a slur, equated with other class-based insults such as 'chav'. I asked focus group members to make collages using newspaper and magazine clippings to show what the working class was. Many chose deeply unattractive images: flashy excess, cosmetic surgery gone wrong, tacky designer clothes, booze, drugs and overeating.

  Members of one focus group self-identified as middle class; another opted for working class. Their backgrounds, jobs and incomes were almost exactly the same. The difference was that the 'middle-class' selfidentifiers were trying to distance themselves from an unappealing identity in favour of one with a strikingly positive image. As Deborah Mattinson put it: 'being middle class is about being, well, a bit classy'. The working-class label was no longer something people felt that they could wear with pride. Far from it: ithad effectively become synonymous with' chav'.

  The minority that did describe themselves as working class struggled to come up with positive contemporary images to express their own identity. Focus group participants suggested the 1960s as the heyday of working-class Britain. When asked to define what itmeant to be working class, a common theme was it 'tends to just mean being poor.

  The BritainThinks studies identified some of the consequences of the social and political forces that Chavs had tried to identify. First, the Thatcherite assault on many of the pillars of working-class Britain, from trade unions to traditional industries. Secondly, a political consensus established by Thatcherism: that we should all aspire to be middle class, and that being working class was no longer something to be proud of. Thirdly, the almost complete absence of accurate representations of working-class people in the media, on TV, and in the political world, in favour of grotesque 'chav' caricatures.

  The term 'chav' is used by different groups of people throughout British society. Practically nobody, except in jest, self-identifies as a chav. The term is almost always an insult imposed on individuals against their consent, but its exact meaning changes depending on who is wielding it, and the context in which it is used.

  That said, as I have shown in the book, the term is undeniably used in a classist fashion.

  Take ChavTowns, a pretty nauseating website which-I'm proud to say-has added my name to its roll call of villains. ChavTowns ridicules entire communities. As it happens, my own hometown of Stockport gets a bit of a battering at the hands of anonymous individuals brimming with undiluted class hatred: 'To be fair, Stockport has some very wealthy areas. Unfortunately, ithas more than its fair share of scummy ones too,' says one. Another moans that 'I have to admit I feel ashamed to have to write Stockport on my address, despite being from one of its much, much nicer suburbs (yes they do exist).' Yet another post, written by someone describing themselves as living in the 'charming village of Cheadle Hulme', savages people living on Stockport's council estates.

  But that's not to say this demonization is straightforward. In her review of Chavs, Lynsey Hanley-author of the brilliant Estates: An Intimate Hirtory-argued that class hatred wasn't simply 'a one-way street', but a 'collusive, often subtle, process which demeans everyone. In fact a great deal of chav bashing goes on within working-class neighbourhoods, partly because of the age-old divide between those who aim for "respectability often and those who disdain it.'

  Chav-bashing can often come from working-class people as an expression of frustration at anti-social elements within their own com- munities. Chavs attempted to put anti-social behaviour in a social and economic context: it was more likely to happen in communities with high levels of poverty and unemployment. But it's also true that the impact of anti-social behaviour and crime are class issues. Both are sta- tistically more likely to affect working-class people than middle-class people. Those on the receiving end often-unsurprisingly-have little sympathy for the perpetrators, particularly if they share a similar set of difficult economic circumstances but do not themselves resort to anti- social behaviour.

  It's also not the case that hostility to supposed 'benefit cheats' is the sole preserve of middle-class Daily Mail readers-the net-curtain- twitching types who rant about gays and Gypsies. If you are someone scraping by in a low-paid job, the feeling that there are people down the street living it up at your expense may well infuriate you more than anything else. It's an age-old example of the 'poor against the poor', and right-wing politicians and journalists exploit such sentiments ruth- lessly. Extreme examples of 'benefit fraudsters' are hunted down with relish by the tabloids, and are passed off, not as isolated examples, but as representative of an endemic and far bigger problem. The 'scrounger' has become the public face of the unemployed in Britain.

