Warning: what I’m about to write includes some critique of middle-class culture and values. If you are not prepared to hear that, don’t read this.
For the last twenty years I have, by intention, lived in the poorest ten percent of communities in the country. For the last ten years I have served as an ordained resident of some of the kinds of communities that have voted heavily for the Conservative Party. These are my observations on what I see as a long-term disengagement from the Labour Party by the people I live in and among. It is tempting to say “oh it was Corbyn” or “it was Brexit”. They are the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the arms race and militarisation of various other factors (if you want a cuppa to go through that analogy you are very welcome).
Here are my top ten of why respectable working-class communities have gone blue. Let me explain ‘respectable’ working class. It’s a term Lynsey Hanley uses in in her book of the same name. I may not have her exact sense of what that means- for me it’s the vast and quiet group of citizens who are living in working class communities and making it work. They work, or are retired after a life of work. They (and I hate the term they, for that is my family background) have seen poverty and wealth. They value family. They have been many of my fantastic neighbours, parishioners and friends. They are incredibly generous.
And that leads to my first point. It’s not usually about money in communities like mine. Families are aware that money comes and goes, and somehow you get by. The middle-class obsession with the economic effects of Brexit just don’t wash here because money has always been a useful and yet fragile commodity. And moreover, money doesn’t trump family.
Family matters. The most alien thing for me in most of the last ten years is that I choose to live a long way from my family. Families here want to be close to one another. That has long roots and unfortunately has been derided and neglected by all politicians in the post-industrial world. One of the most heated debates in local politics here is about how families can get housing and work in the same communities. The perceived injustices around race often start here, as new families move in forcing others to live further away (and yes, I know that there are good logistical reasons for those decisions).
I have to be careful how I phrase this. Race and multiculturalism is an issue. It hasn’t worked for many respectable working-class communities. That’s partly because the cultural differences between poorer people of different cultures are bigger; affluent educated middle classness crosses cultural boundaries much more easily. The Labour Party has not done well in this. New Labour heralded multiculturalism and began to ostracise it’s historic base. Local people were told “you can’t say that” or even “you can’t think that”. In my view, this was a significant factor in the move towards UKIP that emerged this decade. UKIP provided a safe space to express doubts and concerns. Sadly, it also harboured rampant aggressive racism.
We have to accept that the country is probably more socially conservative than it’s leaders. We (white middle- class privileged people) have all failed in having honest, long term conversations towards a progress in attitudes. There has been no safe space in the mainline parties for honest confusion. I wonder if that is why the emergence of unfettered anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is such a slap in the face.
Let me return to money for a moment. It’s my experience that people in the communities where I have served do not like debt. I see it when we can’t pay our way in the parish share system (another one that is foundationally skewed against the poor). Debt, when you live in an outer estate, is brutal. It can be retrieved with a kick through your door and no-one will ask questions. Respectable working-class folk avoid it. That’s why big spending promises don’t win here. People want to know how it can be paid for. People would rather go without than get into debt for something.
The debt issue is one of a number where well-intentioned policies have not been welcomed. These are many and varied. Sure Start centres that we miss but that have also led programmes that are seen as interference where I live. Childcare from an increasingly young age in a culture where being together as family is really important. Minimum wages that decrease the financial incentive to take on a role with more responsibility (do you want the extra grief and hassle for 50p more an hour?). Unions have left a long lasting sour taste in older mouths. An aggressive culture of homework setting and targets in areas where education has never been valued are alien and set people against the institutions that care the most.
Education is an odd one. People genuinely want good things for their children- but that includes happiness and play and fun. The educational desire to make everyone academic has failed many people in working- class communities. It was a sin of New Labour to decide that everyone should want to go to university. It devalued the gifts of people who want to work with their strength or artistry. In many ways it was Labour’s further betrayal of old mining and manufacturing communities. Please hear, that is not everyone- education does open doors for many but should not be pushed on everyone.
This leads to my final point (not sure if we are ten yet). There is something about meritocracy that is innately middle class. Middle class ideas are that you put in the work and you get the result. Working class and upper class people have more in common because they know that it’s more random than that. That’s why the Momentum anti- public school madness doesn’t cut it here. In twenty years, I have never been derided about my Cambridge education by an estate neighbour (by the way, first in my family to go to university, Dad on dole when I went- not privileged, just clever). There is a shared understanding that life isn’t fair that weirdly joins Boris Johnson and many of my neighbours. They don’t necessarily like him, but they have more in common with a rotund person who seems to be baffled by their station in life and speaks out of turn, than they do by someone who seems to be judging them whilst at the same time saying they want the best for them.
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