Chavs - The Demonization of the Working Class

by Owen Jones

  Even as fans administered the kiss of life to those dying on the pitch, the police formed a cordon to prevent Liverpool fans reaching the Nottingham Forest supporters on the other side of the stadium. Fans trying to break through the cordon to carry the injured to ambulances were forcibly turned away because the police were reporting 'crowd trouble'. Although forty-four ambulances had arrived at the stadium, police only allowed one to enter. of the ninety-six Liverpool fans killed by the events of 15 April 1989, only fourteen even made it to hospital. The youngest victim was a ten-year-old boy.

  A subsequent inquiry held the police, under the command of Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, responsible because of''a combina- tion of inadequate safety procedures and defective crowd management'. But the police had no intention of accepting responsibility. So, instead, they attacked the victims. Police spread misinformation that the disas- ter was caused by the drunkenness of Liverpool fans. Duckenfield claimed that the locked gate had been forced open by Liverpool fans, and his officers were encouraged to manufacture evidence to prove their responsibility.

  On the Wednesday after the tragedy, the Sun newspaper launched a savage attack on the victims on the basis oflies circulated by the police. Fans picked the pockets of the dead and dying, it claimed. Police offi- cers, fire-fighters and ambulance crew were attacked by hooligans. Liverpool supporters urinated on the bodies of the dead. A police officer giving the kiss of life was beaten up. A dead girl had even been 'abused'. Even today the Sun remains widely boycotted in Merseyside, despite an apology for these lies fifteen years after the issue was pub- lished. In a decade of attacking and denigrating working-class Britain, Hillsborough plumbed new depths.

  How did the new, aggressive Tory class warriors win time and time again? As Geoffrey Howe boldly puts it, 'the case against us when we were doing it was never really very frightening.' The reasons have long been shrouded in myth. It is routinely claimed that Thatcher won record working-class support because of council house sales and popu- list law-and-order policies. It is true that such measures did push some working -class voters into the Tory fold, particularly in the south of the country.

  According to Howe, the Tories won them over because they 'have a respect for success and the desire to achieve it themselves. And so more naturally see our approach as being more favourable to that. And they're less concerned with tackling poverty, in a way.' This has always been at the heart of Tory strategy: to drive wedges between better-off and poorer working-class voters, while peddling the idea that there is 'room at the top' for those with the grit and determination.

  And yet the reality is that Thatcher came to power in 1979 with a smaller share of the vote than any winning party since W orld War II, excepting the two general elections of 1974. More people voted for Labour in 1979 (when they lost) than in 1974 (when they had won). It was the defection of Liberal voters to the Conservative camp that had enabled Thatcher's victory. Under the old One Nation leaders such as Anthony Eden, the Tories had regularly won around the 50 per cent mark: but the most Thatcher ever got was less than 44 per cent. When you factor in the number of people who actually voted-with the Labour-inclined poor being less likely to do so-- Thatcher never won the support of more than a third of eligible voters.

  Indeed, Thatcher sank to third place in some opinion polls during the first phase of her premiership. Then the Argentinean military junta came to her rescue. When they invaded the Falklands in 1982, barely anyone had even heard of the islands: but British victory in the war led to a wave of patriotic fervour. Even so, that was far from the most important reason she triumphantly returned to Downing Street in 1983, in spite of her ruinous policies.

  As Labour shifted to the left following Thatcher's victory, the party split, with the right forming the Social Democratic Party and making an Alliance with the Liberals. Reflecting on the catastrophe of 1983, Michael Foot believed that 'the main reason was the breakaway of the so-called Social Democrats. Their treachery brought the country Thatcherism.'18 Thatcher had lost half a million votes since 1979, but her fragmenting opposition allowed the Tories to come through the middle in constituencies across the country, giving her a landslide.

