Common People

by Kit de Waal

  At the same time, and much as with class, social mobility has a broader meaning in the language of the public and politicians, which asks whether society is fair. What are the chances of people making it into prestigious jobs? Or is success solely based on what your parents did for a living, where you went to school or university, and who your contacts are?

  It is useful to remember that the answers to these questions are not solely about class either. Class intersects with other big social categories, such as gender or ethnicity. Disability and sexuality are also important, as is immigration. Intersectional understandings are most crucial when we ask if particular groups are under- or over-represented in the workforce. This may then help to explain why specific voices and stories are absent from page, stage and screen.

  Class origins are a particularly difficult subject for researchers because many people’s self-descriptions are subtly different from how their parental occupational origins might be classified. This is made even more complicated by how people self-describe their class identity in the context of their jobs, their occupational destinations.

  In publishing, the core sets of occupations are classified as being professional and managerial jobs. This means they are middle-class occupations, middle-class destinations for the people working in them, irrespective of their social origins and the sometimes low pay and bad working conditions they may encounter.

  The fact that publishing is counted as a middle-class occupation might go some way to explaining why we hear so many horror stories of people feeling excluded; people feeling like they don’t quite fit with organisational or occupational cultures; and why the statistics on the class origins of people working in publishing are so alarming.

  Publishing has a serious class problem, as it is one of the most socially exclusive of all creative industries. According to analysis of the Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey 2014, almost half (47 per cent) of all authors, writers and translators in the British workforce were from the most privileged social starting points (NS-SEC I), contrasting with only 10 per cent of those with parents from working-class origins (NS-SEC VI–VIII). For publishing as a whole, including occupations such as editors and journalists, the figures are still highly skewed towards those from middle-class starting points: 43 per cent as opposed to 12 per cent.

  This is clearly a major imbalance. It is also an imbalance in the context of the rest of society: the same data set estimated that around 14 per cent of the population were from the higher professional and managerial origins (NS-SEC I). This means that publishing is much, much more middle class, in terms of the people working in it, than British society as a whole.

  Those from working-class origins, according to the ONS, are around 35 per cent of the British labour force, a far greater proportion than the 12 per cent of people from working-class origins working in publishing. It is clear there is an almost total absence of working-class-origin individuals, of whatever gender or ethnicity.

  Publishing sees better figures in terms of the gender balance, in ONS data, with women representing over 50 per cent of the publishing workforce (54 per cent). This is seemingly good news about the numbers of women in publishing. It is good news compared to the numbers in the labour force as a whole (51 per cent) and to other creative industries dominated by men, such as architecture (30 per cent women) or film, television, radio and photography (24 per cent women).

  What the ONS data doesn’t tell us is who has power and control over the industry, as much of the academic work on the specifics of how publishing works shows women are often excluded from the top of creative professions and from prestigious roles exerting power and control over what we see and read – commissioning, for example.

  There is a similar, although more worrying, story associated with the ethnicity of the publishing workforce. Publishing is whiter than the general population (93 per cent white vs the general population, which is 90 per cent white). However, this does not tell us who is making the crucial decisions, nor the types of control or creative freedom offered to people. As with gender, we know people of colour are much less likely to be in senior, powerful positions in creative jobs, and we know they are likely to face stereotypes and constraints on their creative freedom when compared to white colleagues.

  Moreover, to return to the statistics, the under-representation of people of colour is made more worrying in the context of the dominance in the publishing industry of London, which is a much more diverse city (around 61 per cent white) than the rest of the UK. Thus the lack of diversity is not just unrepresentative of Britain, it is also highly unrepresentative of the city that is home to many of publishing’s major players.

  One of the things that comes from the statistics is the question of who is missing from these numbers. This is not just about percentages or ratios, as important as they may be for policy or organisational change. It is about the narrowness of the workforce that may have little or no lived experience outside of the white male of middle-class origins. It is about the impact of that on who is permitted to speak, who is allowed to take risks, and who is only offered a clichéd or inaccurate ‘gap in the market’. Finally, it is about the lived realities that are overlooked, assumed to be unimportant by commissioners, and never given a chance.

  Acknowledgements

  All of us who have stories in this book send our thanks to the team at Unbound who helped get them out into the world. Thanks also to the support of the Writer Development Agencies, in particular Claire Malcom and Jonathon Davidson, who have worked tirelessly to see this project through from conception to completion and who will go on supporting new writers at the beginning of their careers.

  Thank you to my agent, Jo Unwin, who encouraged me to see Common People through even when I should have been doing other things.

  Again, thank you to everyone who pledged money, time and good wishes to Common People. We truly couldn’t have done this without you.

  And thanks, as always, to my children Bethany and Luke, everything is for you.

  About the Authors

  Paul Allen, ‘No Lay, No Pay’

  When Paul Allen was three, he would watch the gas men lighting the street lamps from his gran’s bedroom window. He grew up in relative poverty on a large council estate, which he says ‘was actually pretty good, as everybody I knew back then was in the same boat’. He left school at fifteen to be a bricklayer, like his dad before him, and loved it. Paul has played in bands and ridden motorcycles all his life, and freelances, between building jobs, road-testing bikes for a monthly motorcycling magazine. Using that experience, he applied for a degree in journalism at the University of the West of England, swapping on to the creative-writing course, where his tutor has described his writing as ‘experienced and emotionally intelligent’.

