Working Class Brits...

On the subject of the English riots this summer -which I feel are directly related to issues of working-class and youth alienation- I offer the following comments, first published at Forbes.com by Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com, a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and an adjunct fellow of the Legatum Institute in London.

I would be very interested in reading forum members insights re: the contents of this article.

The article is titled The U.K. Riots and the Coming Global Class War:

The riots that hit London and other English cities last week have the potential to spread beyond the British Isles. Class rage isn’t unique to England; in fact, it represents part of a growing global class chasm that threatens to undermine capitalism itself.
The hardening of class divisions has been building for a generation, first in the West but increasingly in fast-developing countries such as China. The growing chasm between the classes has its roots in globalization, which has taken jobs from blue-collar and now even white-collar employees; technology, which has allowed the fleetest and richest companies and individuals to shift operations at rapid speed to any locale; and the secularization of society, which has undermined the traditional values about work and family that have underpinned grassroots capitalism from its very origins.
All these factors can be seen in the British riots. Race and police relations played a role, but the rioters included far more than minorities or gangsters. As British historian James Heartfield has suggested, the rioters reflected a broader breakdown in “the British social system,” particularly in “the system of work and reward.”
In the earlier decades of the 20th century working class youths could look forward to jobs in Britain’s vibrant industrial economy and, later, in the growing public sector largely financed by both the earnings of the City of London and credit. Today the industrial sector has shrunk beyond recognition. The global financial crisis has undermined credit and the government’s ability to pay for the welfare state.
With meaningful and worthwhile work harder to come by — particularly in the private sector — the prospects for success among Britain working classes have been reduced to largely fantastical careers in entertainment, sport or all too often crime. Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron’s supporters in the City of London may have benefited from financial bailouts arranged by the Bank of England, but opportunities for even modest social uplift for most other people have faded.
The great British notion of idea of working hard and succeeding through sheer pluck — an idea also embedded in the U.K.’s former colonies, such as the U.S. — has been largely devalued. Dick Hobbs, a scholar at the London School of Economics, says this demoralization has particularly affected white Londoners. Many immigrants have thrived doing engineering and construction work as well as in trades providing service to the capital’s affluent elites.
A native of east London himself, Hobbs maintains that the industrial ethos, despite its failings, had great advantages. It centered first on production and rewarded both the accumulation of skills. In contrast, by some estimates, the pub and club industry has been post-industrial London’s largest source of private-sector employment growth, a phenomena even more marked in less prosperous regions. “There are parts of London where the pubs are the only economy,” he notes.
Hobbs claims that the current “pub and club,” with its “violent potential and instrumental physicality,” simply celebrates consumption often to the point of excess. Perhaps it’s no surprise that looting drove the unrest.
What’s the lesson to be drawn? The ideologues don’t seem to have the answers. A crackdown on criminals — the favored response of the British right — is necessary but does not address the fundamental problems of joblessness and devalued work. Similarly the left’s favorite panacea, a revival of the welfare state, fails to address the central problem of shrinking opportunities for social advancement. There are now at least 1 million unemployed young people in the U.K., more than at any time in a generation, while child poverty in inner London, even during the regime of former Mayor “red Ken” Livingstone last decade, stood at 50% and may well be worse now.
This fundamental class issue is not only present in Britain. There have been numerous outbreaks of street violence across Europe, including in France and Greece. One can expect more in countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal, which will now have to impose the same sort of austerity measures applied by the Cameron government in London.
And how about the United States? Many of the same forces are at play here. Teen unemployment currently exceeds 20%; in the nation’s capital it stands at over 50%. Particularly vulnerable are expensive cities such as Los Angeles and New York, which have become increasingly bifurcated between rich and poor. Cutbacks in social programs, however necessary, could make things worse, both for the middle class minorities who run such efforts as well as their poor charges.
A possible harbinger of this dislocation, observes author Walter Russell Mead, may be the recent rise of random criminality, often racially tinged, taking place in American cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
Still, with over 14 million unemployed nationwide, prospects are not necessarily great for white working- and middle-class Americans. This pain is broadly felt, particularly by younger workers. According to a Pew Research survey, almost 2 in 5 Americans aged 18 to 19 are unemployed or out the workforce, the highest percentage in three decades.
Diminished prospects — what many pundits praise as the “new normal” — now confront a vast proportion of the population. One indication: The expectation of earning more money next year has fallen to the lowest level in 25 years. Wages have been falling not only for non-college graduates but for those with four-year degree as well. Over 43% of non-college-educated whites complain they are downwardly mobile.
Given this, it’s hard to see how class resentment in this country can do anything but grow in the years. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claimed as early as 2007 that he was worried about growing inequality in this country, but his Wall Street and corporate-friendly policies have failed to improve the grassroots economy.
The prospects for a widening class conflict are clear even in China, where social inequality is now among the world’s worse . Not surprisingly, one survey conducted the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences found that 96% of respondents “resent the rich.” While Tea Partiers and leftists in the U.S. decry the colluding capitalism of the Bush-Obama-Bernanke regime, Chinese working and middle classes confront a hegemonic ruling class consisting of public officials and wealthy capitalists. That this takes place under the aegis of a supposedly “Marxist-Leninist regime” is both ironic and obscene.
This expanding class war creates more intense political conflicts. On the right the Tea Party — as well as rising grassroots European protest parties in such unlikely locales as Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands — grows in large part out of the conviction that the power structure, corporate and government, work together to screw the broad middle class. Left-wing militancy also has a class twist, with progressives increasingly alienated by the gentry politics of the Obama Administration.
Many conservatives here, as well as abroad, reject the huge role of class. To them, wealth and poverty still reflect levels of virtue — and societal barriers to upward mobility, just a mild inhibitor. But modern society cannot run according to the individualist credo of Ayn Rand; economic systems, to be credible and socially sustainable, must deliver results to the vast majority of citizens. If capitalism cannot do that expect more outbreaks of violence and greater levels of political alienation — not only in Britain but across most of the world’s leading countries, including the U.S.

