Brit white working class: "voiceless"

[Maurice Picarda]

Surely you mean demographic.

An adjective cruelly nouned by fuckwitted marketers.

 

[kabbes]

you would be hard pressed to find any political party that got 50% or more of the population, something that hasn't been done for about 50 years or so (if I remember rightly). You seem to be just looking at how many seats they won, if you add up all those that voted for other parties or didn't vote for any of them it goes into millions.

I would argue that most working class DIDN'T vote for Thatcher, but of course I can't claim that no one that saw themselves as working class did. Again, problems with the term working class, someone could be what most of us define as working class yet they might claim to be middle class.

The Tories got about 42% of the vote in 1983. Tony Benn lost his safe Bristol seat

From the Guardian article of the time

But if (the legend in the beginning) it was the policies that mattered, the policies of certain triumph, then no-one in the Labour Party today should seek too widely for scape-goats. An election, in such appalling economic circumstances, where the party of the workers - employed and unemployed - falls back even in the blighted north is an election to ponder and tremble over.

You can't pretend that she didn't have substantial support amongst swathes of the "white working class". The existance of anti-Thatcher sentiment elsewhere doesn't negate that.

I'll just remind you again that my point is really just: there is no such thing as a single "voice of the white working class". Although the sentimental view might be that such a voice would be all cosily Old Labour, the truth is that some voice would be that way and some voice would be quite the opposite.

 

[nino_savatte]

An adjective cruelly nouned by fuckwitted marketers.

Well, colour aside, we're all consumers now.

 

[Roxy641]

Thatcher out out out

I would hardly call 42% seathes of the working class.

But I am not claiming that every working class person is or isn't voting Labour. Would any person vote for Blair had they known what a mess he'd make? There were plenty of people that had worries about him even before he became Labour leader/Prime Minister.

The other thing is the people don't vote for the prime minister so, unless you lived in the area where Margaret Thatcher/Tony Blair etc where standing, you would be more likely to vote for the same party. There are limited choices on the ballot paper.

Roxy641

The Tories got about 42% of the vote in 1983. Tony Benn lost his safe Bristol seat

From the Guardian article of the time

You can't pretend that she didn't have substantial support amongst swathes of the "white working class". The existance of anti-Thatcher sentiment elsewhere doesn't negate that.

I'll just remind you again that my point is really just: there is no such thing as a single "voice of the white working class". Although the sentimental view might be that such a voice would be all cosily Old Labour, the truth is that some voice would be that way and some voice would be quite the opposite.

 

[poster342002]

rather than display solidarity with their peers, they want to leave them behind and get ahead?

It'd be nice if so much of the left and Trade Union movement could also stop supporting precisely this sort of individualistic "I'm alright jack", corporate-ladderclimbing ass-pirationalism.

These days it's all "career development" this, "personal development" that. Conspicuos by it's absence is "standing together rather than shitting on each other to crawl up the career drainpipe"

 

[kabbes]

What proportion of the country is working class?

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Bloke from IWCA just spoke very impressively on Radio 5.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Bloke from IWCA just spoke very impressively on Radio 5.

http://www.iwca.org? They haven't had a decent spokesperson since George Formby.

 

[_angel_]

So why are so many working class tories?

Good question! Although I believe more of them located in the South rather than the traditional unemployment blackspot areas of the north, scotland and wales ie just about everywhere else fucked over by Thatcher.


I guess the W/C tories who voted her were mainly the ones NOT losing their jobs so *I'm alright Jack* really.

 

[smokedout]

who speaks for the black working class?

 

[Roxy641]

Working class Hiro

Hi Kabbes,

I did reply to this about five minutes ago, but the puter ate it!

I am not sure if there is a way you can find that out, although I would be interested if there was a way.

Roxy641

What proportion of the country is working class?

 

[cockneyrebel]

This series looks utter crap and full of the usual middle class stereotypes about the working class.

 

[cockneyrebel]

Bloke from IWCA just spoke very impressively on Radio 5.

What did it say? Does the BBC let you listen to the programmes on the internet once they've gone?

 

[nino_savatte]

This series looks utter crap and full of the usual middle class stereotypes about the working class.

That's the impression that I get too. I also think that the remit is going to be wider than they've suggested too.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Hi Kabbes,

I did reply to this about five minutes ago, but the puter ate it!

I am not sure if there is a way you can find that out, although I would be interested if there was a way.

Roxy641

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Expodata/Spreadsheets/D7665.xls



lower supervisory and technical 9.4%

Semi routine 13.3%

Routine occupations 9.8%

Long-term unemployed 16.5%

 

[kabbes]

Thank you Picardy. That makes a total of a staggering 49% of the population. If that really constitutes "the working class" then there is no way that the Tories could have got 42% of the vote without a large proportion of this working class voting for them. Particularly since my guess is that this proportion would have been higher back in 1983.