  Labour maintained its lead among unskilled working-class voters even in the ill-fated election of 1983. Among skilled and semi-skilled working -class voters, however, it did not regain its lead over the Tories until 1992-when almost all of those who were Alliance voters returned to their old political home. If Thatcher kept winning, it was primarily because the 60 per cent of skilled and semi-skilled workers who voted against her were hopelessly split.

  Yet Labour's repeated drubbing had consequences of its own. The idea that Labour gave a voice to working-class people, that it championed their interests and needs, was severely weakened during the 1980s. On issue after issue, Labour under Kinnock capitulated toThatcher's free-market policies. Any who resisted were sidelined.

  Above all, though, itwas the party's acute demoralization in the face of Thatcherite triumphalism that paved the waytothis surrender. For example, when I asked Kinnock how he managed to win what he called his 'tussle' with the unions to make them accept that Labour would not reverse Thatcher's union laws, he replied: 'Itwas made easier by the defeat, the size of the defeat in 1987, and the way in which I was determined to exploit that. And Iexploited it mercilessly, because by 1988, I heard myself saying more and more and more, "It's the only offer you're going to get." Even before the advent of New Labour, Thatcherism had ensured that the working class would be bereft of political champions. 'The real triumph was to have transformed not just one party, but two,' as Howe was later to put it.

  In only a decade or so, Thatcherism had completely changed how class was seen. The wealthy were adulated. All were now encouraged to scramble up the social ladder, and be defined by how much they owned. Those who were poor or unemployed had no one to blame but themselves. The traditional pillars of working-class Britain had been smashed to the ground. To be working class was no longer something to be proud of, never mind to celebrate. old working-class values, like solidarity, were replaced by dog-eat-dog individualism. No longer could working-class people count on politicians to fight their comer. The new Briton created by Thatcherism was a property-owning, middleclass individual who looked after themselves, their family and no one else. Aspiration meant yearning for a bigger car or a bigger house. As miners' leader chris Kitchen put it: 'Forget the community spirit and all that. If you can't make a profit, then it has to be stopped. That's always what Thatcher's ethos was about.'

  Those working-class communities who had been most shattered by Thatcherism became the most disparaged. They were seen as the leftbehinds, the remnants of an old world that had been trampled on by the inevitable march of history. There was to be no sympathy for them: on the contrary, they deserved to be caricatured and reviled.

  There was a time when working-class people had been patronized, rather than openly despised. Disraeli had called working-class people 'angels inmarble'. 'Salt of the earth' was another phrase once associated

  with them. Today, they are more likely than not to be called chavs. From salt of the earth to scum of the earth. This is the legacy of Thatcherism-the demonization of everything associated with the working class.

  3

  Politicians vs Chavs

  Now the working classes are no longer feared as a political peril they no longer need respect, and the uppers can revel in their superiority as if this were the eighteenth century.

  -Polly Toynbee

  Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron cannot be said to lack courage. When he trekked up to Glasgow East to support the Tory candidate in a 2008 by-election, there were a number of suitable observations he could have made given the facts on the ground. Glasgow has twice as many people out of work as the national average. More than half of the city's children live in poverty. The city tops Scottish league tables for drug addiction, overcrowded housing and pensioner poverty. Life expectancy in Glasgow's Calton
neighbourhood is fifty-four years

  -well over thirty years less than men in London's Kensington and Chelsea district, and lower than in the Gaza Strip.

  'I come here to apologize for the destruction of industry under Thatcher's rule during the 1980s,' Cameron could have said. 'Today's modem Conservatives recognize the effect this has had on jobs, on communities and on people's hopes and aspirations. It will never happen again.' Surely admitting the damage wrought by the policies of previous Conservative administrations could only have bolstered the electoral propects of a Tory candidate facing a stiff challenge in hostile territory.

  But David Cameron was more interested in reinforcing middle-class prejudice than in boosting the Tory vote in an unwinnable seat. 'We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it's as if these things--obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction-are purely external events, like a plague, or bad weather. of course, circum- stances-a-where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school and the choices your parents make-have a huge impact. But social prob- lems are often the consequence of the choices people make.'

