Book review: Chavs: The Demonization Of The Working Class

ON THE first page of Owen Jones' impassioned and thought-provoking book, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, I had an objection. Jones explains that the impetus for writing his book was an off-colour joke at a dinner party about 'chavs'.

The former trade union lobbyist and parliamentary researcher argues that if the joke had been about race or sexuality, the person would have been asked to leave, but because it was about class, no one cared. Class hatred, Jones contends, is the last acceptable prejudice. I beg to disagree.

Class hatred is an acceptable prejudice, there's little doubt about that. Jones presents enough evidence from political dogma, social policy, harsh economic truths to soft, but no less pernicious, examples from commentary and culture, to make a cast iron case that to be working class is to be, before anything else, an object of derision in contemporary Britain. My quibble is that the working class are not the only ones.

In a sense, the same process that has washed away respect and tolerance for class difference has had a similar impact on other kinds of difference, be it race or gender or sexuality, at least at the level of cosy dinner party chat.

Our public discourse is impoverished because of the overwhelming dominance of a set of social and political values, focused on the accumulation and celebration of personal wealth, which serve the few at the great cost of the many.

But my quibble is beyond the scope of Jones' argument and, although it wasn't my only objection to his thesis, it does little to diminish my admiration for his book. Jones presents an argument which needs to be made. The issue, he argues, is urgent.

I have no quibble with that.

As welfare cuts target the most vulnerable in society, Jones reminds us that although the Treasury loses 1 billion a year in benefit fraud, it is short-changed to the tune of 70bn in tax evasion. He reminds us that, in direct contrast to the argument Evan Davis has been busy making in Made In Britain, the death of manufacturing in the UK was caused by government policy "not the onward march of history".

He states that in 1979, five million people lived in poverty but by 1992, this figure had risen to 14 million. By the end of the Tories' reign in 1996, the richest 10 per cent of families with three children were 21,000 richer per year than when Thatcher came to power while the real income of the poorest had collapsed by almost 20 per cent.

The trade unions were beaten, the factories and pits were closed.

As one of the working class women Jones' interviews puts it, communities such as hers had been stabbed in the heart, and since then they've simply been allowed to bleed to death.

Thirteen years of New Labour did precious little to staunch the flow. For Jones, partly that was because New Labour had sold its soul to the notion of aspiration being only about individual acquisition rather than values that might benefit the community and partly it was that the initiatives they did implement were woefully inadequate – the minimum wage set too low, benefits too bureaucratic to be claimed, creating a system in which 10.5bn of means tested benefits go unclaimed each year.

Cultural representations have done little to prick the consciences of those in power or reassert any kind of balance. From easy caricatures (Wayne and Waynetta Slob, Vicky Pollard) to Jeremy Kyle, the aim is to stereotype and reduce.

In Westminster or on Fleet Street, given that the working class is now barely represented there is simply no one to object.

According to Jones, the crisis of working class representation is "the biggest issue in British politics today" and what is required is a new class politics. As a champion for those prevented for speaking for themselves, Jones is a passionate and well-informed advocate. I genuinely hope his voice is heard.

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 26 June, 2011