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In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminalized and ignorant a vast, underprivileged swathe of society whose members have become stereotyped by one, hate-filled word: chavs.
In this acclaimed investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from “salt of the earth” to “scum of the earth.” Exposing the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, he portrays a far more complex reality. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient figleaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems and to justify widening inequality. Based on a wealth of original research, Chavs is a damning indictment of the media and political establishment and an illuminating, disturbing portrait of inequality and class hatred in modern Britain. This updated edition includes a new chapter exploring the causes and consequences of the UK riots in the summer of 2011.
- Sales Rank: #844682 in Books
- Published on: 2012-05-22
- Released on: 2012-05-22
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.01" w x 5.10" l, .79 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Review
“A passionate and well-documented denunciation of the upper-class contempt for the proles that has recently become so visible in the British class system.”—Eric Hobsbawm, Guardian
“A work of passion, sympathy and moral grace.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times
“A bold attempt to rewind political orthodoxies; to reintroduce class as a political variable ... It moves in and out of postwar British history with great agility, weaving together complex questions of class, culture and identity with a lightness of touch. Jones torches the political class to great effect.”—Jon Cruddas, Independent (Book of the Week)
“It is a timely book. The white working class seems to be the one group in society that it is still acceptable to sneer at, ridicule, even incite hatred against ... Forensically ... Jones seeks to explain how, thanks to politics, the working class has shifted from being regarded as ‘the salt of the earth to the scum of the earth.’”—Carol Midgley, Times (Book of the Week)
“Superb and angry.”—Polly Toynbee, Guardian
“Seen in the light of the riots and the worldwide Occupy protests, his lucid analysis of a divided society appears uncannily prescient.”—Matthew Higgs, Artforum
“As with all the best polemics, a luminous anger backlights his prose.”—Economist
“Chavs is persuasively argued, and packed full of good reporting and useful information ... [Jones] makes an important contribution to a revivified debate about class.”—Lynsey Hanley, Guardian
“A lively, well-reasoned and informative counterblast to the notion that Britain is now more or less a classless society.”—Sean O'Hagan, Observer
“A trenchant exposure of our new class hatred and what lies behind it.”—John Carey, author of The Intellectuals and the Masses
“The stereotyping and hatred of the working class in Britain, documented so clearly by Owen Jones in this important book, should cause all to flinch. Reflecting our high levels of inequality, the stigmatization of the working class is a serious barrier to social justice and progressive change.”—Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, authors of The Spirit Level
“Eloquent and impassioned.”—Andrew Neather, Evening Standard
“Jones’s analysis of the condition of the working class is very astute ... A book like this is very much needed for the American scene, where the illusion is similarly perpetuated by the Democrats that the middle-class is all that matters, that everyone can aspire to join the middle-class or is already part of it.”—Anis Shivani, Huffington Post
“Everybody knows what a chav is, it seems, but no one is a chav. But then it’s a word unlike any other in current usage ... A new book, Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, by first-time author Owen Jones ... has thrown the word into the spotlight all over again.”—Carole Cadwalladr, Observer
“A blinding read.”—Suzanne Moore, Guardian
“[A] thought-provoking examination of a relatively new yet widespread derogatory characterization of the working class in Britain ... edifying and disquieting in equal measure.”—Publishers Weekly
“A fiery reminder of how the system has failed the poor.”—Peter Hoskin, Daily Beast
“Mr. Jones’s book is a cleareyed examination of the British class system, and it poses this brutal question: ‘How has hatred of working-class people become so socially acceptable?’ His timely answers combine wit, left-wing politics and outrage.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times
About the Author
Owen Jones is a writer, commentator and activist. He writes frequently for the Guardian, Independent and New Statesman, and has worked in Parliament as a trade union lobbyist and parliamentary researcher, helping Labour plan backbench rebellions on issues ranging from civil liberties to workers’ rights. He lives in London.
Most helpful customer reviews
69 of 73 people found the following review helpful.
Class War
By Diziet
I hesitated to title this review 'Class War' - it seems so out-of-date, so 'old Labour'. But that is what this book is about. It is about the sustained economic, social and ideological attack on the majority of the population of this country.
