Working
Class Heroes
by Rob Lloyd
Negative Equity and All That
A northern, redbrick, millstreet upbringing. Stern father figure, top-heavy
disciplinarian, ex-squaddie. No time for "going soft". Insulted by long hair
and body adornments. Irritated by the 3 minute popsong and catholic
idolatry. Macho moral panic stations of the 1960s. We teenagers rode the cultural
helter skelter of intolerance, prejudice, cold war fatalism. Dad never swore
at home, "not in front of the kids" but by hell did he at work.
My generation were brought up with our parents hang-ups, double standards,
Laingian double-binds and familial disfunctions. Philip Larkin was cynically
correct about the tyranny of parents. Because our parents yearned
for "nostalgia", the good ol' days, when men were men and hard graft were nowt
but good for't soul. Alas, my Dad and many working men died in their early
50s, dropping like flies. Mass heart attacks ont way't factory.
Mums left alone. Young widows in back to back terraces. Amidst rising damp,
with outside loos, in slum areas of Bradford, Burnley, Oldham. Places that
have become inter-generational and multi-cultural war zones. The
Liberalist, left, right and centre - so sympathetic to these "sensitive areas
of need". The all-preaching-tolerance showsters, residents of south facing
semi-detach homes overlooking the war zones (from a safe distance).
Politician, police, priest and psychologist all champions of the ordered status
quo. Always residing outside areas of conflict, depression and relative poverty.
Yet strangely, they remain the main investors of these conflictual places and
peoples. Single Regeneration budgeters, Expert consultants, area controllers,
personal and group counsellors.
Representatives of disparate communities at war with the outside. Yet no-one
resident living in these areas trusts these assumed notions of democracy, the
politician nor police. All feel cheated, excluded and disenfranchised. The
right to vote for who and for what? So instead the the old pass on to new generations
a culture of forgetfulness and individualism. Watch the hyperreality of soap
operas depicting the ideal family community. Zero recall... And everywhere
the sky is a landfill.
At Secondary Modern, teachers often dished out individualised instruments of
violence - hand, fist, cane, plimsoll, tennis table bat, T square... Boys duly
retaliated, slapped, kicked, punched, spat back in an hierarchy of fear
and repression. A school of bullies for bullies by bullies. A top down education
system, geared to perpetuate and maintain oppression and subservience. We protested,
sneaked off; to be dragged back by the ears, chastised, warned and placed under
constant surveillance. In a Weberian iron cage, our panopticon, we learned
survival tactics. Outcasts. We found solace in pockets of resistance: skipping
lessons; faking illnesses; joining an invisible band of milk monitors. Labelled
deviant, troublesome, we were the "Kes" generation.
"A working class hero is something to be..." John Lennon.
Destination: Factory fodder. We happily left school days for work days. Replacing
one oppressive hierarchy for another. Dictatorial white coat men, engineering
a new mindset for a life of piecework. Swarf fingers and oil
stained overalls; 15 year old boys on lathes and loud milling machines. The
grind of mass industrial complex. Mind numbing work. One huge ancient canteen
for blue collar. One modern restaurant for white collar. Pint pot mug of tea.
Pie, mash, gravy and white sliced. Coffee cup and saucer. Ham salad and wholemeal
bap. On pay day, blue collars stood, long queue round shower rooms; metal numbered
chip, awaiting each turn at allotted metal cage
counters. Milltowners low expectations, limited life chances, occupational
immobility. King cotton kids, scallys conned into passively accepting a social
contract of coercive exploitation. Subsequently, we paid our dues,
loyal to Queen and country. In return the state provided fairy tales of tragic
princesses, comic book fantasies, Hollywood escapism and the promise of technological
gadgetry.
Many stayed to watch the redbrick mills torn down or turn into supermarkets.
Dad's proud work ethic admonished by many of my peer group. Better read, feed,
informed, travelled than our parents, we made cultural capital out of
our changing beliefs. Attitudes and values were turned upside down. Parents
misunderstood our interest in literature, music, travel, other cultures, sex,
drugs and rock n' roll. Jealous, they wanted to sour our ideals, turn
drugs into a commodity of greed. Threaten and ridicule our alternatives lifestyles,
poetry and comical "cosmic" sensibilities. Then the pre-WW2 generation ideologically
bought into Thatcher/Reagan and Co. New Labour and
Co. Transnationals and Co. Globalisation and Co. Roads filled with poison gases
and aspiring fat cats. Dog crap on Heritage sites, once wild, solitary places.
Everyone's PC on PCs! Artless, restless monkeys buying into technocratic oblivion.
