Chavs. Owen Jones

has this hatred come from? There is certainly nothing new about venting spite against those at the bottom of the pile. Theologians of the seventeenth century deplored the ‘indiscreet and misguided charity’ extended to poor people who were ‘the very scabs, and filth, and vermin of the Common-wealth’.⁴³ In the nineteenth century, the harsh Poor Laws threw the destitute and unemployed into workhouses where they toiled in hellish conditions, and commentators debated whether the respectable working class was giving way to a debauched rump they labelled the ‘residuum’. The rise of eugenics in the early twentieth century led even some who considered themselves left-wing to argue for the sterilization of the ‘unfit’ poor—or even for their extermination.

      Chav-bashing draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred. But it cannot be understood without looking at more recent events. Above all, it is the bastard child of a very British class war.