Chavs - The Demonization of the Working Class

by Owen Jones

  There were some who felt that glorifying beating people up might be overstepping the mark. When the Advertising Standards Authority was called in, Gymbox responded with technicalities. It was not offensive, they claimed, because 'nobody in society would admit to being a Chav; it was not a group to which people wanted to belong.' Amazingly, the ASA cleared Gymbox on the basis that chav-fighting classes 'would be unlikely to condone or incite violence against particular social groups ... '

  You would have to speak to Richard Hilton to appreciate the depths of hatred that inspired the class. Defining' chavs' as 'young Burberryclad street kids,' he went on to explain:

  They tend to live in England but would probably land'. They have trouble articulating themselves pronounce it 'Engerand have little ability to spell or write. They love their pit bull dogs as well as their blades. And would happily 'shank' you if you accidentally brush past them Or look at them in the wrong way. They tend to breed by the age of fifteen and spend most of their days trying to score' super-skunk' or whatever 'gear' they can get their sweaty teenage hands on. If they are not institutionalized by twenty-one they are considered pillars of strength in the community or get 'much respect' for being lucky.

  It is no surprise that, when asked if so-called chavs were getting a hard time in Britain, his response was blunt: 'NO, they deserve it.'

  Apparently the class was a hit with gym-goers. Describing it as 'one of the most popular classes we have ever run,' he claimed that: 'Most people related to it and enjoyed it. A few of the PC brigade were offended by it.' And yet, intriguingly, Mr Hilton does not think of himself as a bigot-far from it. Sexism, racism and homophobia, 'completely unacceptable'.

  An extremely successful businessman, Richard Hilton has tapped into the fear and loathing felt by some middle-class Londoners towards the lower orders. It is a compelling image: sweating City bankers taking out their recession-induced frustrations on semi-bestial poor kids. Welcome to Gymbox, where class war meets personal fitness.

  It is easy to gasp at Hilton's unembarrassed hatred, but he has crudely painted a widespread middle-class image of the working-class teenager. Thick. Violent. Criminal. 'Breeding' like animals. And, of course, these chavs are not isolated elements: they are, after all, regarded as 'pillars of strength inthe community'.

  Gymbox isn't the only British company to have exploited middleclass horror of large swathes of working-class Britain. Activities Abroad is a travel firm offering exotic adventure holidays with price tags often upwards of £2,000: husky safaris in the Canadian wilderness, Finnish log cabin holidays, that sort of thing. Oh, but chavs need not apply. In January 2009, the company sent a promotional email to the 24,000 people on its database, quoting a Daily Mail article from 2005 showing that children with 'middle-class' names were eight times more likely to pass their GCSEs than those with names like 'Wayne and Dwayne'. The findings had led them to wonder what sort of names were likely to be found on an Activities Abroad trip.

  So, the team had a trawl through their database and came up with two lists: one of names you were 'likely to encounter' on one of their holidays, and one of those you were not. Alice, Joseph and Charles featured on the first list, but Activities Abroad excursions were a Britney, Chantelle and Dazza-free zone. They concluded that they could legitimately promise 'Chav-Free Activity Holidays'.

  Again, not everyone was amused-but the company was unrepentant. 'I simply feel it is time the middle classes stood up for themselves,' declared managing director Alistair McLean. 'Regardless of whether it's class warfare or not, I make no apology for proclaiming myself to be middle class.'

  When I spoke to Barry Nolan, one of the company's directors, he was equally defiant. 'The great indignation came from Guardian readers who were showing false indignation because they don't live near them,' he said. 'It resonated with the sort of people who were likely to be booking holidays with us. It proved to be an overwhelming success with our client base.' Apparently, the business enj oyed a 44 per cent increase in sales in the aftermath of the furore.

  Gymbox and Activities Abroad had taken slightly different angles. Gymbox were tapping into middle-class fears that their social inferiors were a violent mob, waiting to knife them to death in some dark alley. Activities Abroad exploited resentment against the cheap flights which allowed working-class people to 'invade' the middle-class space of the foreign holiday. 'You can't even flee abroad to escape them these days' -that sort of sentiment.

