Chavs – a review

Firstly, Chavs is not a terrible book nor is it the best. There’s nothing new being presented. It has though got Owen’s name on the tagline of the appalling Chavtowns website. Better editing could have saved the insights that Owen does have, bolstered the evidence to support what he writes and stripped out some of the rest along with better attention to detail over basic facts.

Some sweeping statements are made from very narrow evidential basis. A remark from an Asian women about too many immigrants made in the context of her son finding it difficult to get a job is used as firm proof that such attitudes must be rooted in the material conditions that people face. Anyone who has argued with right wingers will know that they pick up on sweeping statements from such one-off encounters as being the Left’s intellectual sloppiness. Monster up your evidence kids if you want to turn your words into a revolution!

Much of the book takes the form of a recital of a commonplace statement that is made about working class people followed by a refutation. The commonplace argument is illustrated by a quote from the Telegraph or the Times. The refutations are pulled from anywhere: the Guardian, an interview or a statistic. The effect is to make many passages in the book feel like a précis of various debates between broadsheet columnists.

It is also rather difficult to follow nail down the main argument of the book. It does tend to drift from being a description of the way that the working class continues to be demonised through to a critique of New Labour’s shortcomings in relation to the lack of social housing .This critique of New Labour’s lack of a housing policy is the strongest part of the book and makes some pertinent points. The passage quoting Hazel Blears in interview does illuminate the political shortcomings around this. The book then goes into a chapter entitled ‘Backlash’ which is the politically weakest part of the book.

‘Backlash’ attempts to deal with working class racism rather seeing this mainly as people voting for the BNP. There is no real analysis of power relationships within the working class, of white workers having privileges over Black workers or working class men having privileges over working class women. Rather strangely the Left is upbraided for paying too much attention to international issues and ignoring day-to-day local concerns. More usually the Left is criticised for not paying enough attention to international issues. Owen could lead use in a dangerous direction here.

The experience of Black workers and women workers is left out of the account. The view of white working class people in particular white men is  a rather rose-tinted one. Imogen Tyler’s interesting 2008 paper “Chav Mum, Chav Scum” provides a better account of how the vilification of poor white working class has racist as well as sexist elements to it: what makes these women disgusting to reactionaries is that they are fertile  (womens’ fertility is often a site for a lot of misogynist hatred) and that they debase themselves by having children with Black men. Owen misses this in his book but was famously faced with the the full force of a particular form of racist and reactionary nonsense from David Starkey denouncing the white working class becoming Black.

Another important analysis left out of the book is the Tory working class, an example of false class consciousness if ever there was. There is an abundance of research about working class Labour voters becoming disenfranchised from Labour and turning to the BNP yet that is only part of the picture:

If BNP supporters are traditional Labour, male working class voters therefore, the natural conclusion that it’s Labour they are taking support from. This falls down, however, on some other questions – asked if they’d rather have Cameron or Brown as PM, BNP voters opt for Cameron by 59% to 17%. Asked to place themselves on the political spectrum they put themselves right of centre, in roughly the same place as they do the Tories. 22% of them think the Tories care about people like themselves, only 6% say the same about Labour. In short, the people the BNP seem to appeal to are actually “working class Tories” – the sort of traditional working class voters who under other circumstances might shift over to the Conservatives.

A more complex picture arises. It does seem that many BNP voters would otherwise be racist working class Tories. There always has been working class racism as indeed there has been racism in the middle class and the ruling class. Sometimes you get the feeling though that working class racism is being explained away.

Another woeful omittance is the intertwining of race, gender and class, the concentration on the specifically white working class man neglects the voices of women and Black people and the demonisation they experience. A much more thorough analysis of women and the global employment market read Ehrenreich’s “Global Woman” and “Nickel and Dimed”.

You cannot simply divide class, race and gender as separate dynamics. Neither does Owen explore the power relationships or divide and rule tactics, racism and sexism, used that exist within the working class, we are given an insight into the white working class people yet nothing of the increased oppression experienced by Black people and women who are at the short-end of these brutal cuts we are witnessing and the increase in unemployment is neglected.  Instead there’s a rather old-fashion sentimental view of the white working class edging into melodrama. We just see the attacks on the working class through the eyes of white people. Owen only needs to glean a couple of research papers on ethnicity and unemployment and poverty to find out the true extent of deprivation and the savage impact of racism on Black people. If white working class men are misunderstood and stereotyped then the experiences of Black working class people and women are even more misunderstood, ignored and stereotyped combined with the oppression that exists in this society. If Chavs is about the demonisation of the working class then surely all aspects of the working class need to be analysed.

Owen argues, “Purged from politics, their identity trashed, their power in society curtailed and their concerns ignored, it is perhaps surprising that so few working-class have opted for parties like the BNP”.

This quote worries me. He ironically gives less credit to the working class than the working class deserves because many, consciously, see through the racism and fascist ideology the BNP represents. Instead we are treated to a rather patronising explanation, a rather sentimental and soft on racism approach. It’s a kinda letting people off the hook sentiment.

In the conclusion the book drifts round to a general call for a renewed left-wing politics and political organisation. This is fine but it doesn’t really makes the book into a general manifesto on what British left wingers should argue and fight for. The original subject of the book is rather forgotten.

Finally, the book may have put class back into the public domain but it is still gives a skewed and flawed understanding of class. In order to understand class you also need to understand how oppression can take different forms, race and gender are integral to this analysis.

Does this book speak for me and to me? Not really, I find it hard to relate to the discussions in the book. My own background is that I am a daughter of a plastics factory worker and a housewife living on a council estate in the West Midlands, both Labour voters and a GMB member but with racist, homophobic and sexist views (certainly with my own mother it exposed her own internal contradictions as her mother was mixed race). In many ways, experiencing this made me aware of the oppression around me and challenging the lies, contradiction and myths spouted. It made me realise the importance of organising and not subordinating other forms of oppression to the class struggle.

See Kevin Blowe’s post here