  Damian Barr, ‘Uniform’

  Damian Barr’s memoir Maggie & Me was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and the Sunday Times Memoir of the Year, and won him Stonewall Writer of the Year. Damian writes columns for the Big Issue and High Life and hosts his celebrated Literary Salon at the Savoy. You Will Be Safe Here is his debut novel. @Damian_Barr

  Ruth Behan, ‘Stalin on the Mantelpiece’

  Ruth Behan was born in 1952 and brought up in south-east London. Her father, Brian Behan, was very active in organising Trade Union membership in the building trade and her mother’s family were Socialists right back to Peterloo. Ruth dropped out of school early due to depression but recovered and worked in the antique trade and also as a care assistant, musician, French polisher and nursery assistant. Returning to education in 1998, she studied counselling skills and then went on to study with the Open University. In the course of this she discovered she was dyslexic and was able to complete her BA/BSc in Childhood and Youth Studies, and other qualifications relevant to Early Years Care and Education. She eventually worked as a Visiting Lecturer in Early Years Studies for Wiltshire College. Ruth now lives in Wiltshire with her partner, who is a songwriter. She teaches fiddle-pla
ying and plays in a folk-rock band called Billy in the Lowground.

  Malorie Blackman, ‘Snakes and Ladders’

  Malorie Blackman has written over seventy books for children and young adults, including the Noughts and Crosses series of novels. Malorie is a scriptwriting graduate of the National Film and Television School. Her work has appeared on TV, with Pig-Heart Boy being adapted into a BAFTA-winning TV serial. She co-wrote the Doctor Who episode ‘Rosa’. In 2008, she was honoured with an OBE for her services to Children’s Literature. Malorie was appointed Children’s Laureate 2013–15.

  Astra Bloom, ‘Black Cat Dreaming’

  Astra Bloom grew up on the outskirts of London. She worked in catering, education and fashion before moving to Brighton with her family. She has two grown children, two cats, a husband and a labradoodle. Astra suffered a long and debilitating illness which left her housebound for years during which writing was a lifeline. She received a bursary for a course at New Writing South and one of her poems won the Bare Fiction competition. Astra has since been runner-up in the Brighton prize and won both the Sussex story and Sussex flash fiction prizes. She’s been shortlisted by many competitions, including Bridport short story prize and Live Canon International Poetry prize, and was selected to take part in Penguin Random House WriteNow Live event. She has had work published in Under the Radar, Magma and Brittle Star, and forthcoming in A Wild and Precious Life, an anthology on the theme of recovery from illness and addiction. Astra had two novels longlisted by the 2017 Mslexia Fiction Award and she is currently polishing these up whilst working on collections of short stories and poetry.

  Lisa Blower, ‘A Pear in a Tin of Peaches’

  Lisa Blower is an award-winning short story writer and the author of Sitting Ducks, shortlisted for the Arnold Bennett Prize. She won the Guardian short story prize, was shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Award and was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. Her collection It’s Gone Dark over Bill’s Mother’s is out now with Myriad Editions. She lectures in Creative Writing at Bangor University. www.lisablower.com @lisablowerwrite

  Jill Dawson, ‘The Dark Hole of the Head’

  Jill Dawson is the author of ten novels, and editor of six collections of poetry and short stories. Twice nominated for the Women’s Prize, she has won awards for poetry, short stories, fiction and screenwriting. Her most recent novel was The Crime Writer, about Patricia Highsmith, and her forthcoming book is The Language of Birds, inspired by the story of the nanny murdered by Lord Lucan. She lives in the Cambridgeshire Fens with her husband, son and foster daughter.

  Kit de Waal, ‘The Things We Ate’

  Kit de Waal has won numerous awards for her short stories and flash fiction. Her debut novel, My Name Is Leon, won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the British Book Awards Debut and the Desmond Elliott Prize. In 2016, she founded the Kit de Waal Scholarship at Birkbeck University for a disadvantaged writer to study creative writing. Her new novel, The Trick to Time, was published in 2018 and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is the editor of this anthology of working-class writers.

  Louise Doughty, ‘Any Relation?’

  Louise Doughty is the author of nine novels, including Apple Tree Yard, which was a number-one bestseller and adapted for BBC television. She has been nominated for the Costa Novel Award, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the EFG Sunday Times Short Story Prize, and her work has been translated into thirty languages. Her latest book is Platform Seven, due out in 2019.

  Jenny Knight, ‘Matoose Rowsay’

  Born and bred in rural Suffolk – back when no one knew where it was – Jenny Knight was the first in her family to go to university. She has a degree in English Lit & Drama, and after jobs spanning barmaid, temp, roadie, aid worker, proofreader/typesetter, radio producer and prison creative writing tutor, she settled into freelance copywriting and editing in south Norfolk, where she lives with her husband and two sons. A prize-winning writer of short fiction and memoir, her stories have been listed in many competitions, including the Bridport, and appeared in The Yellow Room, Riptide and Words with Jam. She’s written two novels and is currently polishing her first narrative non-fiction book.