  With the help of Tory briefings, newspapers left their readers in no doubt as to what Cameron was getting at. 'David Cameron tells the fat and the poor: take responsibility,' as The Times put it. 'Fat or poor? It's probably your own fault, Cameron declares,' was how the evidently delighted Daily Mail reacted. Cameron was tapping into sentiments that Thatcherism had made respectable: the idea that, more often than not, less fortunate people had only themselves to blame.

  Glasgow's working class had actually suffered from what David Cameron so breezily dismissed as 'external events': the collapse of British industry. The Tory leader was asking people to take responsi- bility for what happened when these jobs disappeared. The steelworks, which employed 30,000, had been the first to go; then the Templeton carpet factory; and, finally, Arrol's engineering works. Many smaller industries and suppliers dependent on these industrial hubs had disap- peared along with them. But Cameron made no mention of these inconvenient truths; instead he resorted to criticizing the victims.

  What made David Cameron's speech all the more remarkable is his own ultra-privileged background. There is no evidence that he has ever had any real contact with the people he was haranguing. Unlike the average Glaswegian, he owes everything to his family's wealth, power and connections. 'My father was a stockbroker, my grandfather was a stockbroker, my great-grandfather was a stockbroker,' as he once boasted to a gathering of City types.

  As a boy, Cameron attended Heatherdown Preparatory School in Berkshire, which counts Princes Andrew and Edward among its former pupils. At the precocious age of eleven he travelled by Concorde to the U.S with four classmates to celebrate the birthday of Peter Getty, the grandson of oil billionaire John Paul Getty. A former tutor, Rhidian Llewellyn, recalled seeing Cameron and his friends tucking into caviar, salmon and beefbordelaise. Cameron cheerfully raised a glass of'Dom Perignon '69, toasting: 'Good health, Sir!'

  It is well known that he spent his teenage years at Eton College, the traditional training ground of Britain's ruling elite. But before Cameron had even started university, he worked as an adolescent parliamentary researcher for his godfather, the Tory MP Tim Rathbone. A few months later, after his father pulled a few strings, Cameron went to Hong Kong to work for a multinational corporation. Following his graduation from Oxford University, where he was a member of the infamous toffs' drinking society the Bullingdon Club, he was parachuted into a job at Conservative Central Office, which had received a mysterious phone call from Buckingham Palace that can't have ruined his chances. '1 understand that you are to see David Cameron,' a man with a grand voice told a Central Office official. 'I've tried everything Ican to dissuade him from wasting his time on politics but I have failed. I am ringing to tell you that you are about to meet a truly remarkable youngman.'

  When Cameron left Central Office a few years later, his rarefied circle helped yet again to push him up the ladder. Annabel Astor, the mother of his equally privileged fiancee Samantha Sheffield, suggested to her friend Michael Green, chairman of Carlton Television, that he should hire him. 'She's a very formidable lady,' he later recalled. 'When she says to me, "Do something", I do it, As Cameron himself put it: 'I have the most corny CV possible. It goes: Eton, Oxford, Conservative Research Department, Treasury, Home Office, Carlton TV and then Conservative MP .' For an idea of just how disconnected Cameron is from the way the majority of us live, Dylan Jones's Cameron on Cameron has him describing his wife's upbringing as 'highly unconventional '-because 'she went to a day school' .

  There is one trait that Cameron shares with working-class people in Glasgow. He, like them, is a prisoner of his background. It was not inevitable that he would become prime minister, but whatever happened, it was pretty certain that he would die as he was born: in the lap of wealth and privilege. For hundreds of thousands of Glaswegians, it is equally likely that they will grow up with the same risks of poverty and unemployment as their parents.

