Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

by Owen Jones

Poverty and unemployment were no longer to be seen as social problems, but more to do with individual moral failings. Anyone could make it if they tried hard enough, or so the myth went. If people were poor, it was because they were lazy, spendthrift or lacked aspiration.

Demonization serves a useful purpose in a divided society like our own, because it promotes the idea that inequality is rational: it is simply an expression of differing talent and ability. Those at the bottom are supposedly there because they are stupid, lazy or otherwise morally questionable. Demonization is the ideological backbone of an unequal society.

cannot put it better than Stephen Pound, one of the few Labour MPs with a background in manual work, who told me: I genuinely think that there are people out there in the middle classes, in the church and the judiciary and politics and the media, who actually fear, physically fear the idea of this great, gold bling-dripping, lumpenproletariat that might one day kick their front door in and eat their au pair.

Being born into a prosperous middle-class family typically endows you with a safety net for life. If you are not naturally very bright, you are still likely to go far and, at the very least, will never experience poverty as an adult. A good education compounded by your parents’ ‘cultural capital’, financial support and networks will always see you through. If you are a bright child born into a working-class family, you do not have any of these things. The odds are that you will not be better off than your parents. Britain’s class system is like an invisible prison.

Her voice started to break. ‘Teenagers, I mean young people and teenagers at the time when Tony Blair got in, they were dancing and cheering in the street, and that broke my heart.’ Her eyes were now welling up. ‘Because they were so disillusioned! I mean we all thought—“Oh, he’ll do us the world of good” … No, no. He didn’t do nothing for nobody. I don’t think he did anything even in Durham, where he comes from. So it’s just been one big lie, one repeated lie after another.’