  understanding about the unemployment. As one working-class self-identifier put it in the BritainThinks study, 'We've now got this benefit generation which started

  That's not to say there isn't a widespread understanding about the causes behind the increase in long-term unemployment. As one working-class self-identifier put it in the BritainThinks study, 'We've now got this benefit generation which started when Thatcher closed all of the industries.' Chavs attempted to present a corrective to these exag- gerated tales of benefit fraud. Such fraud, indeed, represents less than I per cent of total welfare spending, and up to 60 times less than tax avoidance at the other end of the economic spectrum. Meanwhile, the idea that there are plenty of jobs if only people could be bothered to drag themselves down to the Jobcentre is risible. All the evidence shows that most unemployed people desperately want work: they can't find any. At the end of 2011, the Daily Telegraph reported that there were twenty-three jobseekers in the UK chasing every job vacancy. For every retail job, there were forty-two applications; in customer services, it was forty-six.i In some communities, the picture is even bleaker. In Hull, there are 18,795 jobseekers chasing 318 jobs. There are simply not enough jobs to go round. But with this reality largely ban- ished from our newspapers and TV screens, and with tax-avoiding businesspeople a distant, abstract concept for most, it is a challenging case to make.

  The demonizarion of working-class people also stems from insecu- rity, or 'social distancing' from those in superficially similar circumstances. Britain'Thinks revealed that those belonging to groups most likely to be stigmatized as chavs can often be among the most vociferous in their chav-bashing, One long-term incapacity benefit claimant denounced chavs who were supposedly milking the system; so did two unemployed teenage mothers. This isn't classist contempt: it comes from a fear of being lumped in with a demonized grouping. Hereis one ugly consequence of persistent attacks on the unemployed and teenage mothers: prejudice can even be voiced by those who are themselves targeted.

  In large part, the demonization of the working class is the legacy of a concerted effort to shift public attitudes, which began under Thatcher, continued with New Labour and has gained further momentum under the coalition. Poverty and unemployment were no longer to be seen as social problems, but more to do with individual moral failings. Anyone could make it if they tried hard enough, or so the myth went. If people were poor, it was because they were lazy, spendthrift or lacked aspiration.

  The latest Social Attitudes Survey, published at the end of 2011, shows just how successful this project has been. Even as economic crisis swelled the ranks of the unemployed and poor, attitudes towards them hardened. With nearly 2.7 million people out of work, over half of those surveyed believed that unemployment benefits were too high and were deterring people from getting a job. of course, few would have known from reading newspapers or watching TV that the Jobseekers' Allowance was worth just £67.5O--and even less for those under the age of twenty-six. Another 63
per cent believed that a factor driving child poverty was parents 'who don't want to work'. Depressing stuff, but not surprising given the Thatcherite onslaught, New Labour's refusal to challenge Conservative dogma on social problems, and the airbrushing in the media concealing the reality of poverty and unemployment.

  And of course, such attitudes have political consequences. If you think poverty and unemployment are personal failings rather than social problems, then why have a welfare state at all? The Social Atti- tudes Survey revealed that support for the redistribution of wealth had fallen to just a third; towards the end of Margaret Thatcher's reign in 1989, it was over half. Demonization serves a useful purpose in a divided society like our own, because it promotes the idea that inequal- ity is rational: it is simply an expression of differing talent and ability. Those at the bottom are supposedly there because they are stupid, lazy or otherwise morally questionable. Demonization is the ideological backbone of an unequal society.

  Another criticism facing Chavs was that it glorified a golden age that never existed, presenting a rose-tinted view of an industrial world that was finished off by the Thatcherite experiment. But I do not believe that this was the argument presented in the book. As Chavs emphasized, industrial work was often backbreaking and dirty. Women were often excluded from these jobs; and when they were not, they did not have the same status as men. There were countless other problems that a dewy-eyed portrait of the industrial past written by an author in his mid-twenties would fail to address.