The idea of 'chavs' (US equivalent probably 'trailer trash') is, these days, so pervasive that as I read the first few chapters, I had my doubts. The book seemed merely an apologia for a post-industrial lumpenproletariat, a group of alienated misfits beyond the reach of the rest of society. But Jones' analysis is far wider, deeper and more powerful than that and deserves as wide an audience as possible.
The book starts with a shocking comparison between the media coverage of Shannon Matthews and Madeleine McCann. The point is forcefully made that the coverage clearly showed a deep-rooted class prejudice - and ignorance. The McCann's come from the same class as the majority of journalists, leader writers and 'opinion formers'. The same journalists have virtually no experience of the world of Shannon Matthews. Jones make the point in a quote from Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror:
'Increasingly, the lives of journalists have become divorced from those of the rest of us. 'I can't think of a national newspaper editor with school-age kids who has them in a state school,' [Maguire] reflects. 'On top of that, most journalists at those levels are given private medical insurance. So you're kind of taken out of everyday life.' (P27)
Jones continues:
'More than anything, it is this ignorance of working-class life that explains how Karen Matthews became a template for people living in working-class communities. 'Perhaps it's because we're all middle class that we tut at the tragic transition of aspirational working class to feckless, feral underclass, and sneer at the brainless blobs of lard who spend their days on leatherette sofas in front of plasma TVs, chewing the deep-fried cud over Jeremy Kyle,' speculated commentator Christina Patterson. 'We've got a word for them too: "Chavs''' (P27)
(Jeremy Kyle is, in this context, roughly equivalent to Jerry Springer, but without the humour). So how did this come about? How has the whole working class come to be seen as a 'feckless, feral underclass'? Jones continues with a look at 'Class Warriors'. He suggests that:
'Thatcherism fought the most aggressive class war in British history...Thatcher wanted to end the class war - but on the terms of the upper crust of British society. 'Old fashioned Tories say there isn't any class war,' declared Tory newspaper editor Peregrine Worsthorne. 'New Tories make no bones about it: we are class warriors and we expect to be victorious.' (P48)
This class war was waged as an attack on collectivism - the promotion of an aggressive individualism that sees success or failure as a purely personal matter. Everyone should naturally aspire to be middle class. This is not simply the adoption of a neoliberal free market economic philosophy but also an essentially neoconservative cultural approach - defining whole working class communities as 'chavs'. And it worked, thoroughly and conclusively:
'Even before the advent of New Labour, Thatcherism had ensured that the working class would be bereft of political champions. 'The real triumph was to have transformed not just one party, but two,' as [Geoffrey] Howe was later to put it.' (P71)
This reminded me very much of Peter Oborne's 'The Triumph of the Political Class'. Hardly a left-wing firebrand, Oborne details the formation of a metropolitan elite. Oborne suggests:
'The Media Class and the Political Class share identical assumptions about life and politics. They are affluent, progressive, middle- and upper-middle class. This triumphant metropolitan elite has completely lost its links with a wider civil society.' ('The Triumph of the Political Class', P259)
In case there was any doubt left, Jones states:
'New Labour, through programmes like its welfare reform, has propagated the chav caricature by spreading the idea that people are poor because they lack moral fibre. Surveys show that attitudes towards poverty are currently harder than they were under Thatcher. If people observe that even Labour holds the less fortunate to be personally responsible for their fate, why should they think any different? No wonder the image of communities teeming with feckless chavs has become so ingrained in recent years.' (P94)
Jones details how even supposedly liberal opinion can come to regard the working class as 'chavs'. By emphasising that the working class are predominantly white working class, liberal opinion can ignore the economic underpinnings of class in favour of, as Jones puts it, 'racialization':
'It's one of the ways people have made their snobbery socially acceptable,' says journalist Johann Hari: 'by acting as though they are defending immigrants from the "ignorant" white working class." (P116)
Although, in the past, television representations of working class life might have included Alf Garnett (US Archie Bunker), they also included shows like 'The Likely Lads' and 'The Rag Trade'. Nowadays working class representations seem limited to Vicky Pollard, Wayne and Waynetta, 'Shameless' (soon to be a US remake) or even 'Eden Lake' ('[i]t may not come as a surprise that the Daily Mail treated Eden Lake as though it was some kind of drama-documentary, quavering that it was 'all too real' and urging every politician to watch it.' P131)
The representations of the working class have changed as the economic conditions have changed. With the deindustrialization of large swathes of the country, the 'flexibilization' of the work force, the increasing numbers of low-paid, low-skill and part-time jobs, the labour market has become an 'hourglass' economy:
'highly paid jobs at one end, and swelling numbers of low-paid, unskilled jobs at the other. The middle-level occupations, on the other hand, are shrinking.' (P152)
This has significantly weakened the opportunities for collective action. When staff turnover is high, union power is limited. The attacks on the remaining bastions of union activity continue. The latest targets are public sector workers who are currently being portrayed as over-paid, pampered and secure, which is so far from the truth it is almost laughable. Given the 'hourglass economy', commentators who point to a lack of working class aspiration are rather missing the point.
