I'm not relating to this thread. I think the whole notion of 'Class' is an anachronistic construct with little useful meaning. It means about the same as being, or considering someone else to be, a lover of tea -or of coffee. Football - or rugby. Being into heavy metal -or baroque. Living in a detached house -or canal barge. Working as healthcare worker -or trading on the stock market. Having a 'West Country' accent or 'Estuary'.
Why do we attribute meaning and status to artificial and fluid distinctions that result in as much heat as they do light?
(wistfully) for me it means yet another thread where I can't really participate, as this is so UK specific. But then, I think we have very few Americans left on this site, so I shouldn't say anything.
Does class happen as a concept in the US, my impression was that there is an equivalent but the dynamics might be different ?
Yes, it happens, but not in a way that seems to mirror at all how it appears to happen in the UK. The dynamics are very different, and really don’t seem to align with what I’ve read here, at least not in many ways that I’ve been able to discern. Along with @Lamb Chopped it would seem, I’ve been reading this thread with a mixture of interest and bemusement because what’s been talked about seems so, well, foreign to me.
I’d be interested in knowing about the US experience, from the horse’s mouth as it were, because I mainly only see whatever is filtered through various sitcoms and films. I am, from a U.K. perspective, middle to upper middle class. Where as my fathers family were upperclass, and mothers a generation on from working class (mining family moving onto teaching).
How would describe your class, if you think of yourself as having one in a US context, and in the US what would be working class ?
(To a certain extent I have been moving down the class structure over my life.)
I'm looking a little at the history of the ALP. What hits me between the eyes was how fundamentally socially conservative it was prior to the 1970's. Its like there's a whole history of working people that I for one never really noticed, how divided it is politically once you move away from industrial rights.
That social conservatism you pick up derived from the strong links (at least in the capital cities) between the Catholic Church and the ALP, both in leadership and rank and file members.
My paternal great great grandfather is listed in one record as a linen manufacturer in Ireland - clearly a man of some substance. However, the next record shows him back to being a weaver, now living in a tenement in Govan. I think of our family since then as upper working class with occasional excursions in various directions.
Why do we attribute meaning and status to artificial and fluid distinctions that result in as much heat as they do light?
It’s not artificial to me, it is an aspect of my identity which has had a huge impact on my life. It is the reason I had to give up my dreams of being a teacher, as I was expected to leave school at 16, get a job and contribute to the family rent (I still see this in my working class students, whose experience of education often leaves them with low self-esteem and confidence). It is the reason I grew up in an area surrounded by crime and poverty and was taught what to say if a bailiff came to the door; two of my older siblings answered the door to bailiffs due to my parents tendency to buy things on hp (hire purchase) and not pay for them. I am now middle class yet it still impacts on my life, especially in academia where I lack the vocabulary range of my middle class colleagues.
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We've retitled and broadened out this thread as we've already got Australian points of view too, so feel free to either explore it here or to start a new thread - whatever takes your fancy. If it really takes off we can always split it out for you into its own thread
Speaking from a North American perspective, my impression is that the equivalent distinction more commonly referred to here is "blue collar" versus "white collar". It is very complicated by the degree to which many of the so-called blue collar jobs are considered unappealing and are heavily dependant on undocumented immigrant workers to get done.
My experience is growing up in an all-blue-collar family, indeed in a small mountain town with essentially no white-collar examples outside of television, a nearby hospital, and my teachers. As the only person in my extended family to get a university degree - despite many of us being exceptionally bright - it is very painful to see how much my kin project their own struggles into bigotry, racism, and anti-intellectualism.
There appears to be no overt correlation with religion. My kith and kin are probably 70% agnostic/atheist, 20% mainstream religion, and 10% hippy dippy spiritualism or snake-juggling.
I'm looking a little at the history of the ALP. What hits me between the eyes was how fundamentally socially conservative it was prior to the 1970's. Its like there's a whole history of working people that I for one never really noticed, how divided it is politically once you move away from industrial rights.
That social conservatism you pick up derived from the strong links (at least in the capital cities) between the Catholic Church and the ALP, both in leadership and rank and file members.
This is a tangent.
I'm interested specifically in the three-way struggle I picked up in some reading between the Communist Party, the "left" ALP fighting the communists and the virulent anti-communist Catholic groupers who became the DLP. I am more interested in the struggle between the communists and the ALP than the sectarian struggle, because I have read quite a bit about Santamaria et al. I have the books. I bought a whole bunch of union histories in the 1990's. I've just got to dust them off and read them.
However, I'm doing this to write a little thing for a facebook page on Whitlam, and I know from past experiences that going down these little rabbit holes is not conducive to getting things done. So I may have to turn my back on this very tempting wonderland and add it to my list of undiscovered countries.
