Peace, bread, work and freedom.

[f4f3]

Just read this piece of brilliance by Andrew O'Hagan in the Guardian. It's an edited version of his Orwell Memorial Lecture, and it has a great deal to say about the death of the Working Class in England, and the causes of death. It made interesting reading for me not just because it brings together a good many of my own interests - Orwell, the radical tradition in England, and the society we're living in, but because O'Hagan's voice is very close to my own - his upbringing was the same, and many of his views were shaped at the same time. It's also a Scottish voice, talking about England, and that's something I rarely do.

I don't talk about England because there's nothing I can do about it. I've said here before that I think of England like the partner in a dead marriage  - I wish Scotland could arrange a quiet separation from it, but I also see it through a mist of better times, and feel a perverse loyalty when it's criticised by anyone but me (I had something of the same feelings about Bush's America - hopefully I'll be able to start feeling proud of it again, soon).

O'Hagan's piece is powerful for me because he does make those criticisms, he does talk about what England was and what it is.

I have a lot of English friends on this list, and a lot of friends from outside the UK: what do you think?

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Descriptively, there's much to agree with in O'Hagan's piece but I think it's insufficiently analytical and sloppy in its use of 'class' as a concept. The reason that the English Working Class no longer exerts any influence on English social life or politics is because it no longer exists to any meaningful extent. The class that carved out for itself a social and political role independent of traditional ties of deference and clientage (individual and collective) was firmly based on people (and their families) working in industrial conditions; large, unionised workplaces with their own sytem of values that spilled out into the broader society. OK, it also included, often as leaders, those who were a generation or so removed by scholarship based education from that milieu but whohad not fully adopted the values of their 'betters'. Crucially that class did not include the lumpenproletariat that inhabited the margins of society existing, in a fashion, on casual work an the proceeds of crime nor did it include the demoralised agricultural proletariat dependent on their employers for tied cottages and the like. These were the people who aspired to escape the class hegemony of the bourgeoisie by creating their own political, educational, cultural and sporting institutions and for 50 or 60 years they scared the wits out of the ruling elite. I don't want to be too hagiographical. The working class was sexist, racist and intolerant in many ways but it was also in a very real way decent and, above all hopeful. It is gone. It was hollowed out by the industrial decline that was long under way before Thatcher. She merely demolished the long decayed shell.

So what is left? The lumpenproletariat of course; much enlarged by the destruction of so much skilled, steady, relatively well paid employment. The old imperial ruling class is still there, it's 'thinking' (such as it is) trapped in a timewarp which still sees 'send a gunboat' as the answer to any difficult problem and which still lives in fear of a class that no longer exists. In between is a vastly enlarged 'middle class' which has long existed. When small it was utterly dependent on the patronage of the genuinely rich and, I suspect, learned not to ask for more than it was given since oss of status meant falling into the lumpen world. No room for failed lackeys in the a working class based on trade skills. That class is now vastly expanded; it's a caricature of course to suggest that the boy who would once have learned a trade built ships on the Tyne now has a degree in media studies from the University of Northumbria and, if he has a job at all, he is designing websites for the gambling operations of the Russian mafia. Caricature it may be but there's some truth in it. As a social group (I hesitate to say class) such people are as economically liminal as the old 'middle class' and just as economically and psychologically dependent. Easy fodder for the fear mongers who offer a 'surveillance society' as the way to keep the lower orders in check and offering the illusion that the middling sort are the beneficiaries rather than the victims of their crypto fascism.

Now, I would argue that this isn't unique to England. Something very similar has happened in Scotland. What then is different? Te absence of London probably helps. Cobbett was right about the Great Wen and one of it's features is that it is equally attractive to shysters, Scots and English alike. Thus Scotland has a safety valve! The second is nationalism. I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes. Would England be a better place if everyone dressed up like some half cracked novelist thought Robin Hood had dressed and ritually ate black pudding once a year accompanied by Morris dancers? Some kind of sense of national identity might conceivably curtail some of the sillier imperial delusions though I don't see any sign that it has had that effect in Scotland.

Bottom line, English society is senile but I don't see any alternative vision being articulated. Once it existed but the economic conditions that made tht alternative possible have gone. I don't think a sort of synthetic nationalism is the answer but, honestly, I don't know what is.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that - there's much I agree with, and what I don't is pretty minor - so I'll hoover those points up first.

I think what you say about the piece's tone is inherent in it being a talk originally - I agree that there's some places I'd like to see more depth, and that his notion of class is not exclusively an academic one, but I still feel it's a powerful piece of writing (and power, especially when we're talking polemic, is rarely synonymous with rigour.

