Or: How Not to "Get" it.
I originally drafted this in 2017, as a response to a Labour politician's pontificating about working class culture. For some reason, I never finished or posted it, but in the light of this week's discourse about what consitutes a middle class/working class living room (with respect to Green candidate Hannah Spencer), it still seems relevant somehow.
This book belonged to my grandfather.
The son of a labourer, orphaned and abandoned in childhood, he served as a stoker in the Royal Navy, saw active service on minesweepers during the Great War and was a prison officer during WWII. I don't think he'd ever claim to be anything but working class, growing up in a world with no NHS or meaningful welfare state.
The few books he possessed and which have been passed down to me include volumes of poetry like this one (he was especially fond of Longfellow) and more Dickens than his university-educated granddaughter has read.
Somehow, I don't think he'd have gone much on (for example) Mrs Brown's Boys.
In terms of 'poverty of aspiration', there's nothing like a politician telling us we have to "get" Mrs Brown's Boys to really understand working class people and their concerns. I've never "got" opera... does that mean I can't hope to "connect" with the middle classes?
It's much the same argument with "people's legitimate concerns about immigration" - this should not simply mean capitulating to ill-informed xenophobia.
If people's "legitimate concerns" are based on the misinformation they've been fed by a range of sources, they can and should be addressed; reasonable people will be open to discussion. If people are out-and-out-racists, nothing you can say will change their minds and it is fine to call them out for what they are.
Funny how many politicans (including Labour ones) equate "working class" with "low brow" and/or ignorant
The son of a labourer, orphaned and abandoned in childhood, he served as a stoker in the Royal Navy, saw active service on minesweepers during the Great War and was a prison officer during WWII. I don't think he'd ever claim to be anything but working class, growing up in a world with no NHS or meaningful welfare state.
The few books he possessed and which have been passed down to me include volumes of poetry like this one (he was especially fond of Longfellow) and more Dickens than his university-educated granddaughter has read.
Somehow, I don't think he'd have gone much on (for example) Mrs Brown's Boys.
In terms of 'poverty of aspiration', there's nothing like a politician telling us we have to "get" Mrs Brown's Boys to really understand working class people and their concerns. I've never "got" opera... does that mean I can't hope to "connect" with the middle classes?
It's much the same argument with "people's legitimate concerns about immigration" - this should not simply mean capitulating to ill-informed xenophobia.
If people's "legitimate concerns" are based on the misinformation they've been fed by a range of sources, they can and should be addressed; reasonable people will be open to discussion. If people are out-and-out-racists, nothing you can say will change their minds and it is fine to call them out for what they are.
Funny how many politicans (including Labour ones) equate "working class" with "low brow" and/or ignorant
"Bless 'em. They're fundamentally a bit racist. you won't change them, so no point trying" is a terrible attitude but is sadly typical of much of our political class at the moment.
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