The Demonization and Ghettoization of the Working Class

The modern British working class has becomean object of fear and ridicule. Their demonization as feckless, criminalizedand ignorant by media and politicians alike has also become acceptable by the gentrifiedyoung middle-class, who otherwise praises itself with tolerance and acceptance.This fact has become stereotyped by one hate-filled word: chavs. Owen Jones’well-argued debut thatI have read just recently explores how the working class has developed from astrong part in British society to the ‘scum of earth’. In the media, throughcharacters like Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard or Jade Goody the contemporaryworking class gets ridiculed to a chav caricature. But also in other parts ofEurope the sneering at the socially deprived is everyday media-life. In Germanycountless docusoaps are relying on theinterest of viewers to mock and caricature the under class.  Jones argues that this development wasinitiated through the downfall of the previous strong British (trade) unions evokedby the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher at the end of the 1970s andcontinued by Tony Blair’s New Labour and has recently also been associated with David Cameron’s term of the Broken Britain. However, Jonesaspiration lies beyond explaining how the working class has become demonized,moreover he advocates for a revivified debate about class in general terms.Thatcherism’s - or neoliberalism’s - attempt to eradicate the working classthrough igniting the aspiration for everyone to become middle-class under one’sown stem also has demonized a debate relying on the division of the society byclass.  The aspiration for thefinancially deprived very often just means to ‘own more things’. And thisaspiration means economic growth in the neoliberalist thinking. The“non-aspirational working class” even had no place in New Labour, the partyoriginating out of British working class. Tony Blair declared upon assumingoffice in 1997: “ The New Britain is a meritocracy.” But when Michael Young wrotethe book TheRise of the Meritocracy back in 1958, “Meritocracy” was not intended todescribe a desirable society – far from it. It was meant to raise the alarm atwhat Britain could become. Young warnedthat its consequences would mean “that the poor and the disadvantaged would bedone down, and in fact they have been… it is hard indeed in a society thatmakes so much of merit to be judged as having none.” All these developmentshave fostered growing inequality in British society, one of the most, if not THEmost, unequal society in the Western world. It was not for the government toredress inequalities, because the conditions of the poor would only improve ifthey changed their behaviour. 

The chav charicature: Little Britain's Vicky Pollard pictured as a teenage mum in front of a council estate. Image Source: BBC

 Looking at British cities renders inequalityand also the demonization of the working class visible. The urban councilestate tenant has become the prototype of the chavcaricature. Jones argues that Thatcher’s Right to Buy schemeadded to this fact. Through this policy, which gives council estates tenantsthe right to buy the home they are living in, in areas where demand for housingexceeds supply, the stock of social housing was depleted faster than it wasreplaced. The remaining stock of council housing was concentrated inundesirable areas with little employment opportunity, further isolating andstigmatising the tenants. Due to the shortage in council homes only the poorestof the poor are entitled to move into a subsidised home, a fact that hasdrastically reduced the diversity in these areas. Instead of working againstthese developments in Cameron’s conservative led government this crisis willget more severe. The Tories called for the scrapping of lifetime counciltenancy agreements. Instead only the most needy would be eligible for five-yearor, at most, ten-year agreements. If it was decided that their conditions hadimproved sufficiently, they could be turfed out of their homes and made to rentprivately. Jones suggests that “Council estates would become nothing more thantransit camps for the deprived”. Through these policies combined with plans tocap benefits to workless families, low-income people face eviction fromrelatively richer areas, forcing them into effective ghettoes. According toestimates by London councils, as many as 250,000 people were at risk of losingtheir homes or being forced to move. This form of social “cleansing” would bethe biggest population movement in Britain since World War II.  Jones speculates that these facts arenot only economically motivated but also politically, since it would lead toand exodus of Labour voters from London. But critisims also comes from withinthe party, as for example London’s mayor, the Conservative Boris Johnson, cameout publicly to say that he would not accept “Kosovo-stylesocial cleansing” in the capital. There is a reasonable fear that underthese circumstances London and its still diverse neighbourhoods like theborough of Hackney for example develops towards a homogenised urban inner cityarea with a belt of ghettoes of low-income people at the fringes, comparable toParis and its belt of banlieues.

These types of displacement have a profoundimpact on the cosmopolitan character of cities. They add to the contemporary developmentthat cities are under threat to loose their capacity to foster diversity andbring together people of different classes, ethnicities and religions throughcommerce, politics, and civic practices, as argued by SaskiaSassen. The growing ghettoization of the poor and the rich – albeit in verydifferent types of ghettos – leaves the middle-classes to bring urbanity tothese cities. And the middle-classes arguably are not always the most diversegroups in the city. Sassen argues further, that displacement (from countrysideto town or from the city centre to the fringes or even within the city) doesnot add to a rich diversity but rather becomes a source of insecurity.

Owen Jones’ book makes us well aware ofthese insecurities contemporary society is facing. Although the case heestablished is very UK specific it is a topic that addresses most of Westerngovernments - and cities. In his closing statement he anticipated a revolutionthat the current occupy movement is leading:

“At its heart, the demonization of theworking class is the flagrant triumphalism of the rich who, no longerchallenged by those below them, instead point and laugh at them … But it hasnot be this way. The folly of a society organized around the interests ofplutocrats has been exposed by an economic crisis sparked by the greed of thebankers. The new class politics would be a start, to at least build acounterweight to the hegemonic, unchallenged class politics of the wealthy.Perhaps then a new society based around people’s needs, rather than privateprofit, would be feasible once again. Working-class people have, in the past,organized to defend their interests; they have demanded to be listened to, andforced concessions from the hands of the rich and the powerful. Ridiculed orignored though they may be, they will do so again.”

The last weeks have shown that the globaloccupiers have found a way to organize to defend their interests. And theworking class is part of it. The city is the very site of this revolution.


Related to the decline of British working class: Aditya Chakrabortty's recent article on why Britain doesn't make things any more.