Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

by Owen Jones

Thatcherism remodelled British society.

Since 2010, despite Tory leader David Cameron’s initial avowals of moderation, his government has busied itself with an ambitious project for rolling back the state in an effort to complete Thatcher’s work.

It was not just politicians and newspapers, either, who began to attack the poor.

Brown had pronounced the end of ‘boom and bust’, and it seemed as though a future of rising living standards beckoned for all.

The Child Poverty Action Group warned that poor families faced a ‘triple whammy’ of benefit, support and service cuts,

But it remained boom time for the people at the top.

George Osborne had claimed ‘we’re all in this together’.

the demonization of the working class

continued with New Labour and has gained further momentum under the coalition.

‘ The historic opportunities for the left required imaginative thinking and decisive action in the early stages of taking power, signalling a new direction. The other choice was, of course, to adapt to Thatcherite, neo-liberal terrain. There were plenty of indications that this would be New Labour's preferred direction. And so it turned out. In a profound sense, New Labour has adapted to neo-liberal terrain - but in a distinctive way.’ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/aug/06/society.labour MY COMMENT HERE - Check out how Tiny Blair ‘got into bed with the press’ this enabled the sun to claim “It was this Un that Won It” headline. He also became godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s grand child.

an industrial world that was finished off by the Thatcherite experiment.

the vacuum left by the massive disappearance of industrial work was often not filled

properly, leaving entire communities bereft of secure, well-regarded work.

For the first time since the World War II, the

next generation will be worse off than the generation before

when the jobs and the apprenticeships that supported them disappeared, there was nothing to take their place.

In 1979, Britain was one of the most equal Western societies. After three decades of Thatcherism, it is now one of the least equal.

Britain is a hyper-consumerist society. Status has so much to do with what we own or wear. The vast majority of young people want to be part of this consumerism, but many face huge financial obstacles.

what united the rioters and looters

anger and frustration will surely only increase—and unless it is organized and given political direction, it could

manifest itself in the ugliest of ways.

2011 was a year of turmoil across the globe: not least because of a deep...

In Britain, the new age of dissent arrived on 10 November 2010, when the National Union of Students called a demonstration

Most of those who had taken to the street were newly politicized, and they found the experience of marching alongside young people both exhilarating and empowering.

Arguing that public sector pensions were becoming unaffordable,

June 2011, hundreds of thousands of teachers and civil servants went on strike.

On 30 November, lollipop ladies, bin collectors, nurses and other workers went on strike.

deep sense of injustice that had taken root since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

But such a movement is impossible unless a number of myths are debunked: that we’re all essentially middle class; that class is an outdated concept; and that social problems are the failings of the individual.

How has hatred of working-class

class people become so socially acceptable?

tapped into the fear and loathing felt by some middle-class Londoners

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.

disorientated by multiculturalism and obsessed with defending their identity from the cultural ravages of mass

immigration.

‘In my view, one of the key effects of greater inequality is to increase feelings of superiority and inferiority in society,’

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.

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.

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.

The popular image of the working class is inextricably tied up with football, the sole surviving mass working-class pursuit in an era that has seen all other vestiges of working-class pride, from the traditional industries of coal mining, textiles and engineering to the historic links between

demonized, but even dehumanized, had a stomach-churning role in the worst tragedy in the history of British football: the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster.

Lord Justice Taylor found that, rather than being a disaster caused by fans, the key factor was a ‘failure of police control’.

the Sun newspaper launched a savage attack on the victims on the basis of lies circulated by the police.

It is routinely claimed that Thatcher

won record working-class support because of council house sales and populist law-and-order policies. It is true that such measures did push some working-class voters into the Tory fold,

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’

Thatcherism had completely changed how class was seen.

poor or unemployed had no one to blame but themselves.

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-e...