A few years ago — it would be interesting to know exactly when the first time was, but hey, don’t expect me to do, like, research or something and find out; whaddya take me for, a professional? — a strange thing happened. People of all sorts — liberal people, anti-racist people, people of proletarian origin even; not just nobs and snobs, which would have made more, if equally loathsome, sense — started using the phrase “white trash ”.
White trash! What a giveaway. I’ve always thought the words we use to insult people say more about the fears and aspirations of the insulter rather than the weaknesses of the insulted (hence my ceaseless “He’s SOOO dumb/She’s SOOO middle class!” as I sit on the sofa reading OK! and fiddling with my laptop). Understandably, being a) stupid and b) middle class are my greatest fears, and ones which I feel increasingly prey to as my IQ slips and my income rises. (Though to be fair, I’m actually too rich to be middle class, which is a relief of sorts.) So when someone calls someone “white trash” I know that however confident — arrogant even — they may seem to be, they really have extremely low self-esteem, are thinking “There but for the grace of God go I” and, most shamefully, are seeking to make themselves feel “special” at the expense of the most victimised, demonised, neglected social group in existence. And that’s sad — in both meanings of the word.
Calling someone “white trash” stems from feelings of personal inadequacy, but held a beat too long it can become political. The politically incontinent used it a great deal during the war in Iraq to describe the brave, baffled working-class US soldiers fighting there (“White trash trailer park,” taunted big brave Tony Parsons from Essex, of all places, in the Daily Mirror, of all places) as opposed to “our boys”, who being English were dead classy and cucumber-sandwich-eating — until demob, one presumes, when they too will be reviled as white trash whenever they dare have a few shandies on a Saturday night in any major conurbation.
The cream of the joke being, of course, that though used by America-baiters and haters in order to write off the entire proletariat of that country, it is a profoundly American insult — first sneeringly used by the Southern states in an attempt to dehumanise the indigenous white working class as thoroughly as they had the black slave class. Equally amusing is that though those who use the phrase are silently patting themselves on the back every time for being so gloriously anti-racist (White trash! — geddit, geddit? Not Black! I LIKE them!) the expression stems from the inherent Rebel South belief that blacks of all types being trash went without saying; with whites, you had to differentiate between those who were and those who weren’t.
White trash by any other name stinks; yet the rank odour comes not from the despised trailer trash themselves, but from the creeps who use such charming examples of social-racism as “pram-face”, “chip-shop” and “chav-scum” to describe fellow human beings. These three — particularly oddly and shamefully, considering the massive working-class contribution to popular culture in general and pop music in particular — originated on the supposedly “subversive” website Popbitch, which turned out to be run not by some fierce brace of blood royales (white working-class English slang for fellow lepers), as we innocently assumed, but by a pair of posh kids called Neil and Camilla.
When Neil’s name-calling ways won him the editorship of The Face — the baby of the unimpeachably “council” Nick Logan of Wanstead — we hep proles all had cause to sulk. But when the same magazine was shut down within months, well, how we smirked, slouching on our settees, fags hanging out of our mouths! The problem, we chavs reckoned, was that Neil had been so profoundly middle-class. Not pram-faced, chip-shop or chav-scum; just middle class. That rubbish. That crap. That way that made you literally laugh up your sleeve — and that sleeve was definitely on a top from Topshop. Call it the Chav’s Revenge.
It may be sad, but I have two initial criteria for a great book, long before it makes me cry. a) Am I in it? Yes, I am! b) Does it make me throw it across the room wailing “Oh no, sweet Jesus, what have I been DOING with myself for the past two years!” Yes, it does!
One such is The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class by Mr Michael Collins, of Southwark and Essex. How this complex, brave and vital social group went so quickly from being portrayed by their betters and wetters as the salt of the earth to the scum of the earth (tellingly, I wrote this piece early one morning flicking between This Happy Breed and EastEnders, marvelling that more than 50 years ago even a flaming, frivolous snob like Noël Coward could manage a rounder, more realistic, picture of the working class than the presumably caring and sensitive types who write ’Stenders) and how this view says far more about the thwarted desires and low prejudices of the other classes than it does the actual decline of the proletariat, are dealt with with sass and style.
Alongside this runs the story of Michael’s own Southwark folk — his dad, like mine, was called Bill — and I couldn’t help reflecting smugly that for all their apparent advantages and “good starts” in life, one rarely reads middle or upper-class memoirs in which shameless, clear-eyed parent-worship is indulged in. Indeed, reading some biographies of prominent social figures, one would sometimes think that the only way the ruling classes have of expressing love to their offspring is by raping them.
And perhaps this coldness at the heart of the other classes is what makes them hate the workers so, their lovelessness the spur which makes them place so much importance on status and success. Add to this the growing resentment that the white working class no longer know their place (unlike those nice immigrants, who will do the most mind-numbing jobs for a pittance) and you’ve got a recipe for rabid class envy — inverted, natch.
And it is this which is most amazing and amusing about the classes which have the nerve to call people like me “chippy”; that it is they who are riddled with the class-driven self-doubt and self-loathing which adds up to chippiness in any language. And they are right to feel so. Because against all odds, the best start you can give any child in life is to make sure he/she is born working class. Because for all the struggle, prejudice and stupidity we have to face, only we are ever really sure of our worth. No matter how successful India Knight, say, becomes, she will never really know if she could have made it had she started from the same place as I did. And that’s got to niggle.
No, only we chav-scum will ever truly experience the profound self-satisfaction — as tangible as a Ready-Brek glow — that comes from starting at the actual starting line. But hey, bourgies, try to get over it — try not to hate the likes of us because we’re beautiful.
julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk
