The underclass.
Following Ed Duttonās video making the distinction between the working class in Britain and indeed, the underclass, I thought I would type a few thoughts.
He made his video after channel four published a documentary about so called working class children in Grimsby receiving low GCSE scores. Ed was right to point out that this maybe down to the fact that these arenāt the children of working class parents, parents who literally go to work whilst their child is at school, earning a living as opposed to living off the state. This is not a criticism of anyone receiving benefits when they need to by the way.
Children of the so called underclass tend to be on free school meals as their parents receive numerous benefits and do not go to or even look for work. Why should they when the benefits they receive are more than what they would earn at work? They would say this and whilst the government knows these people rely on them for their livelihood, they will keep on giving them benefits so that they can get their vote. Itās not a coincidence I am sure that some voting stations are now in schools. You can drop your child off and vote-easy enough for all parents whether theyāre going home to watch TV or if they have a late start at work or are able to work from home.
In his video Ed also talks about the different sorts of working class people. You have your labourers and car mechanics, who are people that I know. I would say hairdressers are also working class. My husband and I are self employed and a mixture of working and middle class. Throughout my life, the working class car mechanics and hairdressers have always been friends of my parents and I. They are decent people who recognise decency in others.
When my daughter was little we would go on holidays as a family to places like Haven and Butlins. This was just once a year as they were expensive. So then I wondered why so many could afford our last Butlins holiday in Skegness. The stereotype was there. Obese men and women puffing away on vapes, in mobility scooters, wearing resting bitch faces, not particularly friendly towards me. I am used to it. Where we live there is a set of parents whom we are all aware belong to the underclass, one very proud who has the nails, phone and wears the latest fashions. Her oldest son gives me a look as if I have two heads but as I say I am used to it.
I find that the less critically minded and I suppose less intelligent will see me as a problem or obstacle towards them receiving more benefits, despite them not knowing my circumstances. (I donāt receive benefits and am self employed).
Ed talks about these people not being intelligent themselves so this isnāt me sneering. I actually didnāt think of it in this way but I suppose if the parents arenāt working then it maybe because they havenāt got the skills and so it rather proves the point that they arenāt intelligent and will give birth to children who are less intelligent than their peers. Ed says this is probably why they get low GCSE scores and to be careful if the government starts talking about giving money to these families under the guise of them being working class. They are not working class, they are the underclass.
That term is of course something some of you find problematic and you may not like my honesty in this post. As I say I am not sneering, we are all human with our flaws but it does seem that governments will fund people like the above and encourage them to reproduce as they do with large Islamist families, it seems all so they can have these people voting for them. Whilst they may then boast that the countryās economy is doing well (I donāt even know how they make that up), we can all see declining standards of living.
I know many people who live on council estates so this is not a pop at those people. I am just trying to understand the underclass and the rift that I have seen between them and immigrants, especially ones who do speak English fluently whom Iāve heard be described as up themselves by the Butlins gang.
Thanks for reading.
Edās video.
I see this a bit differently. I grew up in a council house in East Ham. My dad was from Poplar. He lost his own father at five in 1952 and used to pull wood off bomb sites and sell it so his mum, brother and sister could eat. From that start he worked all over the world as a telephone engineer. My brother is a stockbroker, my sister a legal secretary, and Iām selfāemployed.
When people talk about āunderclassā, ābenefitsā and ācouncil estatesā, itās easy to forget theyāre talking about the streets and families that actually built England and kept it running. Iāve done the Haven/Butlins holidays too, and itās always struck me that if weāre all in the same caravan park with our kids, the lines between ādecent working classā and a supposed āunderclassā canāt be as clearācut as they look from a distance. We werenāt a client population being paid to breed; we were the people who fixed the phones, kept things working and raised kids who went into the professions.
Thatās why Iām uneasy with dividing people into ādecent working classā and a supposedly less intelligent āunderclassā, and with folding ālarge Islamist familiesā into the same picture as a demographic problem. It flattens stories like my familyās into a stereotype and lets the British Establishment off the hook for decades of decisions on industry, housing, immigration and education that hollowed out those same communities. By all means criticise bad incentives, but once we start talking as if whole sections of our own people are a different breed, we stop seeing who really built England ā and who is actually responsible for running it into the ground.
That distinction goes at least as far back as Marx, who distinguished between the "proletariat" and the "sub-proletariat."
Indeed one may argue that there is an overlap--not an identity--but a conceptual overlap between the proletariat/sub-proletariat and the Victorian concept of the "deserving/undeserving poor."