The 50s/60s generation took over the previous generation's blame game, moral
responsibility, shame culture. The impress of power re-estabilished itself
from one generational baton pass to the other.
"The history of capitalism is that of creative destruction, of misery and oppression
exacerbated by the proud conviction of the overlords that their vocation was
to dominate their people and the world" (Touraine 1981, p.3 in
The Voice and the Eye.)
Friends fell by the wayside. Victims of drugs, depression or became so ontologically
pissed off by high modernity's mediocrity. Left to hang from electric pylons,
high on magic mushrooms. Left alone dead in bed for weeks.
In/out of cognitive-behavioural therapy, seroxat and incapacity benefit. Elsewhere,
at the "Rock", caring parents continue to pay for their own grown up "children" to
do mundane contract work. Pulp pop cans. Recycle
cardboard. Stand all day next to chopping machinery. Pack and unpack cards.
No conversation. Piped muzak. Repeatable dinners. Burps and farts. Stodge,
gas and custard. The "Rock" run by charity, moral piety and Tuke
and Pinel's divine interventionism. What choice? Stay at home in social isolation
and quietude? Mencap's "Weeping Willy" logo perpetuating a culture of dependency,
devaluing the identities and lives of the most vulnerable.
In Touraine's "Programmed Society", civil rights, equal rights and social justice
all placed under charity not rights. All rights appropriated by social control
agencies. Advocacy rights misappropriated by careerist professionals. Dilution,
duplicity and deception. We're left with a health care consumerist market with
limited rights.
Milltowners, kith and kin, new immigrants, the disabled, all freshly labelled
as Thatcher's underclass. Redefined by political, legal, medical, educational
authority, the underclass disempowered, segregated, alienated. In day centres,
acute psychiatric hospital wards, community centres, hostels, etc, I worked
and experienced many oppressive practices committed by social control agents,
social workers, etc. As an outsider to these institutions; a "community artist",
I recognised the same oppressive acts from previous milltown times. The inquisitors
had gone but the Foucaultian notion of disciplinary power abounded. The metaphoric
panopticon became the computer. Luke warm collective feelings turned to cold
cognitions. All style and no real content. Glamour. Culture of the Celebrity.
Big Bro for oversized egos. Pop idols for undersized talents. Nothing new then?
Forty years, pace The Beatles. Sixty years, pace Hollywood stardom. And before?
pace Walter Scott, or Lord Byron or Josh Reynolds (notice the absence of"female" superstars.).
A Life Beyond Saturation Point?
30 years beyond secondary modern, re-entered education. Access, First Degree,
Postgrad, MSc in Applied Behavioural Sciences. Studies in Social Sciences,
Art and Humanities. Theories to test. Positivism versus Anti-
Positivism. All historic narratives (according to Kenneth Gergen). Conflict
and consensus explanations. Cause and effect models. Reductionist and determinist
values. French Post-Structuralism. Lacan's Unconscious Other. Postmodernism.
Social constructionism. Grand narratives. Hyperreality. Contests between status
quo maintainers versus proletariat change agents. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Art and Drama Therapy. Aboriginal Painting.
Postmaterialism. New Humanism. Magic Realism. Feminism & 19th century literature.
Shallow and Deep Ecologism. Beck and Giddens's Reflexive Modernisation in a
Risk Society. Self and Citizen's Advocacy. Humour research and most of all
Stand Up Comedy.
All this education...A passport to success? Soaked up all these serious discourses,
anthologies, methodologies, epistemologies, ontologies. Well armed with a modicum
of "sophisticated" rhetoric and argument, grand ideas,
explanations, theories, methods, study skills. No answers to seemingly simple
questions: "How can we live together?" "How much do we really care?"""What
will become of us?"The overlords still overseeing our interests, impervious
to the fate of over 3 billion poverty, famine, war stricken people. With clean
hands around the
corporate table and heads elsewhere, the overlords quietly sip self justification
and self impunity. Paolo Freire's banking system continues to uphold the promise
of a false social status and not a critical literacy. No
the making. 15 to 20K in debt! Then (according to the principles of the modern
labour market) boy, you'd better hit-the-ground-running! Or else.
100+ jobs, interviews, letters, job applications, CVs, telephone calls, emails
later... The "outsider artist" still looking in, now and again. Derrida's pretentious
Floating Signifier! Not fixed, nor insignificant. Relatively"free" to form
new ideas; mythmaking truths and lies. But where's the investment? No longer
restless, fretful, fitful or moody nor negative. Education, politricks, religion,
therapy, drugs, media and television, imperialist cultural systems debunked.
For once, the restless, cynical monkey comes to a stop and all becomes perfectly
still and clear. For once.
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