 

On the subject of class warfare, Tory politics, and the growing generational angst in Britain, I found the following post by Van Badham on the ABC.com opinion blog The Drum very interesting.

I would be very interested to read responses, particularly from British forum members, in response to the following commentary, presented under the title A Very British Class War:


Anyone who finds the present riots in London surprising either hasn't been living here, or has not been paying attention.
As I write this, kids in hoodies are running up and down my street with dogs, there are police on the corner, helicopters overhead and divvy vans circling the social housing estate across the road from my flat.
Welcome to David Cameron's Big Society; please applaud his Conservative Party, as their vision for Britain has come true with remarkable speed. I've been watching the Tories on television tonight wriggling through rehearsed and evasive responses to questions like "Are these riots a direct result of Tory cuts? Do you bear any responsibility for the present situation?" and it's almost as enraging as not being able to buy painkillers from the closed local Tesco because rampaging kids are likely to set it on fire.
It's very easy to be enraged at the children - and, watching from my window, they are mostly teenaged children - wreaking havoc in the streets. London is a mess. The shops that have not been smashed up are closed. The pizzeria around the corner from my house is boarded up, police are everywhere and there's no guarantee of available public transport.
I was unfortunate enough to receive an unrelated injury two days ago, and my visit to a casualty ward was my first direct contact with the chaos. Patients spilled out of the doors and we all waited painful, frustrating hours because two other local wards had been closed down due to the rioting and this ward took the overflow.

Unlike the squirming Tories, the kids themselves can't be bothered with rehearsed responses. Those who appear on TV aren't speaking articulately to political demands. "We're showing the police we can do what we like!" is the nasal refrain bleating from the mouths of teenage girls swigging looted booze from the neck. It may not be complicated rhetoric, but they certainly are living up to it. For the first three days of the riots, the 1,400 deployed police staggered around hopelessly, trying to put out gasoline fires or defend their own police stations while around the corner kids helped themselves through shattered shop windows to shoes, smokes, televisions, jewellery.
Where I spent the last couple of days, at Lee Green, the high street is a map of the carnage. The Sainsbury's supermarket is boarded up, a jeweller's shop is smashed to pieces and my friend found the proprietor of the local servo shaking behind a security screen, staring at the wreckage of his looted shop. The same friend made the point that the next-door Vauxhall car dealership remained unscathed, with the observation that this was probably because the looters are too young to drive.
What's causing the fear of the young people amongst the local population is not simply the rapidity at which the violence has spread, nor the unpredictable, shifting locations of the attack. It's the shrieking, materialistic nihilism of the kids liberating televisions from smashed-up megastores that is frightening. The student protests of the past 12 months may have had their moments of argy-bargy with police, but their presence on the streets was always a means to a political end. With the rioters, the presence is the end. What's genuinely terrifying is that this is civil action that is not working towards an ultimately peaceful outcome, but existing within a paradigm of perceived futurelessness shared by the young rioters. Those asking why these young people aren't concerned about the personal consequences of their behaviour need to understand that thanks to the efficient policy implementation of the Tories and their Liberal Democrat buddies, these kids effectively have no future… so why not grab a nice television if you're spiralling towards oblivion, anyway?

