During that visit, my mum brought out the monstrosity that is Concorde Peach Wine and showed Harriet the hostess trolly, proudly telling her that we were the first house on the estate to get one. While my dad went to the pub, which he did every Sunday lunchtime with the same religiosity as others attended church, mum had cooked the dinner by 8am, vegetables and all, and it would sit festering in the trolly, perched by the fake stone fireplace adorned with ornaments, further cooking the overcooked offerings.
I recall Harriet buying a very nice bottle of Chablis, into which my mum poured a good slug of diet lemonade.
Pretty much everything from food to what TV you watch gives your class background away. I often play the “salad game” with new acquaintances. Middle-class kids will have had croutons and olives in theirs, working-class ones will tell you about pickled beetroot and a slice of gala pie. Then there is the issue of dinner time – 5pm “teatime” for the commoners, “dinner” for the middle class, and “supper” for the super posh. Meanwhile middle-class households hide the TV like it’s a dirty secret, and only put it on to watch something educational, whereas our family telly was almost on fire by the time we went to bed.
Blakeley’s comments were posted during a discussion about the desertion of “Red Wall” voters from the Labour party. She followed up her post, which had attracted a lot of derision and anger, with: “Clearly, I’m not working class. Clearly, my education and upbringing are what allowed me to reach the position I’m in now. But these things don’t *define* my class position, my relationship to the production process does.”
Blakeley is but one in a long line of super-posh leftists who lecture the proletariat on the class system. For example, public school educated journalist Shon Faye who bragged about working at a call centre while a student before being sacked for smoking. She wrote an article entitled “The fight for trans equality must be recognised as a class struggle”, which would be met by anyone on the council estate where my family live with wide-eyed astonishment or derision.
Despite what the privileged kids of journalism might think, a working-class woman in a call centre, trying to raise a couple of kids and having to negotiate with her manager about time off when her childcare lets her down, might have a different experience than a posh young MA student who is “forced” to take a job in a call centre because daddy has pulled the plug on the monthly allowance. Working-class mothers cannot afford to put a foot wrong, which often leads to them being targeted by sexual harassment and unfair treatment. It is not a game or an “experience” for them; there is no way out.
“Class is a social relationship rooted in production,” tweeted Blakeley in response to criticism to her first post. “Either you own resources critical for the production process, or you sell your labour power to those who do. If the latter, you’re either a professional with some autonomy and some assets, or a worker with little of both.”
This analysis seems to emanate directly from the writings of Karl Marx, but it lacks credibility in a post-industrial society and completely fails to grasp the British class system, which has created significant cultural distinctions depending on where your family come from and how you were raised.
My working-class roots have never really left me, in fact they still have an impact on my life, despite having left the Darlington council estate more than four decades ago. I have been assumed to be an administrator by a male interviewee whilst heading up a major research project; I’ve been asked by an academic whether I would ever “consider doing a degree” in response to me telling her I attended a sink school; I’ve been laughed at when I have no idea of key historical facts that most would take for granted. It’s not the greatest injustice in the world – but the idea that education and upbringing does not define a person’s class is ludicrous.
For Blakeley to say, “Class has nothing to do with: your accent — where you live — where you grew up — what your parents do — where you went to school,” is the epitome of middle-class ignorance. If we need to look anywhere as to why Labour is losing so many working-class voters, this mindset is not a bad place to start.
What we are seeing now is a version of the strange colonisation of working class life that we saw in the 1970s, when Oxbridge educated students joined a version of the Socialist Society and ended up interloping as factory workers post-graduation in order to identify as one of the “workers”.
When I first heard this I thought about my dad, coming home after a gruelling shift at the mill, working in 100-degree heat, often with injuries sustained from being hit by bits of screaming hot metal. I wondered what he would have made of some plummy-voiced rich kid raising his fist in solidarity, masquerading as one of them.
Class disadvantage is not a costume that can ever be really discarded, and nor is it one that the poshies can put on to score points. In the meantime, in my nice middle-class household, the arguments rage between Harriet and me as to whether to watch Gavin and Stacey or some worthy, intellectual sub-titled documentary. In such arguments, “common as muck” sounds like a badge of honour.
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