  But both of them were evidence of just how mainstream middle-class hatred of working-class people is in modem Britain. Chav-bashing has become a way of making money because it strikes a chord. This becomes still more obvious when an unrepresentative story in the headlines is used as a convenient hook to 'prove' the anti-chav narrative.

  When ex-convict Raoul Moat went on the run after shooting dead his ex-lover's partner in July 2010, he became an anti-hero for a minor- ity of some of the country's most marginalized working-class people. One criminologist, Professor David Wilkinson, argued he was 'tap- ping into that dispossessed, white-working-class, masculine mentality, whereby they can't make their way into the world legitimately so behaving the way that Moat has behaved, as this kind of anti-hero, has, I think, touched a nerve.' White working-class men had, at a stroke, been reduced to knuckle-dragging thugs lacking legitimate aspirations. The internet hosted a vitriolic free-for-all. Take this comment on the Daily Mail site:

  Look around the supermarket, the bus and increasingly now on the road, you will encounter ever-growing numbers of tattooed, loud, foul-mouthed proles, with scummy brats trailing in their wake, who are incapable of acknowledging or even recognising a common courtesy, and who in their own minds can never, ever, be in the wrong about anything. These are the people who are getting sentimental about a vicious killer; they have no values, no morality and are so thick that they are beyond redemption. You are better off just avoiding them.

  This form of class hatred has become an integral, respectable part of modem British culture. It is present in newspapers, TV comedy shows, films, internet forums, social networking sites and everyday conversations. At the heart of the 'chavs' phenomenon is an attempt to obscure the reality of the working-class majority. 'We're all middle class now', runs the popular mantra-all except for a feckless, recalcitrant rump of the old working class. Simon Heffer is a strong advocate of this theory. One of the most prominent right-wing journalists in the country, he has spoke to nineteen-year-old Emma, out with her ten-month-old child. She had also brought up a four-year-old, from her partner's previous relationship--'in case you thought I had rum really young!' Her partner works four nights a week as a milkman in neighbouring Morpeth, Emma was, herself, determined to work as soon as possible. 'I do plan to go back to work. Definitely. I'd go back now but he's too young. My rna says that when he's about eighteen months, she's going to watch him for us and I'll go back to work.' She was particularly keen to get back to work because 'it'll be giving me a break'.

  It would be wrong of me to portray Ashington as some sort of postapocalyptic hellhole or as a society in total meltdown. The town centre is studded with shops like Argos, Curry's, Carphone Warehouse and Gregg's bakery. There's a real community spirit in the air. People are warm towards one another-as they were towards me, a stranger asking them intrusive questions. Communities like Ashington were devastated by the whirlwind of de-industrialization unleashed by Thatcherism, but people do their best to adjust and get on with their lives, even in the toughest of circumstances.

  Father Ian Jackson has been the local Catholic priest in Ashington since 2002. 'It's a very warm, caring kind of community. People really look out for each other,' he told me. 'I think it was hit badly with the closure of the mines-there's very little work for people, so it's quite deprived in a lot of ways. But the people, I always find, are very, very caring and very generous.' A number of Filipinos have moved in to the area and, although he says there was hostility towards them to begin with, 'that's all died a death'.

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p; But Father Jackson could not help but notice the terrible impact the lack of jobs has had on Ashington's young. 'For a lot of the younger people, you feel that most of them want to move on and move out, to get out of the town really, because there's nothing for them here! The main industry, I would probably say-you're looking at the big Asda that's just been built, and the hospital ... I think the young people would say: "What is there for me apart from working in a shop?" English Dictionary in 2005, it was defined as 'a young working-class person who dresses in casual sports clothing'. Since then, its meaning has broadened significantly. One popular myth makes it an acronym for 'Council Housed And Violent'. Many use it to show their distaste towards working-class people who have embraced consumerism, only to spend their money in supposedly tacky and uncivilized ways rather than with the discreet elegance of the bourgeoisie. Celebrities from working-class backgrounds such as David Beckham, Wayne Rooney or Cheryl Cole, for example, are routinely mocked as chavs,