I think you agree, though, that the working class in England is dead (I got a little lost in your description of the lumpenproletariat, and I'm not sure if you're suggesting that they, or the working class, "were the people who aspired to escape the class hegemony of the bourgeoisie by creating their own political, educational, cultural and sporting institutions".

I wonder if my perceived view of the strength of the working class in Scotland is purely a matter of perspective, or if it is qualitatively different from the English experience. At least half of Scotland's five million lived in cities, and it's easy to think that's all that exists, or existed. But Burns came from the rural poor - none more rural nor poorer than an Ayrshire cotter, and his egalitarian views sprung from that agrarian soil. While Glasgow produced the firebrands, the Highlands produced the footsoldiers. And Highland regiments in the early 20th C were stationed outside Scotland, in case their revolutionary sympathies became manifest on the Clyde.

There is a sense, up here, that the working class has survived the death of heavy industry, but I'm not sure it can survive the death of unionisation, unless there is a party representing its interests more honestly than Labour can manage on a British stage.

Oh, and the jibe at Burns night - hmm, if the English dressed up in Errol Flynn garb and insisted that robbing from the rich to feed the poor was a good idea, they'd soon have Special Branch at their door. Burns' poetry is full of that dangerous socialist stuff. And can't you get past the tartan myth? I mean, nobody up in Scotland believes it anyway, we just like the look of it.

It's hard to argue with your view of an England senile and incapable of reinvention - harder still, since you've shown the courage of your conviction and left it behind. And, to be honest, it's as little to do with Scots nationalism as Beefeaters have to do with English nationalism - whatever that is.

I'm wondering if my own sense that changing Scotland is a manageable challenge, and that the UK is a lost cause, is pragmatic or a failure of nerve?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

(I got a little lost in your description of the lumpenproletariat, and I'm not sure if you're suggesting that they, or the working class, "were the people who aspired to escape the class hegemony of the bourgeoisie by creating their own political, educational, cultural and sporting institutions".

The "respectable" working class

or if it is qualitatively different from the English experience.

I think you have hit upon a really important difference. The English rural proletariat was, at least by mid 19th century, passive and deferential; certainly not a natural ally to the industrial working class. Nobody had to station the Norfolk regiment overseas for fear of miltary rebellion!

Oh, and the jibe at Burns night

OK I was taking the piss but, on a more serious note, is there a well articulated Scottish nationalism that isn't just tartan flummery crossed with a kind of gut anti-Englishmness? I know people like Tom Nairn have tried to articulate one but does it have any resonance at a mass level?

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

It's possible that the lesser degree of engagement in the English rural proletariat was a matter of geographical scale - although there's always the Levellers, the Diggers and the Ranters to consider, and, as O'Hagan quotes Christopher Hill: "Popular revolt was for many centuries an essential feature of the English tradition."

I think they key to this might be the "indifference" he talks about, and the very short list of things the English are not indifferent about, or, to be more direct, the lack of things they are passionate about.

To shade into your second point, the Scots have tons of things to be passionate about (probably since they're so crap at proper personal passion), and fairness, freedom and commonality are three of them.

It's very hard to seem pro-Scottish without looking anti-English, especially when viewed from south of the border, but the well-spring of nationalism in the last century wasn't about being anti anything, it was a growing realisation that the Union wasn't in Scotland's best interest.

One of the clearest wee books on the subject was Alisdair Gray's "Why Scots Should Rule Scotland" - the tone is pro-Scottish, not anti-English. He states in his first paragraph that it's a decision to be made by all who live in Scotland, no matter which wave of immigration they arrived on, and I think it's a fair representation of the mass gut belief, which isn't anti-English, but pro-independence.

Of course, it remains to be seen if Scottish nationalism will survive an SNP government, but they seem to be doing ok so far.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

although there's always the Levellers, the Diggers and the Ranters to consider,

The 17th century radicals didn't come from the peasantry, as then was, but largely from the towns. They were tradesman and craftsmen for the most part. Revolt in the countryside has typically taken less politically coherent form (a common feature of peasants' revolts) like the Swing riots or, indeed, the revolt against Richard II's government. I can't thin kof a single instance of bottom up revolt in the English countryside that had a coherent political platform.

It will be interesting to see whether a genuinely progressive Scottish independence movement can thrive. I'd certainly give it a better chance than any hopes I might have for England. There is something really quite impressive about some of the 'ordinary' Scots that I've met in my travels, especially in the Highlands. Of course, I'd be much more optimistic about England if one could draw a line from Hull to Plymouth and ditch everything south of it. London has a lot to answer for.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

I can't be nearly as articulate or informed as the previous commenter, but I did find the article thought-provoking. I took a couple of specific themes from it:

CLASS
Of course Americans pretend that we don't have classes, or that everyone is middle class, which amounts to the same thing. I think all industrialized societies have experienced the same decline of pride in the dignity of labor and the idea that there is something worth struggling for. The policies of the past eight years have certainly widened the gap and made it less and less worthwhile to bother trying to get ahead.