Even after all this, the class war continues. Turning on the radio this morning, I heard that Vince Cable (Lib Dem Business Secretary in the current coalition government) is threatening further anti-union legislation. In the same news bulletin, it was announced that '[over the last 30 years] wages grew by over 100% for judges, barristers and solicitors, while they fell by 5% for forklift truck drivers and 3% for packers and bottlers.' (BBC 'TUC: Wage stagnation over decades as income gap widens').
After all that, it is very difficult to not agree with Owen Jones when he says:
'...as a government of millionaires led by an Old Etonian prepares to further demolish the living standards of millions of working class people, the time has rarely been so ripe for a new wave of class politics.' (P257)
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
Fine study of class hatred in Britain
By William Podmore
This brilliant book examines the rise of ruling class hatred of the British working class. Rubbishing the working class goes hand in hand with worship of capital and capitalists.
Who are the working class? Those who have to sell their labour power to live - the vast majority of the British people. We are not defined by our level of income, education or housing.
Jones writes, "At the root of the demonization of working class people is the legacy of a very British class war." Thatcher attacked the working class, trying to destroy our industry, our services, our trade unions, communities and values. As Sir Alan Budd, then the Treasury's chief economist, said, "unemployment was an extremely desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes."
Thatcher said, "Class is a Communist concept", "Morality is personal" and "poverty is not material but behavioural." The Labour Party and the media have embraced these themes.
Britain has vast and growing inequality. In 2010, the richest 1,000 got a record 30 per cent richer in just one year. Manufacturing jobs are being destroyed, and only part-time and/or service jobs are offered instead. In 2008, the median manufacturing wage was £24,343, in services the median was £20,000. Poverty already affects 13.5 million of us, more than 20 per cent of the population. British workers now work longer hours, 41.4 a week, than workers in any other EU member countries save Rumania and Bulgaria.
Under Labour the number of sports and social clubs fell by 55 per cent, post offices by 39 per cent, swimming pools by 21 per cent and libraries by 7 per cent; the number of betting shops rose by 39 per cent and casinos by 27 per cent.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development predicts that the government cuts will add 1.6 million to the unemployed. Conservative minister Bob Neill has admitted, "Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt" and "Those in most need will bear the burden of cuts."
More than 80 per cent of the jobs created in Britain since 1997 have gone to foreign-born workers. A 10 per cent rise in the proportion of immigrants cuts pay for service workers by 5 per cent. No wonder Labour MP Jon Cruddas called immigration a `wages policy'.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
We face diminishing expectations!
By charles t smith
Owen Jones does an excellent job of documenting the destruction of the British working class beginning with Thatcher through to today. The similarities between Thatcher's administration and Reagan's administration makes one wonder if the international ruling class had worked together to break the Unions and decimate the working class. Thatcher broke the strongest Union in England after the miners one year strike ended in defeat (1984-1985) and Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers Union when they went on strike in 1981 and were permanently fired from their jobs. These Union defeats mark the beginning destruction of organized labor in both countries. Today the new mantra is, "We are all middle class." The media no longer mentions the working class and on occasion they pay lip service to the poor and destitute with "human interest" stories. Not a pretty picture. Short of a revolution the majority of residents of both countries will have to live with diminishing expectations. There can be no economic turnaround when both countries are dependent on consumerism and the population has less and less money to spend. The rich live better than royalty ever did while most of us working folks live like serfs with flat screen TV's. Please do read this book and ponder the ramifications of what Mr. Owens is documenting. Even if you have a safety net what will happen to you when the society around you crumbles as it did in Detroit, parts of Florida and east Oakland? Mr. Jones included this poem towards the end of the book. Think about it. It is our way out.
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Call to Freedom"
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