  Above all, the term 'chav' now encompasses any negative traits associated with working-class people-violence, laziness, teenage pregnancies, racism, drunkenness, and the rest. As Guardian journalist Zoe Williams wrote, ' "Chav" might have grabbed the popular imagination by seeming to convey something Original-not just scum, friends, but scum in Burberry!--only now it covers so many bases as to be synonymous with "prole" or any word meaning "poor, and therefore worthless,,: Even Christopher Howse, a leader writer for the conservative Daily Telegraph, objected that 'many people use chav as a smokescreen for their hatred of the lower classes ... To call people chavs is no better than public schoolboys calling townies "oiks":'

  'Chavs' are often treated as synonymous with the 'white working class'. The BBC's 2008 White season of programmes dedicated to the same class was a classic example, portraying its members as backwardlooking, bigoted and obsessed with race. Indeed, while the 'working class' became a taboo concept in the aftermath of Thatcherism, the 'white working class' was increasingly spoken about in the early twenty-first century.

  Because 'class' had for so long been a forbidden word within the political establishment, the only inequalities discussed by politicians and the media were racial ones. The white working class had become another marginalized ethnic minority, and this meant that all their concerns were understood solely through the prism of race. They became presented as a lost tribe On the wrong side of history, disorientated by multiculturalism and obsessed with defending their identity from the cultural ravages of mass immigration. The rise of the idea of a 'white working class' fuelled a new liberal bigotry. It was OK to hate the white working class, because they were themselves a bunch of racist bigots.

  One defence of the term' chav' points out that 'Chavs themselves use the word, so what's the problem?' They have a point: some young working-class people have even embraced the word as a cultural identity. But the meaning of a word often depends on who is using it. When uttered by a heterosexual, 'queer' is clearly deeply homophobic; yet some gay men have proudly appropriated it as an identity. Similarly, although 'Paki' is one of the most offensive racist terms a white person can use in Britain, some young Asians use itas a term of endearment among their peers. In 2010, a controversy involving right-wing US shock-jock Dr Laura Schlessinger vividly illustrated this point. After using the word 'nigger' on-air eleven times in a conversation with an African-American caller, she attempted to defend herself on the grounds that black comedians and actors used it.

  In all cases, the meaning of the word changes depending on the speaker. When uttered by a middle-class person, 'chav' becomes a term of pure class contempt. Liam Cranley, the son of a factory worker who grew up in a working-class community in Greater Manchester, describes to me his reaction when a middle-class person uses the word: 'You're talking about family: you're talking about my brother, you're talking about my mum. You're talking about my friends.'

  This book will look at how chav-hate is far from an isolated phenomenon. In part, itis the product of a deeply unequal society. 'In my view, one of the key effects of greater inequality is toincrease feelings of superiority and inferiority in society,' says Richard Wilkinson, coauthor of the seminal The Spirit Level, a book that effectively demonstrates thelinkbetween inequality and a range of social problems. And indeed inequality is much greater today than it has been for most of our history. 'A widespread inequality is an extremely recent thing for most of the world,' argues the professor of human geography and' inequality expert', Danny Dorling.

  Demonizing people at the bottom has been a convenient way of justifying an unequal society throughout the ages. After all, in the abstract it would seem irrational that through an accident of birth, some should rise to the top while others remain trapped at the bottom. But what if you are on top because you deserve to be? What if people at the bottom are there because of a lack of skill, talent and determination?

