Chavs The Demonization of the Owen Jones

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.'Chav-bashing can often come from working-class people as an expression of frustration at anti-social elements within their own com- munities.Chavs attempted to put anti-social behaviour in a social and economic context: it was more likely to happen in communities with high levels of poverty and unemployment.But it's also true that the impact of anti-social behaviour and crime are class issues.Both are sta- tistically more likely to affect working-class people than middle-class people.Those on the receiving end often-unsurprisingly-have little sympathy for the perpetrators, particularly if they share a similar set of difficult economic circumstances but do not themselves resort to anti- social behaviour.It's also not the case that hostility to supposed 'benefit cheats' is the sole preserve of middle-class Daily Mail readers-the net-curtain- twitching types who rant about gays and Gypsies.If you are someone scraping by in a low-paid job, the feeling that there are people down the street living it up at your expense may well infuriate you more than anything else.It's an age-old example of the 'poor against the poor', and right-wing politicians and journalists exploit such sentiments ruth- lessly.Extreme examples of 'benefit fraudsters' are hunted down with relish by the tabloids, and are passed off, not as isolated examples, but as representative of an endemic and far bigger problem.The 'scrounger' has become the public face of the unemployed in Britain.understanding about the unemployment.As one working-class self-identifier put it in the BritainThinks study, 'We've now got this benefit generation which startedThat's not to say there isn't a widespread understanding about the causes behind the increase in long-term unemployment.As one working-class self-identifier put it in the BritainThinks study, 'We've now got this benefit generation which started when Thatcher closed all of the industries.' Chavs attempted to present a corrective to these exag- gerated tales of benefit fraud.Such fraud, indeed, represents less than I per cent of total welfare spending, and up to 60 times less than tax avoidance at the other end of the economic spectrum.Meanwhile, the idea that there are plenty of jobs if only people could be bothered to drag themselves down to the Jobcentre is risible.All the evidence shows that most unemployed people desperately want work: they can't find any.At the end of 2011, the Daily Telegraph reported that there were twenty-three jobseekers in the UK chasing every job vacancy.For every retail job, there were forty-two applications; in customer services, it was forty-six.i In some communities, the picture is even bleaker.In Hull, there are 18,795 jobseekers chasing 318 jobs.There are simply not enough jobs to go round.But with this reality largely ban- ished from our newspapers and TV screens, and with tax-avoiding businesspeople a distant, abstract concept for most, it is a challenging case to make.The demonizarion of working-class people also stems from insecu- rity, or 'social distancing' from those in superficially similar circumstances.Britain'Thinks revealed that those belonging to groups most likely to be stigmatized as chavs can often be among the most vociferous in their chav-bashing, One long-term incapacity benefit claimant denounced chavs who were supposedly milking the system; so did two unemployed teenage mothers.This isn't classist contempt: it comes from a fear of being lumped in with a demonized grouping.Hereis one ugly consequence of persistent attacks on the unemployed and teenage mothers: prejudice can even be voiced by those who are themselves targeted.In large part, the demonization of the working class is the legacy of a concerted effort to shift public attitudes, which began under Thatcher, continued with New Labour and has gained further momentum under the coalition.Poverty and unemployment were no longer to be seen as social problems, but more to do with individual moral failings.Anyone could make it if they tried hard enough, or so the myth went.If people were poor, it was because they were lazy, spendthrift or lacked aspiration.The latest Social Attitudes Survey, published at the end of 2011, shows just how successful this project has been.Even as economic crisis swelled the ranks of the unemployed and poor, attitudes towards them hardened.With nearly 2.7 million people out of work, over half of those surveyed believed that unemployment benefits were too high and were deterring people from getting a job.of course, few would have known from reading newspapers or watching TV that the Jobseekers' Allowance was worth just £67.5O--and even less for those under the age of twenty-six.Another 63 per cent believed that a factor driving child poverty was parents 'who don't want to work'.Depressing stuff, but not surprising given the Thatcherite onslaught, New Labour's refusal to challenge Conservative dogma on social problems, and the airbrushing in the media concealing the reality of poverty and unemployment.And of course, such attitudes have political consequences.If you think poverty and unemployment are personal failings rather than social problems, then why have a welfare state at all? The Social Atti- tudes Survey revealed that support for the redistribution of wealth had fallen to just a third; towards the end of Margaret Thatcher's reign in 1989, it was over half.Demonization serves a useful purpose in a divided society like our own, because it promotes the idea that inequal- ity is rational: it is simply an expression of differing talent and ability.Those at the bottom are supposedly there because they are stupid, lazy or otherwise morally questionable.Demonization is the ideological backbone of an unequal society [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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