OVERVIEW
The use and abuse of memories of the working class in 21 st century Britain by Selina Todd Professor of Modern History . University of Oxford .
The public history of the working class , as told by most British politicians and the media , is one of decline and disappearance . In a prizewinning essay published in 2009 , the writer and journalist Andrew O ’ Hagan lamented the loss of a ‘ sense of pride and worth that was said to be in boom in the years of austerity ’ following the Second World War , and its replacement by the 1990s with a ‘ working class [ who ] were no longer a working class .... people who craved not values but designer labels and satellite dishes ’ and formed ‘ the most conservative force in Britain ’. O ’ Hagan is not alone in believing that affluence and technology had corrupted ‘ my own people ’. ‘ Once they were celebrated as heroes in plays , books , and films ’, declared the writer Andrew Anthony in the Observer newspaper shortly after the financial crash of 2008 . ‘ Now they are derided as reactionary and bigoted losers .’
Since 2010 , the public memory of the working class has become more conflicted . The notion that ‘ they ’ are reactionary bigots has been strengthened by the result of the Brexit referendum of 2016 . Most journalists overlook that many affluent residents of southern , rural England , voted to leave the European Union . They focus their ire on the deindustrialised areas of northern England – constituencies which also helped give Boris Johnson ’ s Conservative Party a landslide win in the 2019 General Election .
But this public memory of the working class was challenged in 2015 , when Jeremy Corbyn , a left-wing veteran MP , was elected leader of the Labour Party . Labour rapidly became Europe ’ s largest social democratic party , and many of Corbyn ’ s supporters lived in Britain ’ s former industrial heartlands . They were among those voters who defied media predictions to give Labour a huge increase in parliamentary seats in the General Election of 2017 .
Corbyn ’ s victory did not spring from nowhere . In 2016 , more than 60 percent of British people described themselves as working class . This had been the case throughout
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Observing Memories ISSUE 4