Chavs. Owen Jones

mocked as chavs.

      Above all, the term ‘chav’ now encompasses any negative traits associated with working-class people—violence, laziness, teenage pregnancies, racism, drunkenness, and the rest. As Guardian journalist Zoe Williams wrote, ‘“Chav” might have grabbed the popular imagination by seeming to convey something original—not just scum, friends, but scum in Burberry!—only now it covers so many bases as to be synonymous with “prole” or any word meaning “poor, and therefore worthless”.’⁵ Even Christopher Howse, a leader writer for the conservative Daily Telegraph, objected that ‘many people use chav as a smokescreen for their hatred of the lower classes … To call people chavs is no better than public schoolboys calling townies “oiks”.’⁶

      ‘Chavs’ are often treated as synonymous with the ‘white working class’. The BBC’s 2008 White season of programmes dedicated to the same class was a classic example, portraying its members as backward-looking, bigoted and obsessed with race. Indeed, while the ‘working class’ became a taboo concept in the aftermath of Thatcherism, the ‘white working class’ was increasingly spoken about in the early twenty-first century.

      Because ‘class’ had for so long been a forbidden word within the political establishment, the only inequalities discussed by politicians and the media were racial ones. The white working class had become another marginalized ethnic minority, and this meant that all their concerns were understood solely through the prism of race. They became presented as a lost tribe on the wrong side of history, disorientated by multiculturalism and obsessed with defending their identity from the cultural ravages of mass immigration. The rise of the idea of a ‘white working class’ fuelled a new liberal bigotry. It was OK to hate the white working class, because they were themselves a bunch of racist bigots.

      One defence of the term ‘chav’ points out that ‘Chavs themselves use the word, so what’s the problem?’ They have a point: some young working-class people have even embraced the word as a cultural identity. But the meaning of a word often depends on who is using it. When uttered by a heterosexual, ‘queer’ is clearly deeply homophobic; yet some gay men have proudly appropriated it as an identity. Similarly, although ‘Paki’ is one of the most offensive racist terms a white person can use in Britain, some young Asians use it as a term of endearment among their peers. In 2010, a controversy involving right-wing US shock-jock Dr Laura Schlessinger vividly illustrated this point. After using the word ‘nigger’ on-air eleven times in a conversation with an African-American caller, she attempted to defend herself on the grounds that black comedians and actors used it.

      In all cases, the meaning of the word changes depending on the speaker. When uttered by a middle-class person, ‘chav’ becomes a term of pure class contempt. Liam Cranley, the son of a factory worker who grew up in a working-class community in Greater Manchester, describes to me his reaction when a middle-class person uses the word: ‘You’re talking about family: you’re talking about my brother, you’re talking about my mum. You’re talking about my friends.’

      This book will look at how chav-hate is far from an isolated phenomenon. In part, it is the product of a deeply unequal society. ‘In my view, one of the key effects of greater inequality is to increase feelings of superiority and inferiority in society,’ says Richard Wilkinson, coauthor of the seminal The Spirit Level, a book that effectively demonstrates the link between inequality and a range of social problems. And indeed inequality is much greater today than it has been for most of our history. ‘A widespread inequality is an extremely recent thing for most of the world,’ argues the professor of human geography and ‘inequality expert’, Danny Dorling.

      Demonizing people at the bottom has been a convenient way of justifying an unequal society throughout the ages. After all, in the abstract it would seem irrational that through an accident of birth, some should rise to the top while others remain trapped at the bottom. But what if you are on top because you deserve to be? What if people at the bottom are there because of a lack of skill, talent and determination?

      Yet it goes deeper than inequality. At the root of the demonization of working-class people is the legacy of a very British class war. Margaret Thatcher’s assumption of power in 1979 marked the beginning of an all-out assault on the pillars of working-class Britain. Its institutions, like trade unions and council housing, were dismantled; its industries, from manufacturing to mining, were trashed; its communities were, in some cases, shattered, never to recover; and its values, like solidarity and collective aspiration, were swept away in favour of rugged individualism. Stripped of their power and no longer seen as a proud identity, the working class was increasingly sneered at, belittled and scapegoated. These ideas have caught on, in part, because of the eviction of working-class people from the world of the media and politics.

      Politicians, particularly in the Labour Party, once spoke of improving the conditions of working-class people. But today’s consensus is all about escaping the working class. The speeches of politicians are peppered with promises to enlarge the middle class. ‘Aspiration’ has been redefined to mean individual self-enrichment: to scramble up the social ladder and become middle class. Social problems like poverty and unemployment were once understood as injustices that sprang from flaws within capitalism which, at the very least, had to be addressed. Yet today they have become understood as the consequences of personal behaviour, individual defects and even choice.

      The plight of some working-class people is commonly portrayed as a ‘poverty of ambition’ on their part. It is their individual characteristics, rather than a deeply unequal society rigged in favour of the privileged, that is held responsible. In its extreme form, this has even led to a new Social Darwinism. According to the evolutionary psychiatrist Bruce Charlton, ‘Poor people have a lower average IQ than wealthier people … and this means that a much smaller percentage of working-class people than professional-class people will be able to reach the normal entrance requirements of the most selective universities.’⁷

      The chav caricature is set to be at the heart of British politics in the years ahead. After the 2010 general election, a Conservative-led government dominated by millionaires took office with an aggressive programme of cuts, unparalleled since the early 1920s. The global economic crisis that began in 2007 may have been triggered by the greed and incompetence of a wealthy banking elite, yet it was working-class people who were—and are—expected to pay the price. But any attempt to shred the welfare state is fraught with political difficulties, and so the government swiftly resorted to blaming its users.

      Take Jeremy Hunt, a senior Conservative minister with an estimated wealth of £4.1 million. To justify the slashing of welfare benefits, he argued that long-term claimants had to ‘take responsibility’ for the number of children that they had, and that the state would no longer fund large workless families. In reality, just 3.4 per cent of families in long-term receipt of benefits have four children or more. But Hunt was tapping into the age-old prejudice that the people at the bottom were breeding out of control, as well as conjuring up the tabloid caricature of the slobbish single mother who milks the benefits system by having lots of children. The purpose was clear: to help justify a wider attack on some of the most vulnerable working-class people in the country.

      The aim of this book is to expose the demonization of working-class people; but it does not set out to demonize the middle class. We are all prisoners of our class, but that does not mean we have to be prisoners of our class prejudices. Similarly, it does not seek to idolize or glorify the working class. What it proposes is to show some of the reality of the working-class majority that has been airbrushed out of existence in favour of the ‘chav’ caricature.

      Above all, this book is not simply calling for a change in people’s attitudes. Class prejudice is part and parcel of a society deeply divided by class. Ultimately it is not the prejudice we need to tackle; it is the fountain from which it springs.

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       The Strange Case of Shannon Matthews

      Every middle-class person has