Either Insulted Or Invisible

Although he is wrong about the BNP (a party of Sally Websters and Ian Beales), Mick Hall writes:

Once again we are living though a period when it is perfectly acceptable for the mass media to insult working class people, often for no better reason than ‘some’ of them live on Council Estates. Indeed LBC, one of London’s most popular ‘talk radio’ stations does this daily. Tune into this station and throughout the day ordinary working class people will be lumped together and described as lardies or scrubbers who live on council estates, benefit scroungers, hefty hideaway girls and thoughtless automatons who strike whenever a trade union leader demands it. These are just some of the less insulting terms of abuse and class prejudice this station’s broadcasters spit out daily. That those who work at LBC front of mic are almost exclusively middle class people tells me how deep such class prejudices have become amongst a large section of that class.

One LBC broadcaster was lamenting the deaths of British solders in Afghanistan and demanding the government spend more on up to date weaponry and give extra support to their families. As is the way today, he then quickly flipped subjects and poured out a torrent of hate, calling a minor celebrity, one Sheryl Cole [sic - nice one, Mick], "a working class scrubber who should get back to her council estate in the North East where she and here family belong." He seemed totally oblivious to the fact that a majority of the young squaddies he speaks so highly of and are killed and maimed with sickening regularity in Afghanistan, along with their families, in all probability come from a council estate not dissimilar to those he was so willingly disparaging.

If it were just a case of one local radio station churning out such poison I could possibly live with it, but it is not. Such class hatred is endemic throughout the mainstream media. For example, recently in an episode of Coronation Street, the UK’s most popular soap, one of its main characters, Sally Webster, shouted at John Snape, recently released from prison and the new husband of her neighbour Fizz, “He should clear off and live on a grotty council estate.”

EastEnders is the same, if not worse, the programme is set in East London, an area which has tens of thousands of decent law abiding council and housing association tenants, yet not a single character portrayed in the show lives in a council or housing association property, they all either own their own home or rent from the private sector. (What worker could afford to buy a home in east London today?)

This lack of reality is not a mere oversight, there has been a sea change in the BBC’s portrayal of working class people since EastEnders first appeared on our screens, and today the show undoubtedly reflects this.

When EastEnders first hit the TV screens, out went the mockney middle class actors who portrayed working class people as stereotypes and spoke like Dick Van Dyke in the movie Mary Poppins. The producers of EastEnders searched out actors who came from a working class background. Not anymore, if you look at any of the characters who have come into the programme in recent years they are almost exclusively played by middle class actors, this is especially true of the children. Market trader and fly by the seat of his pants businessman, Ian Beale, has kids who all speak as if they went to an English public school or County grammar, despite in the programme supposedly attending the local comp. The same is true of the Asian family in the programme. Even the villains are now played by middle class actors.

These days, the only time council tenants are portrayed on TV is as victims or villains, living on sink estates, surrounded by joy riders, lumpen drug dealers, violent hoodies, benefit fraudsters, and various other forms of supposed low life. Never mind such people exist within all sections of society, and live on a host of differing housing estates. When was the last time a TV journalist reported that a convicted criminal or victim of crime lived on a Bovis Homes estate, or one owned by the Duchy of Cornwall? Never. Yet today these lazy hacks feel it is imperative for them to tell their viewers/listeners if someone lived on a ‘council estate,’ as by saying these two words they believe there is no need for any further explanation.

Not only are they wrong and incompetent bigots, they are stereotyping and devaluing all those who do live on a council estate and in the process make a damn fine pair of shoes of a life lived in often difficult economic circumstances. When I see a young working class single mother, I do not see a scrubber but a hero who daily creates a tiny miracle despite the obstacles society throws up at her; for she provides love, substance and shelter for the next generation and in return; far too often, from the aforementioned media types she has excrement thrown in her face.

Shame on them for doing it, shame on us for allowing it to happen.

Of course if this upsurge of anti working class propaganda was only about more working class journalists and actors working and appearing on TV we could leave the matter to their trade unions the NUJ and Equity, but it is not. The real purpose is to demoralize and further atomize working class people.

At a time when our living standards and quality of life are under attack, it is imperative workers come together collectively to resist all attempts by the State to drive down their quality of life. If class solidarity is depicted in the media as a 20th Century fiction, and working class people are portrayed daily as living on squalid estates and fighting amongst each other like cats in a sack, it makes it all the harder for the class to pull together.

That a ‘tiny’ minority of working class people have, at the ballot box, given their support to the BNP, has given the media a field day to portray us in a bad light; and goes some way to explain why the BBC were so ready to give a platform to Nick Griffin, for if it is to their advantage the ruling class never pass up an opportunity to use the Fascists.

In case anyone feels I am over egging the pudding, I suggest they Google ‘council estate’ as I did when looking for a photo to accompany this piece, I found page after page of tower blocks and flats and not one of the many well kept council estates which exist throughout the UK. I rest my case.