I hate talking about class. At least I do now. It wasn’t always this way. It used to be fun to talk and write about it when I had fuck all. Class was the indiscriminate fist with which I would righteously ‘punch-up’, much to the satisfaction of my comrades.
It’s far trickier, however, to touch the topic when you’ve made a few quid. When you’re no longer scraping to get by, questions are asked as to how authentically you can represent working-class experiences. In fact, aren’t you going to have to turn that righteous fist on yourself?
Having spent my life railing against middle-class people and the wealthy, certain that their affluence was in some way linked to my hardship, I now find myself at an uncomfortable crossroads. In the past year, I’ve been given a taste of how the other half live, as the material circumstances of my life changed dramatically. While I still feel like the same person, I feel that my claim to being working-class grows more tenuous by the day.
The pivotal moment came when my first book, Poverty Safari, won the Orwell Prize last year. The first thing I asked was: “Can anybody take this away from me?” That question revealed a lot – mainly how I felt the opposite of entitled to win or to even be considered.
That year still feels like a dream. I am now often introduced not only as an Orwell Prize-winner, but also as the writer of a book that George Orwell himself would have commended. This strange association with one of history’s most celebrated authors is flattering but, as I feel it, undeserved. And yet it has quite simply altered the course of my life forever.
The accolade parted the choppy sea of circumstance that for so long had obstructed my progress. Those invisible barriers that impeded my social mobility disappeared and the glimpse of a previously alien life, one without constant financial anxiety, came suddenly and surprisingly into view.
Some people seem bred for success. When people of a higher social caste become successful it is unremarkable and rarely something they must justify. When you grow up in poverty and become successful, you are never allowed to forget it. “Where did you learn to speak so well, Darren?”, is the innocent but rather offensive question I am routinely asked by people who haven’t won an Orwell prize. There’s a reason why some find my ability to articulate coherent sentences so surprising. Few would ask privately-schooled Glaswegian historian Niall Ferguson where he learned “all the big words” he uses.
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