The social conservatism I picked up was specifically over the fight within the Party to change the White Australia policy. It looks like (bearing in mind the limits of my reading to date) it was the "old guard" represented by Calwell v "new guard" represented by Whitlam. I never looked at that before.
I'm not relating to this thread. I think the whole notion of 'Class' is an anachronistic construct with little useful meaning. It means about the same as being, or considering someone else to be, a lover of tea -or of coffee. Football - or rugby. Being into heavy metal -or baroque. Living in a detached house -or canal barge. Working as healthcare worker -or trading on the stock market. Having a 'West Country' accent or 'Estuary'.
Why do we attribute meaning and status to artificial and fluid distinctions that result in as much heat as they do light?
Identity is fundamentally a construct, and for the fortunate few like me, a choice. I think I find it easier to switch identities on and off because I don't get my identity from what others think about me, I'm too self-centred, too interested in myself and my reactions. The identity I am assigned by others is white, rich and male. If it were otherwise, and I was blasé about what others thought, my assigned identity would be quickly pointed out to me and become my public reality.
So class, race, religion, wealth are all combinations of our self-perceptions and the perceptions others place upon us. For those who are physically different from the socially constructed norm, "race" might be the predominant identity. Its the aspect of a person in some places that most controls what they can do. Others might identify most strongly around their gender or sexual orientation. That is the aspect of their person that determines the course of their lives, or is perceived to limit it. My impression is that in the UK class is a significant limiting factor.
In 2020's Australia the dominant identifiers are accent, ethnicity, "race", gender and gender identity. Religion, I state bravely, is a sub-set of ethnicity in most cases. Accent determines whether you are perceived as Australian, even for people who have a non-European appearance or dress.
So being Irish-Catholic, or Australian, or a football tragic, or "almost-American", or ENGLISH (yes, English) or Western, a lout or a snob are all both me and "not-me". I feel like I can put on and take off the accoutrements of these identities at will (I am undoubtedly fooling myself there). But there is still a "me". When I was young, I couldn't really see "me", and that was a factor in my breakdown in my 30's. But I'm starting to come into my own view now.
It might well be that my attitude to identity is a strong marker of privilege. That's OK. I accept my fortune, am grateful for it, and want to spread it about. I love and want to expand Australia's multiculturalism.
Speaking from a North American perspective, my impression is that the equivalent distinction more commonly referred to here is "blue collar" versus "white collar". It is very complicated by the degree to which many of the so-called blue collar jobs are considered unappealing and are heavily dependant on undocumented immigrant workers to get done.
My experience is growing up in an all-blue-collar family, indeed in a small mountain town with essentially no white-collar examples outside of television, a nearby hospital, and my teachers. As the only person in my extended family to get a university degree - despite many of us being exceptionally bright - it is very painful to see how much my kin project their own struggles into bigotry, racism, and anti-intellectualism.
There appears to be no overt correlation with religion. My kith and kin are probably 70% agnostic/atheist, 20% mainstream religion, and 10% hippy dippy spiritualism or snake-juggling.
I am beginning to feel that the dominant euro-American identity, the one that dominates the public sphere is the "rugged individual". That strikes me as fundamentally an identity of aspiration, of self-reliant improvement. I locate that identity in my country with people who run their own small business, the petit-bourgeoise (to use 19th century terminology), including people like electricians and plumbers who work for themselves.
I'm interested specifically in the three-way struggle I picked up in some reading between the Communist Party, the "left" ALP fighting the communists and the virulent anti-communist Catholic groupers who became the DLP. I am more interested in the struggle between the communists and the ALP than the sectarian struggle, because I have read quite a bit about Santamaria et al. I have the books. I bought a whole bunch of union histories in the 1990's. I've just got to dust them off and read them.
The social conservatism I picked up was specifically over the fight within the Party to change the White Australia policy. It looks like (bearing in mind the limits of my reading to date) it was the "old guard" represented by Calwell v "new guard" represented by Whitlam. I never looked at that before.
Your first paragraph will take you (being from Victoria) into some interesting territory. When you're looking at Victoria, it's going to be very hard to separate out the sectarian struggle, given the strong links between ++ Mannix, Santamaria and the Groupers. NSW makes an interesting comparison, with ++ Gilroy working closely with Cahill and official Labor to support them rather than adopt the confrontational approach which drove Mannix, and which condemned Labor to Opposition in both State and Federal Parliaments.
The White Australia policy owed its continuation to the "old guard" which you describe. There was a great fear that non-European migrants would be prepared to work for a pittance and thus be the preferred employees.