  According to one of his old schoolmates, Cameron is an unrepentant social elitist. 'I think there's something very unconservative about believing that because of who you are, you are the right person to run the country. It's the natural establishment which believes in power for power's sake, the return of people who think they have a right to rule.' Or as another contemporary from Eton put it: 'He's a strange product of my generation ... He seems to represent a continuation of, Or perhaps regression to, noblesse ohlige Toryism. Do we really want to be ruled by Arthurian knights again?"

  But Cameron has indeed surrounded himself with privileged' Arthurian knights', a point forcefully put to me by a rather unexpected source. Rachel Johnson is no firebrand leftist. She is the sister of the better-known Conservative mayor of London, the floppy-haired, bumbling Boris. Her father, Stanley, was a Conservative member of the European Parliament, and her brother, jo, is a City journalist-turnedTory MP. She is a success story in her own right as editor of the Lady,a rather frumpy magazine that seems tobe largely read by posh women out in the shires. Indeed, the classifieds for nannies and domestic staff are among its big selling points. 'NANNY REQUIRED for delightful girls in West Byfleet,' reads one typical advert.

  And yet, despite being the sister of a senior Eton-educated Tory politician (although she argues that Boris Johnson's background is 'very different' from that of David Cameron), she expressed her disgust to me before the 2010 general election that 'the prospect is Old Etonians bankrolled by stockbrokers ... It's back to the days of Macmillan and Eden.' She has a point. All in all, twenty-three out of twenty-nine ministers in Cameron's first Cabinet were millionaires; 59 per cent went to private school, and just three attended a comprehensive.

  No wonder that, as one poll revealed, 52 per cent of us believe that 'a Conservative Government would mainly represent the interests of the well-off rather than the ordinary people.' It is a sentiment you will often hear expressed in working -class communities. As East Londoners Leslie, a home carer, and Mora, a pensioner, put it to me: 'The Conservatives, they're all for themselves" .. They look after the rich people, but not the poor people.'

  At the centre of Cameron's political philosophy is the idea that a person's life chances are determined by behavioural factors rather than economic background. 'What matters most to a child's life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting,' Cameron claims. Despite a grudging acceptance of 'a link between material poverty and poor life chances', it is clear that he believes the main driving force in an individual's life is personal behaviour. This is, of course, politically convenient. If you think the solution to poverty is parents being nicer to their kids, then why would it matter if you cut people's benefits?

  No one has endorsed this Cameronian attitude to class inequalities more than former Tory leader lain Duncan Smith. After Cameron became prime minister, he appointed Duncan Smith as secretary of state for work and pensions--effectively the guardian of the British welf
are state. Through his think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Duncan Smith has developed the idea that poverty is not about lacking money: it is due to problems like lack of discipline, family break-up, and substance abuse.

  As the darling of the Tory grass roots, right-wing Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, put it: 'It follows that you do not end poverty by giving money to the poor: a theory that British welfarism has amply demonstrated over 60 years." David Cameron himself welcomed one CSJ report with a highly questionable statement: 'Families matter because almost every social problem that we face comes down to family stability.' Not lack of jobs, or class division: 'family stability' explains all. If you are less well off, then itis your behaviour that has to be changed, according to this Tory vision.

  These ideas are the foundation stones of Cameron's semi-apocalyptic vision of 'Broken Britain'. Social problems affecting particular poor working-class communities are first exaggerated and then portrayed as representative. Each time a tragic incident hit the headlines, Cameron seized on it as evidence.

  For example, the nation was shocked in 2009 by the torture and attempted murder of two little boys, aged nine and eleven, by two other young boys in the former mining village of Edlington in South Yorkshire. The aggressors had themselves endured years of abuse. But for Cameron, the attacks were proof that the country had collapsed into what he described as a 'social recession'. 'On each occasion, are we just going to say this is an individual case?' Cameron thundered. 'That there aren't links to what is going on in our wider society, in terms of family breakdown, in terms of drug and alcohol abuse, in terms of violent videos, in terms of many of the things that were going wrong in that particular family?'