Hold Your Head Up High for Not “Making It”
written by: Nick Gerrard
Social relationships do not just skip in and out of existence depending on whether or not an individual self-identifies as being working or upper class, or indeed because people say they don’t believe in class. Wasn’t it Thatcher and Blair banging on about a classless society whilst sticking it to the less well off in society? Social differences are facts. There exist different groups of people who have a certain political and social role in society as a whole.
It’s not a question of being proud because of your class, it’s about people’s traditions, culture, and heritage. Working-class traditions, way of life, political beliefs change all the time.
Upper-class politics, traditions are what they are…er. Rowing and yachting regattas, weekend shootings at daddy’s country estate, buggering the bursar at private school.
As for middle-class, god knows what they are…rugger buggers attending the proms…, tea with the vicar, village jamborees, country dancing, pony riding, watching Yes, minister and the Good life…god knows. It hasn’t changed much at all, really.
What is working-class culture…Jesus, it can be a load of stuff…Negative and positive, right wing and left wing. Struggle and crime, protest and violence…You take what you want from it, you mix and match,
What I always find a bit weird, though, is this attitude that the working-class guy did well. The few who got through to Uni despite their working-class upbringing. You made it, must have been awful! Well done!. As if aspiring to be middle class and upper class is the goal, the top, the best you can be. “She’s done well, got into Uni.” It strikes me as kind of patronising. People who spend their life working for the local community, for their Union, spend a lifetime caring for sick people for little reward, people who worked their bollocks off all their life in a boring job to put food on the table, are never held up as achievers, whereas the few working class people who manage to better themselves despite their disadvantages are held up as some kind of example for people to aspire to be. And I’m not knocking working-class people bettering themselves, or going to University, I wish that more people did and could do both.
I always find it very odd also when people tell me to shut up about being working class or bang on that class doesn’t exist, and the working class are all reactionary anyway, etc. I agree, not all working-class culture is about struggle and protest. But it is a lot more than just beer, reality TV, and voting conservative. And all people take things and relate to things from their background. I very often hear people who went to University sitting around talking about how great times they were. Is it not Ok for people who never went to Uni to talk about their different experiences?
Forget about it, let it go, move on, it’s not where you are from, it’s where you are at!
But what are you trying to tell me to forget about? Strange, but I don’t notice middle-class people being routinely told to “give it a rest” about their origins because they’re “irrelevant”. Shut up about your family history, your university years, your local culture…I don’t hear black people being told to forget their culture, their traditions. Such an attitude doesn’t even make sense. If, say, the average length of a childhood-adolescence is 18 years, and even disregarding the fact that most of us take much longer to find our feet, that’s still at least 18 years’ worth of experience, working-class people are expected to blithely toss aside at the first taste of a pulled pork bun on a shovel. Then, after 18, the jobs worked in, the relationships made, the experiences should all be ignored because they are…‘Working class.’ Oddly, this only happens with class – years of experience in any other field would never be treated so dismissively. No one stands in pubs telling University students or doctors, or lawyers, “Your 18 years of experience means absolutely nothing.” Your life as a refugee is unimportant. The years you suffered as a gay person mean nothing!”
But people think it is OK to tell me I should forget about all of that. Forget about your past, your experiences; forget about the working class, it’s not relevant anymore!
The industrial working class as it was doesn’t exist anymore in the UK (It does exist in China, India, and South America, and is growing, and all those lessons and struggles the working class in the UK experienced are being experienced again elsewhere). But the UK is still made up basically of working-class people, higher middle-class, and the upper class. The working class now is made up of unemployed and low-paid workers, zero-hour workers in blue and white collar jobs. Teachers are working class, of course they are, nurses, self-employed people, skilled workers, the list goes on. The upper class and higher middle class control the system and run it for their benefit. They benefit from the lower classes’ disadvantages. They have the money to send their kids to the best private schools and the best Universities, and then occupy the top positions in the establishment, whether in the Judiciary, business, or top management positions in state enterprises and government. But there exists a body of individuals within capitalist society that is systemically denied any meaningful participation in the governance and administration of society and the economy. Its attempts to seize political or economic power by means of labour struggles, etc., are heavily suppressed. Collectively, it is exploited and economically enslaved by the ruling class, and this is watched over by the upper middle class. That body is the working class. Its existence is a fact.