What @Heavenlyannie said reminds me that one of the most destructive and deracinating aspects of social mobility and rapid social change is gentrification and the erasure of traditional communities and their urban landscapes. Class in South Africa, as in North America or much of Europe, has very different connotations to the UK, but the two extremes of urban decay and gentrification have altered many older neighborhoods for good.
When Cape Town underwent what felt like overnight gentrification circa 2010 or so, many of those living in grimy crime-ridden seafront suburbs found they could sell their grandmother's old flat or a rundown bungalow for a fortune. International property developers weren't deterred in the least by crime, addiction or urban decay. If you put up condominiums, yachting marinas and boutique hotels on a poverty-stricken beach front and call it a tax haven, the rich will flock there. International crime syndicates know property speculation is one of the smartest ways to launder money. And initially those who sold were as thrilled as if they had won a lottery: many emigrated, not to older locations (Britain, Australia, Canada) but to the United Arab Emirates or Singapore for better investment opportunities.
Suddenly the character and way of life changed beyond recognition in Cape Town: Cape Muslim communities dispersed as investors bought into the Bo-Kaap or Malay Quarter, historic buildings were demolished without permission, those who had lived in the city bowl for generations could no longer afford to rent there, let alone buy. Those who could not keep up with soaring rentals and the cost of living were evicted to the outskirts of the city. Old bookshops in Long Street became trendy restaurants, libraries became coffee bars with hipster baristas and live music, mosques, synagogues and churches were redesignated as disused museums, shopping malls, art galleries and upmarket shops went up to replace railway workers' pool halls, labourers' cottages and old nautical pubs. Private homes all around the city were now AirB&Bs.
Even as the old social grids of racial segregation still remained intact, the new division was global affluence. 'Urban upgrades' included significant tax breaks, which for local and foreign developers and investors was a no-brainer for purchasing properties for redevelopment. Older, close-knit mixed-race communities were fragmented and displaced, those now living in those streets didn't know one another, the former social cohesion had disintegrated. Life had been tough and precarious but residents had known who could be trusted to help out.
A brutal and unsentimental process echoed in so many other places around the world. The current pandemic has slowed but not halted the pace of change.
I’m currently rewatching Frasier. Granted, I am a Brit, so have a different perspective: and no, I don’t think it is a grittily realistic documentary. But I think it is enough to illustrate that class distinctions do indeed exist in the US?
I’m currently rewatching Frasier. Granted, I am a Brit, so have a different perspective: and no, I don’t think it is a grittily realistic documentary. But I think it is enough to illustrate that class distinctions do indeed exist in the US?
Yes, they exist, but in a very different form from class distinctions in the UK, at least as described here.
I’ll try to circle back later on this, but in the meantime, I wouldn’t take Frasier as illustrative of much.
Am I right in thinking that any term that indicates a person has, shall we say, a rural background, invariably indicates they are at the bottom of any social hierarchy going? I'm thinking of peasant, yokel, bumpkin, teuchter (Scotland), culchie (Ireland), hillbilly (US).
Am I right in thinking that any term that indicates a person has, shall we say, a rural background, invariably indicates they are at the bottom of any social hierarchy going? I'm thinking of peasant, yokel, bumpkin, teuchter (Scotland), culchie (Ireland), hillbilly (US).
Laird, Squire, country gentleman, country parson.
What your terms have in common is implying a rural poor background.
Am I right in thinking that any term that indicates a person has, shall we say, a rural background, invariably indicates they are at the bottom of any social hierarchy going? I'm thinking of peasant, yokel, bumpkin, teuchter (Scotland), culchie (Ireland), hillbilly (US).
"It's complicated".
Class distinctions between the rural and urban poor aren't as linear as you suggest.
I'm looking a little at the history of the ALP. What hits me between the eyes was how fundamentally socially conservative it was prior to the 1970's. Its like there's a whole history of working people that I for one never really noticed, how divided it is politically once you move away from industrial rights. I don't think I noticed it because by the 1980's it was very much a party of the middle class, just as much as it was one of the working class. In part, that's because free tertiary education from 1972(?) to 1986(?) allowed for many more kid from aspirational families to get educated. They were working and lower middle class kids, and they became the union officials and ALP leaders of later decades.
That's strikes me as the root of the problem with the ALP, this divided character it has on so many issues outside of the industrial sphere.
I think that's true in the UK too - my grandfather was the son of a miner, only bad eyesight kept him out of the pits and in work as a storeman. He and his mates never voted anything other than Labour all their lives and read the Daily Herald then the Daily Mirror when the Herald became the (very different both politically and tonally) Sun. Through the Durham Miners Association he was borderline communist - and remembered Ramsay Macdonald (who he met many times) as a sell-out. He idolised Manny Shinwell. At the age of 85 he was getting two buses just so he could continue to shop in the Co-Op rather than the supermarket at the end of his street.
