Back to Class

Class and the Internet: The Salon of the Proletariat.

Class. The thing we never seem to talk about anymore. A situation which I am sure suits certain individuals very well indeed. You may wonder why I’m always banging on about it. It may seem to some like I have not only a chip, but curry sauce, mushy peas and an entire steak and kidney pudding on my shoulder. There are now so many intersections of oppression that class seems boring, dated, a relic of the past. The Cheshire dales are filled with footballers and their Tik Tok influencer girlfriends. My dad was a tool maker, you may say; and my mum a nurse. No one cares about class anymore.  

If this is you it’s probably because you sit atop a table that was never laid for me. 

Let me paint the scene.  It was a balmy evening and my girlfriend and I were suited and booted, seated outside in a beautiful restaurant on the banks of the River Thames. It was the end of my birthday weekend and I had been treated, truly like a queen. We were about to order a bang up meal and fuck ton of very expensive wine. This must be costing a fortune I thought. More than that I knew this was a step out of her comfort zone. It’s not that she’s uncultured, it's just, I’m the foodie not her.

The waiter arrived and she enquired about the taster menu only to be told in a hushed French accent, “it’s very expensive, are you sure you have enough money?”

BANG. Suddenly it didn’t matter about the view, the crisp linen tablecloth, nor the delicious scent of freshly sauteed fish, drifting out of the doorway.  We weren’t in the same space as him anymore. 

We ordered, we ate, we drank our wine. While the food was delicious the meal was tainted. There was a tiny knot in the middle of my chest all the way through. We had paid hundreds of pounds to be made to feel like riff raff who didn’t really belong. Next time, I joked, we’re going to Nando’s.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on that meal since then; of the barriers everybody pretends not to see. The hidden rules. The walk, the talk, the way to take up space. How come we can’t have nice stuff even when we pay? Why is our acceptance built on such fragile, shifting sand; that one comment from a pretentious French waiter can seem to bring it all crashing down?

---

One thing the middle class have never understood about the working class is we are voracious polymaths and autodidacts. We may not have qualifications but we spend our lives skilling up. My grand dad was an amateur ornithologist breeding birds in his aviary, while my dad practically ate books.

He reads books like a class bred to fear someone would one day take them away. I think I got my intellectual curiosity from him. He taught me that high culture could be my culture. We were poor but he took me to the theatre when he could. He took me to galleries and museums, and read me aloud classics as I sat in front of the gas fire in his flat; the one hidden behind the grill that would burn your shins if you got too close.

My mum can spell any word on command; while my brother is a drummer as well as a master chef. My other brother is a mathematical genius; although he wastes his talent feeding his wages to the fruit machines. My sister is a dancer. My mum and dad scraped and saved to send her to dance college rather than university - which she could have attended but chose, instead, to work on her craft.

One of the most intelligent lads I knew growing up was expelled from school at 14. He hasn’t got a single qualification, yet his mind is so sharp you could cut yourself. He also happens to be an amazing bass player. He just could not connect with the subjects at school; he was too practical; and was never made to feel like the Complete Works of Shakespeare belonged to him. 

If you want to know how intelligent someone is, play a game with them. Play chess, play Risk, play Monopoly. You will be surprised who comes out on top.

All this is to say, I was lucky to have parents who went to a grammar school. I was lucky to grow up in a house filled with books and works of art. I was lucky they encouraged me in my hobbies and interests. 

So I never felt awkward in these spaces. It was only if others made me feel that way. I knew that culture was for everyone; that it is the heritage of the world. It's a childhood that allowed me class fluidity. Not actual class fluidity. The one of a profession and property ownership, but at least the confidence to talk to anyone I like.

The middle class confuse anti-academia for anti-intellectualism. They don't understand why so many are hostile to a cultural milieu that does everything it can to put barriers in our way. The bougie cinema that bans cash and the women’s toilets, but receives awards for inclusivity; at a ceremony they threw themselves, the one sponsored by Barclays Bank and BA systems. The new games they invented like they/them pronouns. The rituals of the pronouns and the admissions of one's innate characteristics; recanted like a Hail Mary whenever they want to say something slightly controversial. Which is anything at all, it seems these days.

---

The class system is back with a vengeance. Norms I thought we left behind long ago are back again under the veneer of diversity, equity and inclusion. 

I used to feel comfortable in their spaces. In galleries and museums; at the theatre and bougie cinemas, too push to sell popcorn. But now? I feel how I imagine the people I grew up with must have felt. Not explicitly excluded, just odd. On edge. Like a square peg in a round hole.

In times gone by the social hierarchy was enforced with a complex system of etiquette and manners. Knowing which knife you used for fish and which for salad. To climb the social ladder the middle classes learned these complex rituals, sending their daughters to finishing school in the hope of attracting a wealthy, well connected husband. 

In later years, as we became a consumer society you would signal your status by buying luxury goods. You bought designer clothes, expensive cars and holidays abroad. But with plumbers earning more than PHD’s, such class signifiers have lost all meaning. How did the upper classes respond? What new method would be used to separate the wheat from the chav? Luxury beliefs.

It is a concept coined by Rob Henderson, a working class army veteran who spent time in foster care growing up, but attended Yale university; and whose observations of his classmates informed the thesis. 

Essentially, in the 21st century the way you signal your class status is by adopting a platter of luxury beliefs. Ideas like ‘trans women are women.’ These ideas cost the managers of a women’s refuge little, indeed, they ensure their promotion; while those forced to share spaces with men; the women who have no choice, pay the price.

Whether it’s social media policies which tell you what to say and how to say it; or politicians using hate crime bills to enforce their world view from on high; the losers of this system will always be those at the bottom of society. Those who cannot keep abreast of the new language codes; who only just stopped saying ‘coloured’ are now told the correct term for all non-white people is ‘people of colour.’ Despite the fact that no one seems to have asked black and brown people what they thought about all this. Then again, these changes were never brought about for their benefit but to boost the egos of their betters.

If Labour wins power in the general election as all the pundits seem to be suggesting we will see this process accelerated. Turbo charged. They will form a politburo for The Man, not the many. 

All the institutions that were built by the working class because we were excluded from the decision making process, have been captured by this new bourgeois. With the Labour party and the unions beclowning themselves to support the right of men with lactation fetishes to feed babies their moob juice, where do we turn?

The internet. 

Barely literate yet smart people can access everything from Chaucer to Hegel; from computer programming to advanced economics. At the touch of a button I can speak to anyone anywhere as long as there’s connection. 

Far from dumbing us down, the internet is fast becoming the salon of the proletariat. 

Our betters take us for fools. They think they can gas light us into compliance. That they can use social exclusion and shame to make us submit and repeat after them the lies they all pretend to believe. Well, they can’t, and they are about to get a very rude awakening.

We won’t stay in spaces that make us feel like shite. We don’t have to give our money to people who treat us like trash. We will vote with our feet and leave. We can build a new space. We have the skills and the numbers. We just need to reclaim our culture as polymaths and autodidacts. We need to get back to class. To remember who we are. To get back to our roots and - educate, organize and agitate!