Chavs. According to many commenters on The Guardian’s comment website, it was they who fuelled the London riots, causing misery to good, hard-working citizens, looting and burning down stores with any stupid excuse. The solution? Chavs should work harder, they should pay attention in school, they should try to make a life for themselves rather than relying on benefits, they should go to jail, they should be exiled from the country.
Or maybe not. Owen Jones, author of the recent book, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working-Class, conceptualises the use of the work ‘chav’ in Britain as a force to unfairly and systematically demonise working-class Britons.
One example of inaccurate stereotyping of chavs is the case of Shannon Matthews, a young girl of the working class town of Dewsbury Mews who one day went missing. The people of Dewsbury Mews tirelessly fundraised to offer money for information on the girls’ whereabouts, and went door-knocking throughout the country for any leads. When Shannon was discovered, alive in the house of a relative, the entire case was presented in the media as a failure of working-class families, of the poorer people of Britain becoming morally uncouth. The work of the local community was completely ignored. There also exists gym classes designed as primers for ‘chav bashing’; advertisements for ‘chav free holidays’; the demonization of working class families on television shows such as Wife Swap; and articles that somehow blame the global financial crisis, caused by big banks lending money unscrupulously, on single mothers (the logic of such argument is, to say the least, evasive).
These stereotypes, argues Jones, work as an insult to most working-class Britons who are not simply lazy, but have been systematically subjected to harsh degradation in living quality. As mines closed down and public sector jobs were privatised in the 1980s, well paid jobs disappeared in front of the eyes of the working-class. Now, in former mining towns, the jobs on offer are predominantly in retail and in call centres. Furthermore, finding and keeping a job is a competitive and precarious process in a recessionary economic climate. Moreover, far being dole bludges, completely provided for by a mythic ‘welfare state’, most people living in poverty in Britain have a job.
Aspiration and social mobility has also reduced in Britain from the days of Thatcher onwards. Education, for instance, is difficult to deliver to children in isolated, working-class communities. Students tend to only be exposed to adults who, after having gone through school, have ended up working at the local Sainsbury’s. Naturally, they become unengaged with their schoolwork, feeling that there is no real point to getting an education if they’re just going to end up at the check-out for the rest of their life anyway.
Further, even where working-class students are well-educated, further barriers exist for entry into many professional careers. For instance, to become a lawyer one must undertake unpaid, internship work. This is fine if one’s parents can foot the bill for living expenses and if one does not have to pay one’s own student debts. However, for working-class graduates this is not the case and many are forced to take whatever jobs they can get, regardless of whether it is in their chosen profession, in order to pay back mounting debts.
So, before you ridicule chavs for being violent, rioting thugs, as many did during the recent riots, remember that many people have not been given the same opportunities to thrive as others and the issues at stake may be complex.