He and his mates at the miners welfare club were the most right wing socially conservative people I've ever met. I asked him about it once - he basically wanted a workers co-operative government with the (Jack Jones era) TUC in charge, but to keep the Monarchy 'because we're British and that's best.'
I think there's a fundamental truth about human societies that often gets overlooked by those on the left, which is that people are considerably happier for the wealth to be shared around so long as the people it's being shared with are essentially the same as them. Thus the correlation between increasing multiculturalism and decreasing socialist sentiment in the UK.
Your observation about your grandfather and his mates being extremely economically left wing but also extremely socially right wing fits with this theory.
I guess in a way it can be summed up as a belief that we should all be the same. The problem being that that belief looks very different when viewed through an economic lens than it does when viewed through a social lens...
Correlation is not causation though, and you can't talk about 'increasing multiculturalism' without also talking about the British colonialism that caused it. That colonialism also feeds this idea that people of colour can't really be working-class, or that white working-class people are the 'real' working-class population. It also perpetuates the myth that working-class people are inherently more bigoted than middle-class and upper-class people.
In reality, fighting for racial equality has almost always been via fighting for labour rights for people of colour (bus boycotts became such a key feature of anti-racist activism because that's how working-class Black people got to work) - and inevitably there was solidarity between many who recognised that anti-racism was inherently part of anti-capitalism. Likewise those railing against 'identity politics' somehow missed the solidarity between LGBTQ+ people and miners in the 80s.
Never said it was. I chose the word "correlation" carefully for exactly that reason.
and you can't talk about 'increasing multiculturalism' without also talking about the British colonialism that caused it.
I think you can, because the people driving colonialism were seldom the same ones dealing with its social effects either at home or abroad.
That colonialism also feeds this idea that people of colour can't really be working-class, or that white working-class people are the 'real' working-class population.
It's that idea that I'm talking about - the lack of solidarity with people who are perceived as being "not us".
It also perpetuates the myth that working-class people are inherently more bigoted than middle-class and upper-class people.
I don't think that's true at all, but I do think that working-class bigotry is sometimes more visible (especially in venues such as this) because the chattering classes either expect the working class to have solidarity with everyone or think the only societal difference that they care about is economic. Or to put it another way, working-class bigotry is more visible because it's less expected, even though it's that expectation that's faulty.
In reality, fighting for racial equality has almost always been via fighting for labour rights for people of colour (bus boycotts became such a key feature of anti-racist activism because that's how working-class Black people got to work) - and inevitably there was solidarity between many who recognised that anti-racism was inherently part of anti-capitalism.
All no doubt true, but tangential to the point I'm raising. Which is that it's perfectly possible (though undesirable) for people to fight for labour rights for themselves and those like them while not caring about (or even actively opposing) labour rights for those seen as different.
Likewise those railing against 'identity politics' somehow missed the solidarity between LGBTQ+ people and miners in the 80s.
At leadership level, anyway. One wonders how many of the miners themselves were in favour of LGBTQ+ causes.
<snip> it's perfectly possible (though undesirable) for people to fight for labour rights for themselves and those like them while not caring about (or even actively opposing) labour rights for those seen as different. <snip>
This can be seen in the past attitude of (some) unions toward women workers.
<snip> it's perfectly possible (though undesirable) for people to fight for labour rights for themselves and those like them while not caring about (or even actively opposing) labour rights for those seen as different. <snip>
This can be seen in the past attitude of (some) unions toward women workers.
That colonialism also feeds this idea that people of colour can't really be working-class, or that white working-class people are the 'real' working-class population.
That colonialism also feeds this idea that people of colour can't really be working-class, or that white working-class people are the 'real' working-class population.
Are you talking exclusively about Britain there?
I'm talking about an attitude that is common in Britain, yes.
Can you expand on how colonialism feeds that attitude, if you want to explore the idea a bit.
I have no problem with the notion that white supremacy is bolstered by nineteenth century European imperialism (and that's probably a synonym for colonialism - I'm fuzzy on that). I have no problem with our whole Western intellectual and social worlds being absolutely dripping with the idea that we are the most highly evolved social system, the pinnacle of human achievement. The key is evolved, and whether we choose to use that concept or not, Social Darwinism lies at the root, a way of thinking developed to meet the needs of European Imperialism.
I also accept that there is a xenophobic attitude common to the Western world that where we Europeans live we are entitled to live by right. In Europe proper, that is because "we have always lived here, it is our place", and in the European offshoots, the places that experienced mass European settlement, the right is by conquest (that's changed. In Australia it used to be explicitly because indigenous people did not occupy the land in the right way).