In fact, those numbers imply that if there really was a single "working class voice" then that voice would easily overpower all others.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

some maybe, but many wouldn't even think of it in those terms i don't think.

when my dad voted Tory in the 80s, he did it because (he says) Thatcher was protecting their economic interests. They had a mortgage to pay, and they saw Thatch as being the person to keep it cheap. After all, they had kids to bring up. He never would have described himself as a member of the aspirant middle classes. He just wanted a little house for him and his kids, a bit of garden, something to work towards and provide his family with some security. He never would have considered bringing his kids up on a council estate as solidarity, he'd see it as uneccessary. I doubt he would even know how to answer if you asked him what class he was.

Class consciousness was pretty rare where I grew up.

i take your point that they may not be making such decisions explicitly on class grounds as such, but what you have described is essentially the aspiration to better yourself and your circumstances, which is what i was driving at, allbeit somewhat flippantly.

growing up in cornwall was a strange one, because when i was young, large swathes of the population were very definitely working class, with the main employment being in agriculture, fishing, and mining mainly. yet it was also a solidly Conservative county from what i remember (more lately Lib Dem) despite the fact that one would have assumed a natural affinity with the Labour party as was. yet i think the thinking behind their voting decisions were made very much on the grounds you identify, that is an inherent distrust of the Labour party's ability to allow them to protect and improve their rather austere lives.

 

[kabbes]

Regardless of the reasoning behind it, though, the fact is that the reality of the "white, working class voice" is not inherently analogous to "Old Labour". Actually, it is made up of a range of views, from the far left to the far right of the spectrum. Just as for other demographic* groups.


*Used as an adjective, just to please Picardilly.

 

[cockneyrebel]

This is the flip side of the liberal ideology of multiculturalism. Having seen their project fall apart over the last few years they have now gone full tilt and embraced "rights for whites" in Norman Tebbitt style. It's only showing the reactionary crap at the heart of liberal multiculturalism as an ideology that was always there though, but more hidden in the past. The trailer showing a white bloke being made black by "ethnics" writing on his head is a disgrace.

Will any of these programs show class solidarity between races or show class divisions. I doubt it.

 

[glenquagmire]

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Expodata/Spreadsheets/D7665.xls



lower supervisory and technical 9.4%

Semi routine 13.3%

Routine occupations 9.8%

Long-term unemployed 16.5%

Is there somewhere where those terms are explained?

What exactly is an intermediate occupation or a routine occupation?

Does lumping professional workers in with managers mean that teachers are regarded the same as CEOs?

 

[8ball]

The trailer showing a white bloke being made black by "ethnics" writing on his head is a disgrace.

I saw that and didn't have the faintest clue what they were going on about.

I'm not sure what the white working class is, tbh.

I think it used to relate to working in heavy industry and drinking pints of foamy beer in the evening but now is something to do with playing tinny music on your mobile phone and wearing knock-off branded sportwear.

It's confusing - I think there is a points system.

 

[treelover]

It's a shame the BBC have framed it in the way they have. Something needed to be done and said about the sense of powerlessness many people feel and yes, some of that will be over mass migration. But what else can they do? If they had called it 'democracy season' for instance, all the usual bourgeois civil liberty issues, ID cards, etc would have filed the airwaves(and yes they are important0. Now, at least, basic issues like housing , poverty, the NHS, will be discussed, though not perhaps in the way i would have liked.

 

[Joe Reilly]

who speaks for the black working class?

This was a point raised by the IWCA speaker on the Radio Five Live programme mentioned. The programme was called 'Has Britain forgotten the white working class?' The implication is that only the working class remains white and that all other ethnic groups have transcended this status, leaving the white working class as remnants of a previous age'.

 

[Spion]

Personally I'm looking forward to the Bradford WMC one, being local like. What else is in the season?

 

[Spion]

The implication is that only the working class remains white and that all other ethnic groups have transcended this status, leaving the white working class as remnants of a previous age'.

Who implied that?

 

[treelover]

is there a 'listen again' for it?

 

[STFC]

Personally I'm looking forward to the Bradford WMC one, being local like. What else is in the season?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/white/

 

[ViolentPanda]

fookin underclass cunts

Go chew your own pissflaps.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Urban75 has about as many white working class voices as it does black working class voices

Which is fuck all , its a hell of a lot more middle class than the daily mail IMO

Thanks for that, oh arbiter of class.

Now piss off back to the Muppet show.

 

[nino_savatte]

Personally I'm looking forward to the Bradford WMC one, being local like. What else is in the season?

Same here but because I'm actually interested in WMCs and what's happening to them. A place like Ashington in Northumberland, for instance, had more WMCs than pubs on its high street.