Saturday 31 October, 10.30am until 12.00pm, Café
When a holiday firm can offer ‘chav-free holidays’ and a London gymnasium puts on lessons in ‘chav-fighting’ it seems like ‘chav’ is one of the few socially acceptable slurs left. Some commentators argue that the term is an expression of class prejudice as morally reprehensible as racism. Underlying the discussion, however, is a widespread perception that a significant section of society has values and norms of behaviour that are highly problematic. The c-word may be regarded with distaste, but the spectre of an yobbish, BNP-electing class looms large in the popular imagination, while ‘McDonald’s Mums’ and ‘binge-drinking ladettes’ are widely regarded with disdain.
Often this group is regarded more sympathetically as a marginalised ‘white working class’ demoralised by political correctness and multiculturalism. Others blame a failing educational system for turning out a generation of NEETs who are unfit for either employment or training. The Department for Communities argues working class kids have a ‘poverty of aspiration’ and proposes mentoring to broaden their horizons.
But do the discussions about ‘chavs’ or the ‘white working class’ describe real problems or are they symptomatic of less tangible cultural anxieties? Who exactly are these fluid terms meant to describe? Is there really a majority working class culture threatened by political correctness? Is the celebration of ‘chav-culture’, from the Dianafication of Jade Goody to artistic depictions of happy-slapping and graffiti, an antidote to snobbery, or does it risks turning its supposed objects into another pitied minority?
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 | Neil Davenport sociology and politics teacher; writer on culture; former music journalist |
 | Professor Geoff Dench senior fellow, Young Foundation; sociologist; writer on family and community issues |
 | Dr Gillian Evans lecturer, social anthropology, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), University of Manchester; author, Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain |
 | Suzanne Moore columnist, The Mail on Sunday; founding member, New Deal of the Mind Coalition |
| Chair: | |
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Martin Earnshaw
co-editor Future of Community: reports of a death greatly exaggerated; chair, IoI Social Policy Forum |
Politicians should have paid attention years ago to the growing alienation of the old white working class
James Forsyth, Telegraph, 24 October 2009The blending of Right-wing fiscal policy with the belief that it somehow helps those at the very bottom is the essence of the thesis. ‘We are all in it together,’ said Osborne. To which one can only reply: Some are clearly more in IT than others.
Suzanne Moore, Mail on Sunday, 10 October 2009Chris Grayling’s comparison of Moss Side with The Wire was silly, but his critics have vilified the working class, too.
Neil Davenport, spiked, 27 August 2009It would be a mistake to think that because the US is a less racist, sexist and homophobic society, it is a more equal society. In fact, in certain crucial ways it is more unequal than it was 40 years ago.
Walter Benn Michaels, London Review of Books, 27 August 2009Britain is jostling for the dubious honour of the sickest lifestyle in Western Europe. Government figures show our adults are the most obese, and 11 to 15-year-olds who drink, are drinking more - the average weekly intake being over six pints. According to The Children's Society charity, a higher percentage of youngsters are getting drunk than in any other OECD country.
John Ware, Daily Mail, 11 July 2009
How to beat up chavs
A London gym is offering people lessons in headbutting hoodies and duffing up ‘the scourge’ of society.
Tim Black, spiked, 27 April 2009
Large inequalities of income in a society have often been regarded as divisive and corrosive, and it is common knowledge that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem.
Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett, Allen Lane, 5 March 2009
Britain has produced a generation of
Nick Britten, Telegraph, 9 February 2009This report examines sources of resentment, and perceptions of ethnic minorities among poor white people in England.
Department for Communities and Local Government, Department for Communities and Local Government, 7 January 2009Life chances for today’s children are overwhelmingly linked to parental income, occupations and educational qualifications – in other words, class. The poor white working class share many more problems with the poor from minority ethnic communities than some of them recognize.
Runnymede Trust, Runnymede, January 2009
Philosopher Julian Baggini pinpointed postcode S66 on the outskirts of Rotherham, as England in microcosm - an area which reflected most accurately the full range of the nation's inhabitants, its most typical mix of urban and rural, old and young, married and single.
Julian Baggini, Granta Books, 1 April 2008
What does it mean to be working class in Britain at the beginning of the 21st century? Why, despite over 50 years of compulsory education in Britain, are many working class children still likely to end up in the same kind of low-paid, routine occupations as their parents?
Gillian Evans, Palgrave Macmillan, 25 May 2007
This is non-fiction Brick Lane -what life is really like around Brick Lane and the East End.
Geoff Dench, Profile Books, 17 February 2006
Once they were portrayed as the salt of the earth. Nowadays, they take to the streets when paedophiles and asylum seekers are in their midst; they expose their lives in TV documentaries; they love Gucci and hate the Euro - the broadsheets cast them as xenophobes and exhibitionists and mock their tastes and attitudes. Who are the white working class and what have they done to deserve this portrayal?
Michael Collins, Granta Books, 6 June 2005
