Elitism, Classism, we’re all part of the reason it ain’t going nowhere!

This week in the UK has been all about this topic, thanks to the Labour Party’s conference, where the party’s leadership have been questioned about their claims to understanding the people better, because of their own personal working class upbringing. But are they or have they in recent years been working class??

It all hinges on a quest to fit in. Quest to belong. The minute someone opens their mouth, we’re judging their accent, their mannerism etc.

Few decades ago, I spent nearly 2 years travelling across West Africa and I spent the first year, intensely trying to belong, not wanting to stick out like a sore thumb. I wanted to be a writer, writing about how the poorer parts of the world can set aside their past and quit moaning about slavery (which strangely enough, West Africans that I came across, very rarely spoke about) or the ills of colonialism (which is what they frequently talked about and linked pretty much all their present-day plight to) and focus on them working together and taking advantage of the advantages they do have e.g. solar. I didn’t want to be seen as foreign. I fully immersed myself, worked intensively on my accent to acquire as much of an African accent as possible (spending night after night mimicking my two guides) and by the second year, I had blended in perfectly (and to this very day, I have proudly retained an element of that accent, which I claim as my own!). When I spent the final months of that soul-searching period travelling across South East Asia, it was amazing how welcoming the locals were, now that I spoke to them in a less pompous accent. I could immerse myself into their cultures, I was welcomed into their homes and it was just such a completely different experience to my previous visits to Hong Kong and Thailand as a kid with a British accent; you try to engage and get close to the people but they only see you as a tourist, a visitor, a foreigner.
It is no different from where we are in the UK today, where the class war appears to be well alive & thriving. People are not able to blend in, as the working class want to associate with the working class and the new government spent years criticising the entitled demeanour of the posh folk of the Tory party, with their upper class accents. The middle class on the other hand, have been taxed out of existence! When the (previously) working class try to blend in, they are accused of hypocrisy

But essentially, everyone’s just trying to fit in!

The Labour Party leaders who are now being heavily criticised for accepting freebies such as using a millionaire donor’s New York and London home for their holidays etc., are in essence all just trying to fit in. They were raised working class but in truth, now that they are in high-salaried jobs and positions of power, they aspire to the lifestyle they deem better? Well, I have news for you: that is indeed, the lifestyle of the wealthy, upper class. There is nothing wrong with that attempt to blend in, perhaps it is the perceived hypocrisy that’s causing the present furore. They have come in, attacking private schools, slapping VAT on them, stating it will fund the addition of teachers to state schools, even as data affirms the impact will be detrimental across the board. But it would seem that if offered the freebie of having their kids at Eton, they would have accepted. So, all a bit confusing to many. But quite understandable to me, when I recall those couple of years when I worked so hard to blend in, on my trip across West Africa. It is indeed a profound experience, when people try to fit in; it sometimes take on that perception – as it is today, with the Labour Party – of hypocrisy. The Labour Party folk mean well. Their intentions are noble. They are trying to do the right thing. But, they need to realise and accept that the right thing is to bring everyone UP, not drag the whole country DOWN in the name of creating a fairer society