Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

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Class is a communist concept," Margaret Thatcher told Newsweek in 1992. "It groups people together and sets them against each other." Just over a decade later, Thatcher's crude rightwing dogmatism had given way to a kind of all-pervasive centre-right wishful thinking. Towards the end of his reign as prime minister, Tony Blair told a New Labour think-tank "we're all middle class", an opinion echoed more recently by both the Daily Telegraph ("We're all middle class now, dahling") and the Times ("We're all middle class now as social barriers fall away").

Owen Jones". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 December 2016 . Retrieved 12 December 2016. Owen Jones". David Higham. Archived from the original on 1 December 2011 . Retrieved 27 August 2014. Owen Jones's indignant, well-argued debut begins with a joke: "It's sad that Woolworth's is closing. Where will all the chavs buy their Christmas presents?" This was uttered by the host of a dinner party attended by the author in "a gentrified part of east London", at which liberal views are taken as a given and, though everyone present has a professional job, not everyone is white, male or straight.Ash Sarkar: Do you buy into this idea that there is a working class, and then an underclass? Or is that a wholly manufactured distinction? Indeed as Jones rightly puts it: “Thatcher’s assumption of power in 1979 marked the beginning of an all-out assault on the pillars of working class Britain”. On her watch council estates were something to be feared, not somewhere to be proud of, and her callous derision of single-mother families ensured communities were divided. All the while trade unions were being targeted and dis-empowered, while the poor found themselves getting worse off. Jones subtitles his book 'the demonization of the working class' -- but that isn't far removed from criminalising them. For as long as I can remember, debate has raged over welfare reform and 'scroungers' milking the system, of the need to create real jobs that allow people to leave benefits, of so-called benefit dependency. Over the years, it's moved from some -- admittedly heated -- debate towards shrill moralising and contemptuous slander. Under this current coalition Government, it has reached a terrifying peak.

Cuando Thatcher llegó al poder en 1979 había 5 millones de pobres en Reino Unido. En 1992, tras tres mandatos, había catorce millones de pobres en Reino Unido. El tejido industrial había sido destruido. Explicad cómo eso es bueno para el pueblo británico. Pista: no lo es.

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Sexists in gay armour | Julie Bindel". The Critic (modern magazine). 13 January 2022 . Retrieved 17 October 2023.

We live in an age of upheaval. The global crisis of Covid-19 has laid bare the deep social and economic inequalities which were the toxic legacy of austerity. These revolutionary times are an opportunity for a radical rethink of Britain as we know it, as the politically impossible suddenly becomes imaginable. Meltzer, Hannah (3 March 2013). "John McDonnell interview: how Labour is moving to the left?". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 7 April 2015 . Retrieved 19 April 2020. Jones' television appearances include Jeremy Vine, Politics Live, Good Morning Britain and University Challenge.a b Jones, Owen (9 March 2012). "My father, and the reality of losing your job in middle age". The Independent. London, UK. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015 . Retrieved 14 March 2015. There are two elements of the book I think work particularly well. One is a story that is not told enough, where ‘Broken Britain’, a term so favoured by David Cameron, is re-presented as the post-industrialised shattered communities devastated by repeated government policies that killed off mining and industrial communities (Jones tell this story through a Northumberland ex-mining village, and the effects on Longbridge near Birmingham of the closure of the Rover car plant). It is an impressive piece of work and chilling. The other is a story told regularly on the left but overlooked by many others – the effective community organisation the drove the neo-fascist British National Party (BNP) from its political foothold in Barking and Dagenham in Essex. The Barking and Dagenham story then becomes an effective way to hammer home the point that much of the right’s tactics, especially its focus on immigration as a social and political issue, divides working people and continues to allow the plutocrats in whose interests neo-liberalism works and who caused the current economic crises to keep on acting as they have for the last couple of decades.