What I want to explore in the British context is whether that xenophobic attitude displayed when we assume that the real working class is comprised of white British people is actually because of nineteenth century imperialism (or colonialism if there is a relevant difference).
I'm trying to narrow the question down to save time, but feel free to challenge the assumptions I make.
How so, Pomona? What is it that makes London different from Manchester or Birmingham, for example?
I mean for a start there's the size issue - the next biggest cities after London (Birmingham and Manchester have very similar population sizes with a difference of around 100k between them) have less than a third of the population of London. London is also much less suburban than either - obviously there are suburbs but there are more people living in the truly urban areas. I'm not all that personally familiar with Manchester but I know Birmingham well, and Birmingham's city centre is actually very compact (obviously relatively speaking) and much smaller than the city's large overall size would suggest - compared to other large UK cities it feels a lot smaller despite having such a big population. London feels big in a different kind of way to even the other big cities though.
I think also the London mayoral system makes a huge difference along with things like TfL being municipal in a way other UK cities' transport isn't - I know that other cities now have mayoral systems but they haven't been around for long enough to really become part of the city in the same way. The London mayoral system makes London more like other global large cities where this is the norm. In my experience there is quite a big divide between people who live in London and those that don't, in the sense that the rest of the country barely exists for those that live in London. People leave in order to go on holiday/vacation or to visit friends in other places, but it isn't usually a regular thing in the same way as outsiders might regularly visit London. I think also the lack of a megaregion or multi-city metro area is significant - there isn't a large city nearby enough to form a megaregion/metro area with more than two cities. Within the commuter belt it's quite isolated, in contrast to say the Liverpool-Manchester area or the Leeds-Bradford area, or even smaller examples like the Thames Valley region.
Just picking this up too. What I would like to know is how these differences are reflected in how "...class for the post-colonial diaspora works differently [in London compared to the rest of the UK]".
I'm challenging the idea so that I understand it before I decide whether I agree with it.
Am I right in thinking that any term that indicates a person has, shall we say, a rural background, invariably indicates they are at the bottom of any social hierarchy going? I'm thinking of peasant, yokel, bumpkin, teuchter (Scotland), culchie (Ireland), hillbilly (US).
"It's complicated".
Class distinctions between the rural and urban poor aren't as linear as you suggest.
In the US, the urban poor and the rural poor are at the bottoms of two different hierarchies, I think. You can have a rural background in the US and be rich, middle class, or poor -- and I think of these as being determined by whether you own land and if so, what kind of land and how much of it. If you have US$20,000,000 in cash burning a hole in your pocket right now, you can buy just over 3000 acres of some pretty sweet ranchland near where I grew up. On the opposite end of the scale in the same county are the poor migrants who pick and pack strawberries by hand. The person who buys Indian Knob Ranch will be called a rancher, very much a rural term, but one that puts them high up on the local social hierarchy.
In the developing world, there's neo-globalism to complicate matters a little. Many farms here have been sold to foreign consortiums (Australian, Chinese) for biofuel production or as a diversification from mining interests. The farm labourers have been replaced by mechanised production. Those who stay on the land depend on minuscule government grants, piecemeal employment on roadworks, intermittent manual labour on smaller farms. The older skills in horticulture or animal husbandry once passed down through families have largely disappeared.
@Ruth used the phrase 'rich, middle class, or poor' in reference to social hierarchies in the US. But just using the term 'class' inadvertently accepts or credence to some sort of validity to what is really just the social inequality end result of social injustice that needs to be challenged.
In the developing world, there's neo-globalism to complicate matters a little. Many farms here have been sold to foreign consortiums (Australian, Chinese) for biofuel production or as a diversification from mining interests. The farm labourers have been replaced by mechanised production. Those who stay on the land depend on minuscule government grants, piecemeal employment on roadworks, intermittent manual labour on smaller farms. The older skills in horticulture or animal husbandry once passed down through families have largely disappeared.
This reminds me of a former refugee I work with who spent quite a few years in a Kenyan refugee camp. One day at work she explained to me how a particular drink was made where she came from, from the vegetable to the end product, from memory. I was amazed at her recall and the organisation of her thoughts. She would make an excellent manager of a disability service, where compliance with legislative requirements is critical. I could not recite a process in the way she did, over a period of perhaps ten minutes.
Meanwhile on the 'Keir Starmer' thread in Purgatory terms like 'working class', 'upper class' and 'lower-middle-class' are being bandied about as though self-evidently acceptable ways of categorising people. Grrrh!
@Ruth used the phrase 'rich, middle class, or poor' in reference to social hierarchies in the US. But just using the term 'class' inadvertently accepts or credence to some sort of validity to what is really just the social inequality end result of social injustice that needs to be challenged.