This futurelessness is the longed-for victory of the British right over the ideology of the welfare state. Reinstated in the May 2010 election was not only conservative government, but, with the help of the socially similar Liberal Democrats, a specifically born-to-rule class of aristocratic elitists with an actual disdain for the aspirational ethos of Thatcher's petit-bourgeois individualism. David Cameron himself is the epitome of the private-schooled, Oxbridge-educated, careerist conservative whose sense of inherent class superiority is so ingrained it has driven Thatcher-style self-made men out of his own party. One of these, working-class-born Sir Tom Cowie, ceased funding the Tories in August 2007, famously withdrawing his cheques on the basis that "the Tory party seems to be run now by Old Etonians and they don't seem to understand how other people live".
While the conservative raison d'etre is the transfer of public wealth into private hands, what's been going on in Britain since the election of Cameron is hardly the short-term sell-offs to small investors, like Thatcher's purchasers of ex-council houses or our own Howard's "shareholding democracy" float of Telstra. Cameron's Tories are not interested in even pretending to enfranchise the working-class or middle-class, let alone the underclass from which the majority of London's rioters have sprung. What's been going on is nothing less than a social revolution where public services have been stripped and withdrawn to structurally prevent any social enfranchisement of the non-ruling classes whatsoever. Public healthcare is facing privatisation. Welfare services have been shredded, benefits cut, school resources cut, community centres closed down, libraries shut, arts funding eroded. Public broadcaster the BBC has taken bloody hits and the introduction of stiff university fees has removed forever the opportunity of many to access higher education. The rhetoric is that of austerity, but the reality is a full-scale assault on any social means by which the middle, working or underclass of this country can access even an image of class agency, let alone the social tools to aspire or achieve the privileges of Cameron's elite.
Britain is a materialistic society, and young people the target of heavy marketing campaigns. High visibility brands dominate the high streets of every city, suburb and town; in the absence of any social means provided to achieve status, status is attached to the mere possession of these omnipresent, socially-hyped materialistic things. With their aspirations impoverished by a system that limits their access to cultural learning, cheapens their school experiences and makes university education financially unthinkable - not to mention enforces their deprivation through new controls on public housing and the removal of benefits – it is unsurprising that the rampaging underclass presently on the streets are seizing stolen sneakers with exultance. This moment, and these things, are all they have to enjoy.
The helicopters seem to have parted for the evening, and I haven't heard a siren for a while. Maybe the police have had a victory for this evening, maybe the young people have been trundled into the vans and peace will ensue for the night.
As many kids they arrest, however, as a Londoner, I know that this peace is temporary. These riots are but mere battles in an ongoing class war, but don't make the mistake in believing it's the kids who are leading it. It's David Cameron.

 

Nice work Johnny B. Cheers.

 

Johhny B. I consider myself working class...But perhaps you can tell us what your own understanding is of a working class Brit? Who is he/she?

 

JB,
Couple of thoughts.
La. Badham, who wrote that article, is described on Wiki as someone who's work as a playwright is "typically concerned with the legacy of personal and political violence [and] critiques of Western consumer capitalism". It's always worth looking someone up to see if they might be carrying some sort of axe for grinding.

If the riots were so directly linked to our current regime; s'funny that, 'cos they've only been in 'power' for 1.5 years - if the (to my mind weak) social exclusion argument applies, then what of the preceding long-term party of power? Odd that there is not a solitary mention of them there - must have been some sort of Golden age...