  Yet it goes deeper than inequality. At the root of the demonizarion of working-class people is the legacy of a very British class war. Margaret Thatcher's assumption of power in 1979 marked the beginning of an all-out assault on the pillars of working-class Britain. Its institutions, like trade unions and council housing, were dismantled; its industries, from manufacturing to mining, were trashed; its communities were, in some cases, shattered, never to recover; and its values, like solidarity and collective aspiration, were swept away in favour of rugged individualism. Stripped of their power and no longer seen as a proud identity, the working class was increasingly sneered at, belittled and scapegoated. These ideas have caught on, in part, because of the eviction of working-class people from the world of the media and politics.

  Politicians, particularly in the Labour Party, once spoke of improving the conditions of working-class people. But today's consensus is all about escaping the working class. The speeches of politicians are peppered with promises to enlarge the middle class. 'Aspiration' has been redefined to mean individual self-enrichment: to scramble up the social ladder and become middle class. Social problems like poverty and unemployment were once understood as injustices that sprang from flaws within capitalism which, at the very least, had to be addressed. Yet today they have become understood as the consequences of personal behaviour, individual defects and even choice.

  The plight of some working-class people is commonly portrayed as a 'poverty of ambition' on their part. Itis their individual characteristics, rather than a deeply unequal society rigged in favour of the privileged, that is held responsible. In its extreme form, this has even led to a new Social Darwinism. According to the evolutionary psychiatrist Bruce Charlton, 'Poor people have a lower average IQ than wealthier people . .. and this means that a much smaller percentage of working-class people than professional-class people will be able to reach the normal entrance requirements of the most selective universities.

  The chav caricature is set to be at the heart of British politics in the years ahead. After the 2010 general election, a Conservative-led government dominated by millionaires took office with an aggressive programme of cuts, unparalleled since the early 1920s. The global economic crisis that began in 2007 may have been triggered by the greed and incompetence of a wealthy banking elite, yet it was working-class people who were--and are-s-expected to pay the price. But any attempt to shred the welfare state is fraught with political difficulties, and so the government swiftly resorted to blaming its users. .

  Take Jeremy Hunt, a senior Conservative minister with an estimated wealth of £4.1 million. To justify the slashing of welfare benefits, he argued that long-term claimants had to 'take responsibility' for the number of children that they had, and that the state would no longer fund large workless families. In reality, just 3.4 per cent of families in long-term receipt of benefits have four children or more. But Hunt was tapping into the age-old prejudice that the people at the bottom were breeding out of control, as well as conjuring up the tabloid caricature of the slobbish single mother who milks the benefits system by having lots of children. The purpose was clear: to hel
p justify a wider attack on some of the most vulnerable working-class people in the country.

  The aim of this book is to expose the demonization of working-class people; but it does not set out todemonize the middle class. We are all prisoners of our class, but that does not mean we have to be prisoners of our class prejudices. Similarly, it does not seek to idolize or glorify the working class. What it proposes is to show some of the reality of the working-class majority that has been airbrushed out of existence in favour of the 'chav' caricature.

  Above all, this book is not simply calling for a change in people's attitudes. Class prejudice is part and parcel of a society deeply divided by class. Ultimately it is not the prejudice we need to tackle; it is the fountain from which it springs.

  1

  The Strange Case of Shannon Matthews

  Every middle-class person has a dormant class prejudice which needs only a small thing to arouse it ... The notion that the working class have been absurdly pampered, hopelessly demoralised by doles, oldage pensions, free education, etc.... is still widely held; it has merely been a little shaken perhaps, by the recent recognition that unemployment does exist.

  -George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

  Why does the life of one child matter more than another's? On the face of it, the disappearances of Madeleine McCann in May 2007 and of Shannon Matthews in February 2008 bore striking victims were defenceless little girls. Both vanished similarities. Both

  without a trace: Madeleine from her bedroom while she slept, Shannon on the way home from a swimming class. Both cases featured tearful televised appeals from the devastated mothers clutching the favourite toys of their beloved daughters, begging for their safe return. It is true that while Madeleine disappeared in an upmarket holiday resort in the Portuguese Algarve, Shannon vanished from the streets of Dewsbury in West Yorkshire. And yet, in both cases, the public was faced with the same incomparable anguish of a mother who had lost her child.