How does the word "class" lend validity to social injustice?
@Ruth used the phrase 'rich, middle class, or poor' in reference to social hierarchies in the US.
Hmmm. I’m not quite sure about that. I read Ruth’s phrase “rich, middle class or poor” as referring to wealth hierarchies in the US. Not that there isn’t overlap between wealth hierarchies and social hierarchies. There unquestionably is.
But in my experience in the US, “middle class” is used primarily to refer to households with annual income within a certain range, or within a certain range of wealth—home- or land-owning, assets in the bank, etc. In other words, whether someone is “middle class,” as that term is generally used, is determined by relative wealth or lack thereof, not by family or parentage, by speech or accent, or by other social markers. And being “middle class” isn’t necessarily indicative of where one falls in any social hierarchies. It might be a factor, but other factors are likely to be more relevant in that regard.
There is a world of cultural difference between Dolly Parton and Mitch McConnell though, but I am not sure how that would be characterised in US terms. It is not just about money and geography.
There is a world of cultural difference between Dolly Parton and Mitch McConnell though, but I am not sure how that would be characterised in US terms. It is not just about money and geography.
Is that not simply politics? Though McConnell's background is wealthier than Parton's neither come from money. What's different is outlook and values. Tony Benn and Lord Carrington were of the same class but had very different politics.
I think most Americans like describing themselves as middle-class and many self-described middle class people (especially in the area I live) are really upper (by economic standards) or lower (again by economic standards). How it all mixes together with family background, perceived race, ethnicity, education, and occupation leads to a messy dance.
I think most Americans like describing themselves as middle-class and many self-described middle class people (especially in the area I live) are really upper (by economic standards) or lower (again by economic standards).
I think you’re right. And where those who study such things draw the boundaries for middle class can vary widely.
How it all mixes together with family background, perceived race, ethnicity, education, and occupation leads to a messy dance.
Yes, and I would say perceived race and ethnicity in particular.
Comments
Why do we attribute meaning and status to artificial and fluid distinctions that result in as much heat as they do light?
How would describe your class, if you think of yourself as having one in a US context, and in the US what would be working class ?
(To a certain extent I have been moving down the class structure over my life.)
That social conservatism you pick up derived from the strong links (at least in the capital cities) between the Catholic Church and the ALP, both in leadership and rank and file members.
My paternal great great grandfather is listed in one record as a linen manufacturer in Ireland - clearly a man of some substance. However, the next record shows him back to being a weaver, now living in a tenement in Govan. I think of our family since then as upper working class with occasional excursions in various directions.
We've retitled and broadened out this thread as we've already got Australian points of view too, so feel free to either explore it here or to start a new thread - whatever takes your fancy. If it really takes off we can always split it out for you into its own thread
Cheers
L
Epiphanies Host
Hosting off
My experience is growing up in an all-blue-collar family, indeed in a small mountain town with essentially no white-collar examples outside of television, a nearby hospital, and my teachers. As the only person in my extended family to get a university degree - despite many of us being exceptionally bright - it is very painful to see how much my kin project their own struggles into bigotry, racism, and anti-intellectualism.
There appears to be no overt correlation with religion. My kith and kin are probably 70% agnostic/atheist, 20% mainstream religion, and 10% hippy dippy spiritualism or snake-juggling.
This is a tangent.
I'm interested specifically in the three-way struggle I picked up in some reading between the Communist Party, the "left" ALP fighting the communists and the virulent anti-communist Catholic groupers who became the DLP. I am more interested in the struggle between the communists and the ALP than the sectarian struggle, because I have read quite a bit about Santamaria et al. I have the books. I bought a whole bunch of union histories in the 1990's. I've just got to dust them off and read them.
However, I'm doing this to write a little thing for a facebook page on Whitlam, and I know from past experiences that going down these little rabbit holes is not conducive to getting things done. So I may have to turn my back on this very tempting wonderland and add it to my list of undiscovered countries.
The social conservatism I picked up was specifically over the fight within the Party to change the White Australia policy. It looks like (bearing in mind the limits of my reading to date) it was the "old guard" represented by Calwell v "new guard" represented by Whitlam. I never looked at that before.
/end tangent
Identity is fundamentally a construct, and for the fortunate few like me, a choice. I think I find it easier to switch identities on and off because I don't get my identity from what others think about me, I'm too self-centred, too interested in myself and my reactions. The identity I am assigned by others is white, rich and male. If it were otherwise, and I was blasé about what others thought, my assigned identity would be quickly pointed out to me and become my public reality.