Also, what of the others, the vast majority, living under exactly the same circumstances?
It seems to me pretty insulting when I hear people make such a blanket assessment; it denigrates the others that live in sh1t circumstances, or have a pretty grim background, who didn't choose to go shopping for free trainers with a lighter and bottle of unleaded, and are as irritated by the attacks on their homes, families, and places of work as anyone else of whatever demographic - possibly more so, as the rioting was largely inflicted on their own areas.

People look for whatever explanations they may, but I can't see any of the 'poor little rioters' hypotheses gaining any ground over here. They pop up, and the sensation is of them being generally ignored.
Most I know, over a rather wide personal political spectrum, seem to be sticking to the 'there aren't half some twats about, and sometimes they spot an opportunity' theorem.

Works for me.

~A

 

'there aren't half some twats about, As Von Poop rightly states..There aren't half some twats about.

 

The most disturbing factor of these riots is the very fact that most of the willing participants will point to this event for the rest of their lives and see it as their finest hour. They will boast about this event for many years to come. This attitude is not new, and it manifests itself in living rooms all over the country.

Our leaders should wake up and listen. If you shut off social mobility to the masses, and then oppress them further with law and enforcement that works only if you, yourself, have the financial wherewithall to put it into practice, then I'm afraid this will keep happeneing.

One wonders whether American rioters would be so brazen, confronted as they would be by outraged shopkeepers wielding some form of personal artillery. I'd make a fair bet that the American NRA is licking it's collective chops over this. Pure grist for their mill, as it were.

 

Interesting comments, gentlemen. My thanks for your efforts in offering your opinions.

I'm not sure, urqh, that I could provide you with a satisfactory definition of what I believe constitutes a "working class Brit." (In general terms, I might reiterate what I've already stated above, and identify the new global working class as a growing demographic characterized by their downward mobility. These people work primarily at "McJobs" in the service sector, that offer them little better than the legal minimum wage. Job security, pensions, and company medical and dental benefits are largely non-existent -thanks to the success of the capitalist class in expanding exponentially the gap between themselves and the working class through a systematic policy of union-busting, tax cutting -with the subsequent and inevitable cutting of social services- and, through the guise of economic "globalization", shifting industrial production to countries where wages are low, environmental and health and safety standards can be largely ignored, and union leaders are threatened and brutalized on an ongoing basis. The working class has minimal access to higher education, the costs being prohibitive, and therefore, they have few opportunities to gain economic, social, or political power.)

Perhaps you would be kind enough to share your definition of a "working class Brit"? -I'd be very interested to see how you define the term.

On the subject of Van Badham, the author of the blog post on the ABC forum page The Drum, I agree, Von Poop, that she lacks the academic credentials of Joel Kotkin; however, I don't feel that her opinions should be automatically disqualified just because she lacks a doctorate.

I also do not feel, Von Poop, that just because this woman is -as you've put it- "particularly concerned with critques of consumer capitalism" that she is in any way disqualified from having a valid opinion on the subject of this summer's riots in England, which she apparently witnessed first-hand.

Were the rioters not, by definition, working class Britons? Did the riots not occur in predominantly working class areas? (I don't remember seeing any footage of any Old Etonians crashing their Bentley's through the doors of Harrods and pilfering a selection of Hermes scarfs and accessories for the little missus back in Knightsbridge....)

Do you really think that the riots that have occurred -as Joel Kotkin points out in his article- in a half a dozen countries in the last couple of years are only the work of a group of young hooligans looking for an opportunity to steal a new television set and a pair of running shoes? These riots, of formerly law-abiding working and middle class citizens who have had their futures stolen from them by the bankers, stock traders and real estate speculators that have operated hand-in-glove with corrupt politicians, have involved tens of thousands of people. (That's A LOT of twats 'spotting an opportunity,' my friend....)

And to reflect on your comments, Volgaboatman, I believe that class-based riots in the United States are just around the corner. And when they occur, they have the potential to get out of hand very quickly and to be exceptionally violent. -Those poor people in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, etc., many of whom have lost their jobs, their homes, and are confronting the prospect of living in communities where there are no police, or fire, or hospital, or school services of any kind -because there's no money left to pay these civil servants-are armed to the teeth.

And why shouldn't they turn to violence? Why shouldn't they be morally outraged at the capitalist ruling class that lied to them, manipulated them, and then robbed them blind?