The fact remains that 5% of the population go to private schools, but take up over 50% of places at University.
These 5% then take up a huge proportion of top posts in governing the country, and occupy the top jobs as well as running the biggest corporations, businesses, newspapers, TV, etc.
I remember during the 80s the NUS would not let kids from FE colleges (i.e. working-class kids) join, but would elect a Dalek onto the national exe…if that ain’t class politics….
Of course, it is also where you are at. And the ruling elite are at it.
No one can deny that the fight for progressive change in society doesn’t come from middle-class people as well as working-class people. And that is indeed about where you’re at.
And what is our culture if not one of class?
Am I proud to be British or English? Why? I think it is far healthier to be proud of your class than to be proud of some flag-waving nationalist empty loyalty.
What have the proms and Rule Britannia got to do with me? Nothing
Eton and Harrow, and Oxbridge? Nothing.
The Queen and the empire? Nothing.
What has got to do with me is what I choose to take out of the culture I know.
So, I take the good and the bad.
I take the history of the working class fightbacks. From Peterloo to Grenfell, communities helping each other as the class running their area stood by.
I take the struggle of the miners, and the solidarity of the Asian and Black community in Brum, donating the most money in support of the strike.
It took the miners at the 1985 Labour Party forcing the conference in Bournemouth to pass a resolution committing the party to the support of LGBT, due to block voting support from the National Union of Mineworkers. After the Lesbian and gay supporters of the miners.
I’ll take Saltley gate; I’ll take the Levellers, the diggers, the Unemployed marches and unions.
A fault of the working class is that they don’t know about these struggles, well, many don’t, but they should.
What is taught in school is bullshit that has nothing to do with me; the history of the Empire, the Queens and kings…the history of the struggle of ordinary people is not taught and should be. Those traditions and that history should be preserved and taught.
The low wage workers trying to organise unions in the London docklands were very interested to hear about the struggles that were waged by Irish and Jewish workers for the same reasons in the same part of London, and that a struggle had also taken place by the print workers in the same area against the sun and the times, for union recognition in 1985.
All these things are a good culture to have something to be proud of.
Along with the humour, the storytelling, the music, the fashion, and more.
Of course, it is not all positive. We can look at the rise of the Fascists in the 70s, but I prefer to look at the anti-fascist struggle against them. We can look at Thatcher’s support, but I prefer to look at the solidarity for the miners. I prefer to look at punk and two-tone and the positive things they brought up. I prefer to remember the proud working class history of my football club and not the bullshit working class culture of violence and clan fighting during the seventies and eighties (Even though I understand it, and was involved in it)
And there are loads wrong with the working class, and indeed many working class people fight and have fought against the way people live their lives, and people choose to get away from many aspects of working class culture. But it’s not all about benefits street, and shite food and beer.
In fact, many worst aspects of working-class culture are now basically middle-class too. ‘Lad’ culture is a good example…loads of middle-class wankers trying to slum it with the working-class plebs. I spent my youth ( I spent a lot of my youth drinking and fighting too, to be honest) trying to get away from ‘Lad’ culture and the work in the factory, get married, a bit of crime, drink on a Friday, fight at the footy on a Saturday, lifestyle…I dismissed it as bullshit. But I discovered positive aspects of working-class culture, aspects that are worth being proud of.
The ability to fight through hard times.
The ability to come together to fight against injustice.
The ability to be individual, humorous, and hard-working.
The ability to help others and fight for others.
There are loads wrong with working-class traditions and lifestyle, but the working class is a tradition, a culture, a social heritage, and a history. Being poor is none of those things.
When I watch England lose in the footy, I am a proud what? I’m English, proud to be. But proud of what? I’m proud of the working class traditions, values, and culture. I am not there to be proud of the bleeding Queen, the bloody Generals and toffs, the Unis and the private schools, Rule bleeding Britainia and Tea and scones. I am proud of my area, my friends, family, and mates, the history and music, the struggles of my class, not the ruling classes.
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