WHO IS WORKING CLASS NOW?

In an excellent article, The truth about Labour's class war, Gareth Roberts focusses on Labour’s class spite, which he identifies as being an intra-attack or civil war, by the progressive public sector middle class on the private sector version. Above all, on their values and self-esteem, using money and mockery as weapons.

He's spot on about the constant spite of public-sector middle class types - truly horrendous people - with and under whom I worked for 18 years, in teaching. Not all of them are horrible but as a group nobody likes these people - they don’t even like themselves. But I think Roberts underestimates how intensely these progressives also loathe (and fear) the genuine working class. I saw this constantly, especially in the frequent cruelty many middle class female teachers gleefully showed to working class English boys. They relentlessly bully them, venting their ideological fury and guilt.

But what is 'working class' now? The term tends to be fudged politically - and in fact completely transformed - into ‘working people’. This notorious dishonesty was much discussed in the context of Labour’s lie about ‘not increasing taxes on working people’. Regardless of this fraudulent approach, class is still the most important social force in this country, though how it’s manifested changes and is often disguised. It underpins so much in our polity but is very difficult to be honest about.

Needless to say, this checklist below is meant to be provocative and is constructed without any worry for 'offence' caused or to reflect my likes/dislikes. But it’s written by an unescapably middle class person, albeit one who felt at ease with very few from that background - either in the public or private sectors.

To be genuinely working class, I propose that you need to satisfy all of these points, which are sometimes aesthetic and attitudinal aspects but made without consciously trying to valorise or demonise that class description:

1. Didn't attend either a public school or a university.
2. Not in public sector management or a corporation's management, nor work in an office or hold any official position (such as MP or Councillor).
3. Could drink in a pub more than once a week, without eating anything there.
4. Could holiday in Benidorm without worrying or thinking it worthy of comment.
5. Be over the age of 18 and could - in extremis - have a fight.
6. Could have someone else think you're working class, instinctively.

When working, I ticked numbers 2, 3, 4, 5. But I'm a middle-class pub-bore, often misanthropic. My wife is from a South Wales mining family, but fails on 1, 3 and 6. She vehemently proclaims her working class identity, and isn't happy with my list!

I was especially fascinated with how the border-line occupations would emerge. In saying this, I’m accepting that the classification very largely - but not entirely - depends on someone’s job.

So, is a hairdresser working class? I’d say almost always yes, but sometimes in the position of feeling that they aren’t and need to prove so. Whereas someone working in advertising or as a policy advisor on diversity (both utterly worthless professions) cannot be working class, regardless of what they claim to think or feel (see especially points 4 and 6). Nor can any politician (see point 2). I’d say more middle class professions have absolutely no social value or purpose than do working class ones; I almost proposed some point on this but found it impossible to capture the idea.

I’m troubled by one particular point. Many proudly working class occupations - nursing and sport management (‘science’?) for example - are now things that can be studied at university. I think the motivation to do so is entirely middle class and becomes self-defining. The job can be - and probably is - far better done by someone who hasn’t ‘studied’, despite the obvious skill and technical expertise needed. But it seems very provocative to claim anyone who’s attended any university fails the test.

I’ll still stick with it though.