What's worse, I ask you, a kid who smashes a pane of glass and then steals a pair of running shoes and an mp3 player, or the corporate banker who steals millions of dollars, destroys the lives of millions of middle and working-class people, and then demands a tax-payer funded "bailout" of the economic ship he himself sank, only to pour these revenues into bonuses and retirement packages to REWARD the very people who are responsible for the financal meltdowns in the first place?

That's my take on things. -And I don't even want to start on topics like the MASSIVE debtloads being incurred by college and university students in countries like England, the United States, and Canada, and the enormously diminished opportunities for young people to find decent jobs upon graduation. (Maybe we'll open that can of worms on another occasion.)

Of course, there's always an upside. (I hear I can buy a home in North Las Vegas that used to sell for $500,000.00 five years ago for somewhere in the neighbourhood of $50,000.00 today.)

Cheers, gentlemen.

 

I didn't really say they/she should be, but as they're presented in such a firm way from the perspective of an obvious ideologue then I'll dismiss 'em for that reason.

Again - the majority of 'working class' in those areas can also be classified in the group 'non-rioters', or even 'anti-rioters', or 'riot victims' - so the hypothesis fails for me again. The bulk of rioters could also be described as 'British', or 'wearing trousers', as do many others. There's no real indicator for me that this deprived/disaffected theory stands. Statistical approaches can be funny old things...

Pretty much, yep. Interesting stats on those convicted so far with c.75% of 'em having previous convictions (again with the caveat about statistics above).
Maybe combine that with a hesitant & restricted Police force, and there's as much argument for things having been too easy for those with violent criminal inclinations (whether opportunistic or not) as too hard.

I can't buy that too strongly either. The banks are the current whipping boys. Whether deservedly or not I don't really know or care, but it seems to be the current rather easy route to say 'what about the bankers!' as a catch-all excuse or diversion for pretty much everything. Political peeps of all stripes are maybe a tad too keen on bringing 'em up when things get 'tricky' of late, and it begins to smack of a bit of easy scapegoating.

I've been thinking lately, that riots are nothing new:
eg.:List of riots - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
So maybe we shouldn't really read too much into many of 'em... - I'm reasonably sanguine that they've always happened, and likely always will for whatever reason, and that the associated moral panics aren't really anything particularly new or illuminating either. Not saying either is a good thing - but they're definitely an established 'thing'.

~A

 

A working class Brit...I'd never attempt to talk for others as class can be confusing. The queen is to most folk of the upper classes. But she works her butt off so the word work is obviously to be discounted as a generalisation in discussing class. However we have had to live with the 3 classes as it where for as long as History has been interested..Personally I'd go back to the old Railway class distinction. They seemed to have it right, and is probably relevant to this whole thing. They had carriages for first, second and third class. Education, work, and how one spoke was not recognised. Just the pure and simple fact of which ticket you were able to purchase. Money does not always come from the results of work. And that holds true today even more so than in the past. I'm working class British. Its not just a mind thing. And purely my own view, I speak for no others. If my view was correct I'd earn a fortune from stating it as such. Then it would be first class travel for life. I was born into a poor family...sob sob..Not my fault, or theirs. Loyal to the status quoe they were..Irish which didnt help much in their or my day in growing up. Not much money and not from a lazy benefit culture. Dad always tried to work. Royal Navy in war, from Eire in fact. Had no need to fight. But educational qualifications for what I'd call the third class in those days was near impossible. I know, there are a few who got past that. But lets not kid ourselves most did not, could not, were not allowed to by the status quo of a nation run the way it was and always has been. Coloured my politics you might say. Didnt stop me from joining up, working hared all my life, war pension thrown in for good luck so my patriotism should never be questioned. I do though see education and travel as a cure for class problems. Some though will never get the chances I had. Working class Brits grew up around me for my formative years. Holes in shoes, hand me down trousers for school, wooley brown hand knitted jumpers by granny. Religion I found was not a good thing. Tends to hold some back...As if it is designed to do so. Know your place young man. The worlds good. And none of the folk who populated the run down council estates of Kirkby I come from, were anything but decent hard working...when it was available...law abidding folk. I'm not that old, but remember dad having to fight for the old coin the foreman threw at the gates just to see if he could have a days work. Casual labour then as now has changed little. The working class mostly not always benefited from better education and prospects of travel, work, and moving upwards over the last 3 decades. Our fathers fought for that in ww2. There is nothing wrong with the welfare state when it works in the intent of its inventors. For helping the old, the sick, the disabled and the temporary workless...We deserve no less in a nation that shouts at others for doing much less. But you'll always get the kickers who try it on and make a living from it. But then so too do you get the tax avoiders. But I'm ranting politics here. No ....working class is to me a person born into a grouping that is ready, able, to work, and move upwards. Sometimes others are not able to do so and will remain working class. They should not be maligned for being so. This country would not survive without them. Middle class are the old civil servant class of old. Superceded now by many ex working class. And probably more disdainful of the working class than any others...Maybe they reccognise their own beginnings. Upper class are just that. Born into it they would say. As the old joke goes, Cooke and Moore...We can never be upper class...Its not a money thing...Its not a right of passage...Its a birth right. One I wouldnt agree with. Duke of Edinboro...No money...no property no land but hasnt he done well...City boys presume it but they will never be let into that particular club. Class in Britain is confusing. I still work..Own sheep...Work hard...Give employment to others...own land...But am still working class in thought and deed. Its a mind thing. The socialsing questioners should leave the old 3 classes we talk of out of the riots and all other such things and look at the old railway class system because that is a better identification of the whole problem in Britain today...We have gone back to that system. I'll get my life jacket...Being Irish, working class, I dont think I'll get to any of the Titanics lifeboats today. But the answer to the worlds problems? Education and travel...Will all get that...Student grants, ema and todays we are all in it together apart from me..just them of course attitude is the only problem...Divide and conquer still holds true.