So class, race, religion, wealth are all combinations of our self-perceptions and the perceptions others place upon us. For those who are physically different from the socially constructed norm, "race" might be the predominant identity. Its the aspect of a person in some places that most controls what they can do. Others might identify most strongly around their gender or sexual orientation. That is the aspect of their person that determines the course of their lives, or is perceived to limit it. My impression is that in the UK class is a significant limiting factor.
In 2020's Australia the dominant identifiers are accent, ethnicity, "race", gender and gender identity. Religion, I state bravely, is a sub-set of ethnicity in most cases. Accent determines whether you are perceived as Australian, even for people who have a non-European appearance or dress.
So being Irish-Catholic, or Australian, or a football tragic, or "almost-American", or ENGLISH (yes, English) or Western, a lout or a snob are all both me and "not-me". I feel like I can put on and take off the accoutrements of these identities at will (I am undoubtedly fooling myself there). But there is still a "me". When I was young, I couldn't really see "me", and that was a factor in my breakdown in my 30's. But I'm starting to come into my own view now.
It might well be that my attitude to identity is a strong marker of privilege. That's OK. I accept my fortune, am grateful for it, and want to spread it about. I love and want to expand Australia's multiculturalism.
I am beginning to feel that the dominant euro-American identity, the one that dominates the public sphere is the "rugged individual". That strikes me as fundamentally an identity of aspiration, of self-reliant improvement. I locate that identity in my country with people who run their own small business, the petit-bourgeoise (to use 19th century terminology), including people like electricians and plumbers who work for themselves.
Is there something in that, or am I off base?
Your first paragraph will take you (being from Victoria) into some interesting territory. When you're looking at Victoria, it's going to be very hard to separate out the sectarian struggle, given the strong links between ++ Mannix, Santamaria and the Groupers. NSW makes an interesting comparison, with ++ Gilroy working closely with Cahill and official Labor to support them rather than adopt the confrontational approach which drove Mannix, and which condemned Labor to Opposition in both State and Federal Parliaments.
The White Australia policy owed its continuation to the "old guard" which you describe. There was a great fear that non-European migrants would be prepared to work for a pittance and thus be the preferred employees.
When Cape Town underwent what felt like overnight gentrification circa 2010 or so, many of those living in grimy crime-ridden seafront suburbs found they could sell their grandmother's old flat or a rundown bungalow for a fortune. International property developers weren't deterred in the least by crime, addiction or urban decay. If you put up condominiums, yachting marinas and boutique hotels on a poverty-stricken beach front and call it a tax haven, the rich will flock there. International crime syndicates know property speculation is one of the smartest ways to launder money. And initially those who sold were as thrilled as if they had won a lottery: many emigrated, not to older locations (Britain, Australia, Canada) but to the United Arab Emirates or Singapore for better investment opportunities.
Suddenly the character and way of life changed beyond recognition in Cape Town: Cape Muslim communities dispersed as investors bought into the Bo-Kaap or Malay Quarter, historic buildings were demolished without permission, those who had lived in the city bowl for generations could no longer afford to rent there, let alone buy. Those who could not keep up with soaring rentals and the cost of living were evicted to the outskirts of the city. Old bookshops in Long Street became trendy restaurants, libraries became coffee bars with hipster baristas and live music, mosques, synagogues and churches were redesignated as disused museums, shopping malls, art galleries and upmarket shops went up to replace railway workers' pool halls, labourers' cottages and old nautical pubs. Private homes all around the city were now AirB&Bs.
Even as the old social grids of racial segregation still remained intact, the new division was global affluence. 'Urban upgrades' included significant tax breaks, which for local and foreign developers and investors was a no-brainer for purchasing properties for redevelopment. Older, close-knit mixed-race communities were fragmented and displaced, those now living in those streets didn't know one another, the former social cohesion had disintegrated. Life had been tough and precarious but residents had known who could be trusted to help out.
A brutal and unsentimental process echoed in so many other places around the world. The current pandemic has slowed but not halted the pace of change.
I’ll try to circle back later on this, but in the meantime, I wouldn’t take Frasier as illustrative of much.
Laird, Squire, country gentleman, country parson.
What your terms have in common is implying a rural poor background.
"It's complicated".
Class distinctions between the rural and urban poor aren't as linear as you suggest.
I think there's a fundamental truth about human societies that often gets overlooked by those on the left, which is that people are considerably happier for the wealth to be shared around so long as the people it's being shared with are essentially the same as them. Thus the correlation between increasing multiculturalism and decreasing socialist sentiment in the UK.
Your observation about your grandfather and his mates being extremely economically left wing but also extremely socially right wing fits with this theory.
I guess in a way it can be summed up as a belief that we should all be the same. The problem being that that belief looks very different when viewed through an economic lens than it does when viewed through a social lens...