I was struck by the article's description of the despair and lack of ambition of the English working class. My experiences in Italy suggest that working class Italians haave even less thought of getting ahead, but they are supported by a nation-wide distrust of any organizations outside their own families. There's a lot of fatalism there, but it's pervasive at all levels, not just confined to the lower classes.

In the US, though, we tend to use race as a shorthand for class. It's easier for the majority to ignore the the underclass when they are so clearly other.

NATIONALISM
Just as white Americans can conveniently ignore the day-to-day realities of people of color, the English have the luxury of not thinking about the other parts of the UK. The Scots have their oppression to unite them, while the English enjoy the blindness of the majority.

EMPIRE
That English arrogance extends to their relationships with most other cultures. Again drawing on my time in Italy, I was fascinated by the number of English people there who furnished their daily lives almost entirely by mail order. Rome in the 1980s was hardly the Third World; I found the toothpaste and shampoo perfectly adequate, but many of English colleagues prefered to import their home brands.

Once, while house-sitting for English friends in Rome, I broke a cream jug from their set of Staffordshire. I wrote to Harrod's, giving the name of the pattern and asking if I could get a replacement. They replied with a complete order form. This fascinated my Italian friends. To me it exemplified the way that English life is constructed so as to be exported and recreated anywhere in the world. And when I left the Catholic church for the Episcopal, I was quite taken with the Book of Common Prayer. I love anything that comes with a well-organized instruction manual, but I quickly realized that it actually constitutes an impressive handbook for empire-building. Wherever you go, you can handily perform all necessary offices!

I don't have any neat rhetorical summary, I'm afraid, but them's me thoughts.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I found the toothpaste and shampoo perfectly adequate, but many of English colleagues prefered to import their home brands.

The irony being, of course, that it's the same stuff although (less and less) the brand name may vary. It all comes out of Unilever or P&G's or the Japanese company whose name escapes me's Euro mega plants.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was always quite aware of that irony. Though to be fair, they do offer different products in different markets. I have been so happy that my friend was able to find the mint-eucalyptus shower gel I loved in Argentina on her recent trip. It's made by Palmolive but not available in the US.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

ETA: The biggest irony was actually when I discoverd that the US embassy flew in iceberg lettus for the commissary. Italian produce is so superior to what is available in most of the US, so the thought of importing that junk just makes me laugh. (Not that I didn't use my contacts there to get cranberry sauce at Christmas.)

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Blimey.

I'm a little overwhelmed, both by the article and by the ferociously well-informed discussion going on above, so I'll be brief:

A lot of the article resonates, in that it's consistent with my experience of the English working-classes. However, this experience has come as a permanent outsider (2nd generation middle class, and Scottish) - so I can't really speak to its authenticity, though the article feels authentic to me insofar as there is anger, disgust and disappointment to be had in spades.

I was also interested by your take on Englishness and England. I've been living in England for a little over 10 years now and my take on what the English, and England, are like has become considerably blunted, relative to my first few years here. But every time I come back after having been abroad, it hits me in the face how much the people here are rude, complacent, negative, lacking in self-awareness, politically comatose, utterly without a sense of civic duty or pride, perfectly prepared to eat rubbish (okay, that's not something that differentiates them from the Scots), drunk, belligerent and above all possessed of an entirely spurious sense of entitlement, of being "owed" somehow, regardless of whom their grabby, shortsighted actions will disadvantage. It makes me want to run away as fast as I can (and one day soon I hope we will).

There's a fundamental sense of pride among people in Scotland that I just don't feel here; when I do encounter it, it comes from a strong sense of identity as being part of a community, such as people who grew up with parents in the forces, or in other countries (including Scotland), or in some other well of identity.

I think I've only stayed as long as I have because most days, the air that I breathe is pretty rarified.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

how much the people here are rude, complacent, negative, lacking in self-awareness, politically comatose, utterly without a sense of civic duty or pride, perfectly prepared to eat rubbish (okay, that's not something that differentiates them from the Scots), drunk, belligerent and above all possessed of an entirely spurious sense of entitlement, of being "owed" somehow, regardless of whom their grabby, shortsighted actions will disadvantage.

Umm yes. I notice that when I visit too. That and a persistent feeling of low level violence snd casual racism. I think it has always been there (for some value of always) and was what Keir Hardie meant when he said "beware of the slums". I think it's what socialism was trying to transcend because that had to be the first step to building a politically conscious working class. We failed.

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

It's really sad. I've walked through neighbourhoods in Vancouver that were orders of magnitude more deprived than anywhere I've ever been in Manchester, and yet I felt ten times safer there than here.