 

Were the rioters not, by definition, working class Britons? Did the riots not occur in predominantly working class areas? (I don't remember seeing any footage of any Old Etonians crashing their Bentley's through the doors of Harrods and pilfering a selection of Hermes scarfs and accessories for the little missus back in Knightsbridge....)

What? Birmingham and Manchester city centres? As to old Etonions...The Burlington club springs to mind here...But thats just high spirits what Jeeves? And I seem to remember a certain deputy prime minister on a field trip abroad breaking into a Germans beloved green house and burning his rare possesions...But agan got away with it...Just apologised via mummy and replaced the items..Arson we call it where I come from...High spirits and bad memory is what some may call it if your now deputy pm.

 

The handful in Leicester pretty neatly summed the mentality up for me.
Too dim to even get the barriers open on a camera shop stuffed full of easily disposable shiny things, so they climbed into a car-park and torched the Age Concern minibus...

Charity's delight as cash pours into minibus fund | This is Leicestershire

My sympathy, understanding, and willingness to find some social explanation for such pure retardism... nil.
And funnily enough, I'm hearing zero sympathy or understanding from anyone else, no matter what their 'class'.

 

Unfortunately Biak, the mob are everywhere. It doesnt take too much to bring em out. As for Von Poops comment, I bet class 5A brought it up next day.

 

Nah, 5A are a group of reactionary Totalitarian proto-fascists.
You have to look to Mrs Johnson's Reception class for the real social commentary brigade, Mr Himmler the Deputy head is very worried about them.

 

Anarchists then.....You gotta love the English Education System..I'm a product of it by the way...

 

Very interesting observations, gentlemen.

As to your general distrust of statistics, Von Poop, I am reminded of the line popularized by Mark Twain and attributed -perhaps erroneously- to Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." (Still, if your comment about 75% of English rioters having prior convictions is accurate, that fact does give considerable weight to your belief that these violent disruptions were mere vandalism, rather than acts motivated by political convictions.)

When it comes to the role played by bankers, stock traders, real estate speculators, hedge-fund managers, etc., we'll just have to agree to disagree. (I believe that these people have behaved in a criminal fashion -and with no regard for the majority of their fellow citizens- certainly in the United States.) If it's become somehow trendy to "blame bankers" in the last couple of years, might I suggest that it's because people have woken up to the fact that these people act in the interest of themselves and their corporate cronies, rather than in the interest of the broader society, and that the evidence of their malificence has become almost overwhelming? -At the very least, Von Poop, I can assure you that my criticisms of these financial pirates has nothing to do with jumping on any bandwagon....I've been railing against these people for about the last thirty years. ;-)

I found your comments about growing up working class quite poignant, urqh. (Thanks for sharing.) For some reason, I was particularly struck by your comment about how religion didn't help to alleviate class distinction, but rather served to send a message about obedience and 'knowing one's place.' -This reflection made me think instantly of the famous assertion by Karl Marx that "religion is the opiate of the masses," and also of American folk poet and labour radical Woody Guthrie singing about how the churches will promise you "pie in the sky when you die."

