Sonofstan, it does seem those who work in telly get a little obsessed with representing – after all, they probably had to endure hours of media lectures about it and all their essays had to mention it if there was any chance of getting a high grade.

Mary, that’s what struck me as odd too. The commissioning of these programs seems quite political – and ignores the fact, as you say, that the working class hasn’t even been part of mainstream culture. In the 18th century they were the rabble. The uncouth crowds milling on London’s streets. In the 21st century they’re racist and poor, living in sink estates and grumbling about their Pakistani neighbours.

And very good point about the working class having historically absorbed immigrants from all over Europe and its alright sticking to what you know.

Ciarán, you’re right, it is looking at the ‘English’ in terms of nationalism rather than looking at the working class as a whole including those who are happy to remain Left-wing activists.

It is curious that they should talk about an ‘unrepresented’ group and then, while promoting it only focus on those who adhere to the clichés without looking at the whole picture.
But in Britian, and I think SonofStan mentioned this in one of Conor’s post, there are those who don’t live in sink estates or own butch dogs or sport union jack tattoos on their arm and who still consider themselves working class.

Maybe they grew up in council estates, or their parents did, but they went to university and have professional jobs – they’re often white and working class – but they don’t tell the right story.

Looking back at the Anthony article it seems that he’s happy to perpetuate the same old myths:

Back in the Sixties, there was a nobility to the working class and also, crucially, a mobility. It was on the way somewhere. But that optimism has gone. Those who could get out have left, joining an expanded middle class, and those left behind have become the underclass: ugly, obnoxious, feckless and amoral.

This idea about the ‘new middle class’ certainly has legs.

New Labour in Britain has for over a decade promoted the notion that there is no working class anymore, just middle class and this ‘underclass’ - by which they mean chavs on the housing estates and other stereotypes mentioned at the top of the post. This image has become so prevalent that there was a somewhat typical reaction against it - I remember seeing a programme on Sky defending chavery as a legitimate expression of working class culture. Now it might well be an aspect of it but it certainly doesn’t represent the entirety of English working class youth. A documentary (or documentary series) on the English working class that breaks these stereotypes could be a positive development, but it would need an honest balance between the lads in the workingman’s club flirting with the BNP and the left-wing working class activists who actually still exist (they’re the real ‘forgotten people’).

But isn’t it funny when class will only be on the agenda when it’s mixed up with race?

Firstly, there has never been a time when British white working class culture was strong and proudly taking its place in the public sphere and whatever else the reactionary rightwing tabloids are claiming. The history of the white working-class has been of a class struggling against a dominant middle-class bourgeoisie, ever since the 1700s. Socialism, unionism, working men’s clubs, whatever - they were defined against the establishment.

Secondly, surely there has never been a time when the majority of white working-classes in England could trace their ancestry back through ten generations of English? The white working-class has absorbed French Protestants and eastern European Jews and Irish Catholics again and again: one of the things I discovered on moving from England to Ireland is that lots of the names and syntax that I associated with the English working-classes are Irish in origin. It’s not that the white working classes are in opposition to mass immigration: it’s always, but always, been formed and re-constituted by immigration. Far, far more so than the middle-classes.

maybe the white working class are perfectly happy just being white and working class and all the other things people are in real life, and sensibly think that stuff on telly is all made up anyhow.

But it’s those controllers, like the thoroughly middle-class commissioning editor Klein who are perpetuating another stereotype, that of a embattled ‘white’ ethnic group whose culture is under seige from the huddled masses with their foreign ways.

Speaking of Ireland and immigration, there’s this particularly stoopid post on the Foreign Policy blog: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/8249. Yes, in a small way its about Glen Hansard again.