Class

The Social Distance Between Us is full of insight and great passages worth quoting. So, here is another that should, hopefully, compel you to add it to your own reading list and then read it to gain some new perspectives, understandings and appreciations for those of a different class.

Hampered by classism, (oft-)unquestioned privilege and tradition, Britain really doesn’t help itself and its (working-class) citizens to genuinely progress and grow and safely and securely manage their lives, in amongst the many bureaucratic and downright ludicrous ways that (politically) get made to frame difference, diversity and non-individual difficulties as the problem, not the bright light that actually shines on the inefficiencies, double-standards and overly complicated and often unnecessary hurdles that seem to serve only their instigators, not their intended recipients.

The class-based analysis on which Britain’s emergence from the [Covid-19] pandemic so clearly depended became increasingly drowned out by the overconfident bluster of media personalities and commentators, who were insulated from its worst effects. A concerted effort in sections of media to frame coronavirus as a matter of personal responsibility and resilience led to massive pressure building on poorer people to get back to work, which contradicted the public health advice they were already growing sceptical of. Working-class people were photographed and filmed constantly in parks, at shops or on public transport, often portrayed as acting unthoughtfully, when many simply had no choice. Even their permitted exercise time became news fodder, as Britain’s chattering classes debated the wisdom of working-class people visiting parks during a pandemic. Was it safe? Were they being irresponsible? Should they be told to move on or even be detained on the grounds of public safety? Nobody was quite sure but one thing was certain – Guardian and Spectator columnists would get to the bottom of it all in between backyard chicken feeds and tending to their allotments.

Even as the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on working-class people and the poor became undeniable, we seemed, as a nation, to be unable to grasp the reality that this was a crisis of social inequality. The pandemic, as it was often being discussed among media pundits and politicians, bore little resemblance to conditions in the poorest areas, where people were dropping like flies or falling completely off the map of health services. There was little sense of the daily nightmare experienced by disabled people, cancer survivors and those with serious mental health problems, who were left overexposed to the disease and the economic downturn which followed. Mainstream news increasingly framed events from the perspective of industry and government. There was no end to updates about the chaos going on behind the door of Number 10 – but often the reports centred on political rivalries and struggles for power and not the institutional intransigence of government departments.

We were living in a nightmare, where people at the top of key institutions appeared to have no idea what was going on – and even less idea of how truly out of their depth many of them were.

Then something strange happened. We seemed suddenly on the cusp of a momentous awakening. A lone BBC news presenter looked the country in the eye and spoke the truth. ‘They tell us coronavirus is a great leveller – it’s not.’ Opening a highly editorialised, career-defining monologue, taking to task the misleading language surrounding the crisis and torpedoing the emerging narrative that lockdown was equally painful for everyone, Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis confirmed what millions had long since suspected: ‘It’s much, much harder if you’re poor.’ In doing so, she re-anchored the debate around those most affected, creating that rare televisual experience which causes you to leap up and out of your seat and haymaker the air.

Britain lay ripped right down the centre. On one side of the class ravine, women now trapped at home due to lockdown continued weighing up whether to flee their violent partners and risk being murdered or remain with them in the certain knowledge that more abuse was guaranteed, while on the other, mainstream commentators, working from home, lamented ponderously the good old days when ‘politics wasn’t a matter of life and death’. On one side of the ravine, people with drug problems continued to dance with death, more remote from health services and support groups than ever, using the same illicit substances that had only recently killed their family and friends, while on the other, hustle-culture advocates tweeted that if you didn't come out of lockdown with a new skill, side hustle or more knowledge, you ‘didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline.’ In one world, low-paid workers turned to their under-resourced unions for support in fending off employers pressuring them to risk their lives (and the lives of others) by returning to work, while in the other, an upper-middle-class couple used the pages of a national newspaper to bemoan the high rate of council tax they had to pay on their £1.5 million home and how the lockdown had placed their £120,000 kitchen renovation in jeopardy.

By that point, only an idiot could have denied that Britain’s historic social inequality was not only the decisive factor in our haphazard response to the virus but also in much of the vacuous media discourse which arose from it. Britain, however, is in no short supply of idiots in high-ranking positions and so debates about whether hiring a cleaner was a feminist act ensued. Even the well-meaning, relatively harmless twats became torture after a few weeks, appearing increasingly twee and disconnected, referring to gardens, cars, nannies, cleaners, savings and every other trapping of middle-class life as if they were everyday things. If only the social ignorance of the well-to-do, exhibited so frequently on television and in print, had been in shorter supply. Sadly, unlike basic life-saving equipment, the privilege was all too abundant.

[…a section later…]

Emily Maitlis’s monologue was so affecting because such an occurrence, where a famous journalist knowingly places themselves in harm’s way to defend ordinary people being spoken over by the privileged, is so desperately rare. And even then, she paid a price, as sections of the ‘free press’ attempted to frame her evidence-based argument as proof of media bias. Much of the backlash against her was generated by the same media forces which have waged open war on vulnerable groups while publishing puff-pieces every other day, imploring us to fawn over the royal family, celebrities and tax-evading captains of industry.

To ensure fairness, equality and accountability, and that people of all social classes get the fairest possible hearing, many of us look primarily to news and media institutions, which we entrust to make sense of it all. But even the publicly owned broadcasters, like the BBC and Channel 4, which today exist to provide a counter-balance in the heavily deregulated, commercial media environment, are, themselves, mired in the cultural effects of social inequality.

Darren McGarvey The Social Distance Between Us