In the past 30 years the working classes have become the object of fear and loathing – not to mention an abundant source of amusement – to the wealthy middle classes, argues Owen Jones in his new book. Chav originates from the Romany word for child – chavi – but in its modern context is used to describe a bigoted, uncouth lumpen underclass, with little education and no prospects, who spend their time terrorising the streets and scrounging off the state.
What truth there is in these caricatures has less to do with a crisis of morality and more to do with the devastation of working-class communities and institutions by the very groups that are now mocking them. The shocking irony is that these caricatures are themselves being used to justify further attacks on working class life in the form of public sector reform and welfare cuts.
This book consists mainly of interviews with prominent politicians and journalists as well as a handful of dissenters from the media and political establishment (although Jones does travel to Dagenham to speak to people affected by 30 years of neo-liberal policies). The result is that the book winds up revealing much more about the promulgators of chavism than about those on the receiving end of it.
Jones says he doesn’t “set out to demonise the middle class” but he does expose powerful, perhaps hegemonic, elements of its culture that are quite breathtaking in their savagery and vindictiveness. Of course, culture is not an autonomous force. Just as the working classes are predominantly victims of political and economic policies dating back to the 1980s, the middle classes are prisoners of their own status; a contempt for the lower orders is, in certain measure, a logical accompaniment of capitalist economic arrangements.
Greater emphasis on the structural forces lying behind the 30-year attack on organised labour would have been less provocative (I read the whole book through gritted teeth). It would also, perhaps, have drawn attention to certain areas neglected by Jones, in particular the relationship these trends have with an increasingly punitive criminal justice system and a sky rocketing prison population. However, this wasn’t the focus of the book. The focus instead was on the cultural manifestations of a rampant and one-sided class war and in this regard his intervention is timely, important and very welcome. Our focus now should be on what we do next. On this, Jones is probably in agreement with Tony Blair and David Cameron et al. It is up to the working classes themselves to turn the situation around. They might disagree on the methods, however.
