I wrote some thoughts in my notebook coming home on the 63 bus on Sunday:
Caitlin Moran’s column in the Times Magazine this weekend was
about why, despite having her own conservatory and piano and recycled wine
glasses, she still feels working rather than middle class. And how it’s not
about how her life looks, but her frame of mind. What a silly thing to write
for the Times! It’s only going to be read by other middle-class people at their
kitchen tables over their morning filter coffee. None of her readership will
identify with her at all!
As I read the column, eating grapefruit in my friend’s
kitchen with all matching appliances (including an impressive 4-piece toaster
with bagel button), I completely agreed with her. She admits that ‘the way we calibrate class in this
country does indeed insist that if I were now … to claim that I am still
working class, I would be, in some obscure way, a bit of a w***er’. And
that is true. The logical explanation for this is that in identifying yourself
as working class you are claiming you have less than you do, and to do so implies
you do not appreciate what you have. I often worry about the level of hypocrisy I excude when I talk to my friends at university about the importance of unemployment benefits and child support and EMA while shopping for new dresses at the Bullring Topshop. But that doesn't stop me feeling working class, like my upbringing still matters. Class has not been defined purely in
monetary terms by just about anyone for like, ages. The real reason you’re seen
as a bit of a knob for distinguishing yourself as a class that belies your
earnings, is that you’re seen as a try-hard. You’re like a tory MP rallying for
votes in Sheffield by maintaining you’re best mates with Jarvis Cocker. But
Jarvis Cocker has just as much money as a tory MP. Does that mean they are now
of a similar social class? Does the fact that a bunch of people really really
liked Pulp and paid money for their albums make Jarvis a wanker for continuing
to sing about common people?
Of course not. As humans we make stereotypes because we like
to define things. We like rigid rules to dictate these definitions, so that we
can recognise people and put them into categories easily. We want to know as
much as we can about stuff; our brain naturally wants to fill in the gaps. So
we like to be able to see a copy of The
Art Book, or a Nigella recipe out in someone’s home and immediately be able
to deduce from that that they also probably liked The White Album and have
recently taken up knitting. All these traits are of course as unconnected to
class as they are to each other. There seems to have been something of an
obsession recently with defining ‘middle-class’. Recycling is middle-class,
irony is middle-class, guilt is middle-class, swearing for effect is
middle-class. Mocking the middle-class is middle class. According to the blog
‘Stuff White Brits Like’, ambivalence about Will Self is middle-class.
Seriously? Ambivalence about Will Self is the default emotion everyone has
about Will Self. Those overly long and complicated words he uses in his consciously
deep and philosophical writing. He epitomises the ‘fit but you know it’ dilemma.
Will Self himself is probably ambivalent about Will Self (the self-aware middle-class twat). It doesn’t matter how you were
brought up and what you believe in. As soon as you start a compost heap or use
the c-word you are no longer allotted the right to quote Arthur Scargill or
drink tennants. It’s a package deal. You have to move out of your flat, take
your compost and dirty words down to Surrey, buy a cat which you will have to
name after an obscure 80s music icon and start a record collection. Because
OBVIOUSLY there can’t be any overlap. Working and middle-class people can’t
engage in the same activities. They are two distinct spheres. How on earth can
people in completely separate worlds both follow Stephen Fry on twitter? It’s
confusing an immovable divide!
Come on guys, it’s not about what you buy, or what music you
listen to. I may buy organic when I can, and find Thom Yorke's voice enchanting and beautiful. But this is Britain, class is POLITICAL. Financially, my social class
confuses me. Politically, it does not. Despite not having very much money when
I was a child, I can’t deny the reasonable cushtie-ness of my life. Being met
with the fierce scent from the brewery across the road every time we opened the
door or window of our first Edinburgh flat made me feel poor (especially that
time when upstairs had a shower and our kitchen ceiling fell in). Reading
Irvine Welsh a few years later made me feel very, very well off. Mark Renton
would shun me as a peroni-drinking university dickhead. I mean, my mum’s not a
miner. She’s a camera operator. We have an imac. I’ve spent whole hours of my
life convincing her of our new, undeniable middle-class status, pointing to the
aforementioned snazzy computer, and her own black and white photography framed
on the walls of our open plan living room. PRIVILEGE, DUH. But my reflex has always
been to regard middle-class as something I’m surrounded by, rather than part
of. I will still feel far more easily united under the phrase ‘tory scum’ than ‘squeezed
middle’. As Ms Moran says, the good old days were only good for the man. Being
working class is about change: ‘joy,
revolution, progress, urbanity, carousing until you bust’. The only way is
up. Restlessness; a need for change. Walking down Millbank on the first student
fees march in 2010,the beautiful flames outside office buildings warming my
belly and satiating my need for some kind of revolution (however small), I
received a text from my grandma saying ‘I’m in Trafalgar Sq, where are you?’.
That made me feel brilliant. She didn’t receive the call-to-arms passed round
every student halls in the country, but still she wrapped herself up and left
her Hertfordshire home to defend what she believed in. She remembered the importance
of higher education not only in providing young people with degrees, but also
an opportunity to GET OUT. Whether you’re looking from a balcony at the top of
a tower block, or through your bay window onto a tree lined street, the world
can still look old and crap, and in need of a reshuffle.
If our current earnings negate our past ones, then there’s
no reason to hope to vote anyone into Parliament who will actually represent
the working classes. If we connect salary with one’s ability to identify with
certain classes, then as soon as anyone gets elected and settles into their accommodation
near Westminster, we effectively retract their ability to communicate with the
common man. I’m not saying social typecasting is the only thing stopping politicians
being fair and open-minded. I’m not so naïve as to assume that our poor representatives
really have a degree of ‘normality’ to prove, and we’re being unfair in
branding them ridiculous for queuing up in northern pasty shops attempting to
dupe us into thinking they’re just like Roger from Greggs except if he had
power. I know they’re not stuck feeling hopelessly trapped in their lonely
upper-class money bubbles, jumping up and down in a furious attempt to smash through
the glass ceiling, trying desperately to free themselves from the GOSH DARN
pheasant dinners and free police horse trials. But champagne socialism is rare.
And people do play-up to their stereotypes. So putting so much emphasis on
rigidly defined class, and labeling people as wankers for trying to contradict
their background probably doesn’t help.
OH. And why was I reading the Times Magazine on a Sunday morning,
you ask? They don’t sell that it New York, do they? And you won’t have bought
your way round the pay wall will you Siobhan, you blatant Guardian reader. Well no, that’s true. I was reading the weekend
paper left on my friend’s kitchen table. In south London. I left my internship
at BAB, and I left New York, and I flew back to England. They don’t really have
class war there. Or healthcare. And the lights are really, really too bright. I
had no kinfolk, and the utterly superfluous business of international bigwig schmoozery
was getting me down big time. So I only lasted 3 months as a grown-up. I’m
going to take a break and try again. Anyway, more explanation coming soon, but
for now, it’s great to be back in the shire. Just great.