In reality, fighting for racial equality has almost always been via fighting for labour rights for people of colour (bus boycotts became such a key feature of anti-racist activism because that's how working-class Black people got to work) - and inevitably there was solidarity between many who recognised that anti-racism was inherently part of anti-capitalism. Likewise those railing against 'identity politics' somehow missed the solidarity between LGBTQ+ people and miners in the 80s.
Never said it was. I chose the word "correlation" carefully for exactly that reason.
I think you can, because the people driving colonialism were seldom the same ones dealing with its social effects either at home or abroad.
It's that idea that I'm talking about - the lack of solidarity with people who are perceived as being "not us".
I don't think that's true at all, but I do think that working-class bigotry is sometimes more visible (especially in venues such as this) because the chattering classes either expect the working class to have solidarity with everyone or think the only societal difference that they care about is economic. Or to put it another way, working-class bigotry is more visible because it's less expected, even though it's that expectation that's faulty.
All no doubt true, but tangential to the point I'm raising. Which is that it's perfectly possible (though undesirable) for people to fight for labour rights for themselves and those like them while not caring about (or even actively opposing) labour rights for those seen as different.
At leadership level, anyway. One wonders how many of the miners themselves were in favour of LGBTQ+ causes.
Quite so.
Are you talking exclusively about Britain there?
I'm talking about an attitude that is common in Britain, yes.
I have no problem with the notion that white supremacy is bolstered by nineteenth century European imperialism (and that's probably a synonym for colonialism - I'm fuzzy on that). I have no problem with our whole Western intellectual and social worlds being absolutely dripping with the idea that we are the most highly evolved social system, the pinnacle of human achievement. The key is evolved, and whether we choose to use that concept or not, Social Darwinism lies at the root, a way of thinking developed to meet the needs of European Imperialism.
I also accept that there is a xenophobic attitude common to the Western world that where we Europeans live we are entitled to live by right. In Europe proper, that is because "we have always lived here, it is our place", and in the European offshoots, the places that experienced mass European settlement, the right is by conquest (that's changed. In Australia it used to be explicitly because indigenous people did not occupy the land in the right way).
What I want to explore in the British context is whether that xenophobic attitude displayed when we assume that the real working class is comprised of white British people is actually because of nineteenth century imperialism (or colonialism if there is a relevant difference).
I'm trying to narrow the question down to save time, but feel free to challenge the assumptions I make.
Just picking this up too. What I would like to know is how these differences are reflected in how "...class for the post-colonial diaspora works differently [in London compared to the rest of the UK]".
I'm challenging the idea so that I understand it before I decide whether I agree with it.
In the US, the urban poor and the rural poor are at the bottoms of two different hierarchies, I think. You can have a rural background in the US and be rich, middle class, or poor -- and I think of these as being determined by whether you own land and if so, what kind of land and how much of it. If you have US$20,000,000 in cash burning a hole in your pocket right now, you can buy just over 3000 acres of some pretty sweet ranchland near where I grew up. On the opposite end of the scale in the same county are the poor migrants who pick and pack strawberries by hand. The person who buys Indian Knob Ranch will be called a rancher, very much a rural term, but one that puts them high up on the local social hierarchy.
This reminds me of a former refugee I work with who spent quite a few years in a Kenyan refugee camp. One day at work she explained to me how a particular drink was made where she came from, from the vegetable to the end product, from memory. I was amazed at her recall and the organisation of her thoughts. She would make an excellent manager of a disability service, where compliance with legislative requirements is critical. I could not recite a process in the way she did, over a period of perhaps ten minutes.
@Merry Vole, you need to complain on the Purg thread in question and not here. Please don't talk across different threads or forums.
Many thanks.
Hosting off/
MaryLouise, Epiphanies Host
How does the word "class" lend validity to social injustice?
But in my experience in the US, “middle class” is used primarily to refer to households with annual income within a certain range, or within a certain range of wealth—home- or land-owning, assets in the bank, etc. In other words, whether someone is “middle class,” as that term is generally used, is determined by relative wealth or lack thereof, not by family or parentage, by speech or accent, or by other social markers. And being “middle class” isn’t necessarily indicative of where one falls in any social hierarchies. It might be a factor, but other factors are likely to be more relevant in that regard.
Is that not simply politics? Though McConnell's background is wealthier than Parton's neither come from money. What's different is outlook and values. Tony Benn and Lord Carrington were of the same class but had very different politics.
(ETA Wiki says his grandfather owned a funeral home and his father was in the military, there’s no mention of being destitute.)
Yes, and I would say perceived race and ethnicity in particular.
All political systems are unjust. There’s always someone getting screwed over.