  Stuart Maconie, ‘Little Boxes’

  Stuart Maconie is a writer, broadcaster and journalist specialising in British social history, landscape, politics and pop culture. He currently hosts shows across the BBC radio networks and is president of the Ramblers, hoping to encourage that august organisation to stay true to its roots in working-class dissent.

  Katy Massey, ‘Don’t Mention Class!’

  Katy Massey grew up in Leeds and worked as a freelance journalist in London. She suffered burnout, and returned to education, culminating in a self-funded PhD in creative writing. This allowed her to write her own family’s complicated story while researching memoir, and finding out why the lives of some groups of people are much less likely to be recorded, and lauded, than others. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, she was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, and while recovering from surgery, started working on ways to encourage non-writers to author their life stories, particularly those under-represented in literature. One result of this work is Tangled Roots, an anthology of memoir by more than thirty members of mixed-race families, exploring their experiences, history and contribution to British society. She is currently developing Who Are We Now?, a collection of memoir responses to the Brexit referendum and a post-European future, while also working on The Cleansing, a novel imagining post-Grenfell London after a large-scale attack.

  Chris McCrudden, ‘Shy Bairns Get Nowt’

  Chris McCrudden was born and raised in South Shields and now lives in London. Over the years he's been a butcher’s boy, a burlesque dancer and a hand model for a giant V for Victory sign on Canary Wharf. He now splits his time between brand strategy and writing, and is the author of two novels, Battlestar Suburbia (2018) and Battle Beyond the Dolestars (2019).

  Lisa McInerney, ‘Working Class: An Escape Manual’

  Lisa McInerney is from Galway. Her work has featured in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, Granta, the Guardian and BBC Radio 4. Her debut novel, The Glorious Heresies, won the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize. Her second novel, The Blood Miracles, won the 2018 RSL Encore Award.

  Paul McVeigh, ‘Night of the Hunchback’

  Paul McVeigh’s debut novel, The Good Son, won the Polari First Novel Prize and the McCrea Literary Award. He has written for radio, stage and television and regularly for the Irish Times. His writing has been translated into seven languages. He is associate director of Word Factory and co-founder of London Short Story Festival.

  Daljit Nagra, ‘Steve’

  Daljit Nagra is from a Sikh background and was born and grew up in west London, then Sheffield. He has published four books of poetry, all with Faber & Faber. His poem ‘Look We Have Coming to Dover!’ won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem in 2004. His first collection of the same name won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2007 and the South Bank Show Decibel Award in 2008. His subsequent two collections, Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man Eating Tiger-Toy Machine!!! and his version of the Ramayana were nominated for the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2014 he was selected as a New Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society. In 2015 he won a Royal Society Travelling Scholarship. His latest collection is British Museum, which was published in 2017. In 2018 he won the Cholmondeley Award. He is the inaugural Poet in Residence for Radio 4/4 Extra and teaches at Brunel University London.

  Julie Noble, ‘Detail’

  A mother of five, Julie Noble is a lone parent living on a small council estate in north-east Yorkshire. Brought up in Leeds on the border of Chapeltown, Julie was the first in her family to go to university, studying psychology at Lancaster. Two weeks before the final exams, she gave birth to her first child, then graduated with honours. While marrying, having four more c
hildren, and divorcing, Julie did various jobs including childminding, banking, television work, bookkeeping and running children’s activity clubs. Her writing has won prizes and appeared in Mslexia, Writing Magazine and She magazine. In 2004, she self-published Talli’s Secret to raise awareness of dyspraxia; her eldest son has the condition.

  Dave O’Brien, ‘Class and Publishing: Who Is Missing from the Numbers?’

  Dr Dave O’Brien is Chancellor’s Fellow in Cultural and Creative Industries at University of Edinburgh. He has recently concluded a secondment to the UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and is the co-author of the 2018 Panic! report for Create London, Arts Emergency and Barbican. He has published widely on the subject of the sociology and politics of culture, and his next book will be Culture Is Bad for You? Inequality and the Creative Class, published by Manchester University Press.

  Louise Powell, ‘This Place Is Going to the Dogs’

  Louise Powell has just completed her PhD in English at Sheffield Hallam University, funded by the North of England Consortium for Arts and Humanities Research. After growing up in receipt of free school meals and attending local comprehensive schools, she was awarded a sixth-form academic scholarship to Teesside High School. She gained a first-class degree in English from Teesside University, and an MA with distinction in Medieval and Renaissance literary studies from Durham University. One of her short comedy sketches, ‘Are You Alright?’, was performed in 2016 as part of Bolton Octagon Theatre’s Best of Bolton production, and in 2017 she participated in New Writing North’s Significant Ink Professional Development Programme for Screenwriting. She was also shortlisted four times for the Martin Wills Writing Awards for writing on a horse-racing theme.