I do have one question for you, urqh, which I hope you might respond to here. Is one's pronunciation still a clear mark of class distinction in Britain? -I'm currently teaching Pygmalion to a group of students and we've been talking about Shaw's famous statement in the preface to the play where he says: "Everytime an Englishman opens his mouth, it makes some other Englishman despise him." Is the "verbal class distinction" G.B. Shaw is talking about here still a reality? Or is it more or less a relic of the past? (Pygmalion was written,after all, in 1914 -almost a century ago.)

Finally, to biak, in reference to your comment about "feeling a little bit better about America." I listened to Obama's speech re: his proposed jobs legislation the other day, and was shocked by two things: 1. His pleading tone -Plenty of Republicans and wealthy elites in the U.S. despised F.D.R. and his New Deal, but I never seem to remember Roosevelt literally begging people to put themselves and their own children before millionaires and billionaires in supportng legislation that is -to my mind- clearly in the interest of about 95% of the population. 2. It was somehow frightening to hear even the President of the United States talk about how children are not going to school, and that desperately needed teachers have been laid off because of the lack of adequate funding available in state budgets. -What's next, the President's State of the Union Address on how to find the nearest Tent City and how to put out a raging fire without the assistance of a Fire Dept.? (The current situation in the U.S. appears more surreal with every passing day.)

 

I do have one question for you, urqh, which I hope you might respond to here. Is one's pronunciation still a clear mark of class distinction in Britain?

I can only speak for myself mate...I have lost quite a bit of my gutteral Liverpool accent over the years. Still have one but the associated language part of it I have dropped over time through travel away from Liverpool. Not through trying. Although it was necessary just so folk could actually understand me. It was no problem in RAF no problem in technician world outside RAF. I did though encounter what you speak of in my last role in the City of London. I was interviewed by a Pole in Brussels via video conf...No problem I was hired. The office manager in London later told me he would not have had me anywhere near his office if he had interviewed me, based solely on my accent. A true story and one many have to live with

 

Thank you for your response urqh; I will share this anecdote about the London office manager with my class on Monday.

Biak, I think that the United States is as divided today as it was during the height of the debacle over the Vietnam War, or perhaps even the American Civil War, with its conflict over slavery and federal vs. state power.

I myself have been severely disappointed by Obama's seeming inability to take decisive action -even when he controlled both the Congress and the Senate- to deliver the sort of liberal democratic reforms that progressives throughout the United States -and around the world- were hoping for.

As far as both sides being intransigent, I respectfully disagree.

From where I sit, it looks like the Democrats have bent over backwards to attempt to accomodate the Republicans again and again...too much so, in fact. (You didn't see this focus on consensus during Dubya's administration.)

The Republicans, increasingly controlled by the Tea Party fanatics, wouldn't support any legislation proposed by Obama -they'd stonewall an "I-like-puppies-and-kittens bill" and then try to label it as "socialist" and "un-American."

Barak Obama's policies, regarded as nothing short of Marxist by some, are actually quite mildly liberal democratic by the standards of virtually every government in the western industrial world. (Even the policies of Canadian Conservatives are mostly to the left of Obama's legislative attempts.)

Time and time again, the record shows that Republicans have voted against proposals they had formally supported, just because they have been presented by the current administration.

I honestly believe that 'the elephant in the living room' here is race. -It appears that many Americans have not got over -and cannot get over- the fact that the United States elected a black man as president.

Those are my thoughts on the subject.

My heart goes out to the millions of middle and working class Americans who seem to be suffering now more than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

At the end of the Second World War, when the United States truly was a great country, the gap between rich and poor was much smaller than it is today, unions were vibrant forces, growing in influence, taxes on the wealthy and on corporations were much higher than they are now, and the middle class was expanding -rather than contracting to the point of extinction.