I’d be interested to hear what Ramiie thinks though.

I’ll write more on this when I get back.

But he also said this:
”But at least the message was clear all around the country that Brixton brlonged to us. And so did Tottenham. And so did Hackney and Stonebridge and Peckham and Handsworth and Moss Side and Cheetham hill and St Paul’s, so on and so forth.”

That’s about Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol too.

I have heard of similar talk about change in Harlem, where market forces have been putting the squeeze on poorer people.
And how in LA, Hispanics have been moving into formally black neighbourhoods.

I read some years ago about some resentment in Oakland California, because a rundown commercial area in a black neighbourhood had been ‘revitalised’ by people from south east Asia opening up businesses in it.

That’s why I typed out that long article. It seems all kinds of people can feel this ”loss of hegemony”.
When it’s articulated by the white working class (in places like East London) it’s usually called racism.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/an-unusual-story-of-country-folk-940321.html

WAVE BRIXTON GOODBYE.

There used to be a time when everyone knew that Brixton belonged to us.
We fought for it, and made love for it.
Some of us even died in that corner of the landscape that would ever be black

It didn’t mean that white folks weren’t welcome, all that it meant is that they KNEW it was ours, the same way as when I go to Norfolk or Suffolk, or any of the shires, I know that it’s NOT ours.
I’m on my ‘p’s and ‘q’s when I go up country, because I don’t have the backative to claim it as mine. And all the youts know this, so they’ve got the bottle to shout out ”N*igga!” from across the road when they see you walking down one of their village streets or quiet country lanes.

I don’t have a problem with that because I KNOW when I venture out there I’m in a white mans country and the white man makes the rules.
Brixton was different though. Babylon THOUGHT he made the rules until Brixton made a stand against the so-called Operation ‘Swamp 81′. As the late Bernie Grant MP would say, the police got ”bloody good hiding” that time.

There were of course casualties on both sides. But at least the message was clear all around the country that Brixton brlonged to us. And so did Tottenham. And so did Hackney and Stonebridge and Peckham and Handsworth and Moss Side and Cheetham hill and St Paul’s, so on and so forth.

ROOTS

Where ever you had an inner city, you had a corner of England that would be forever Jamaican or Nigerian or Bajan or St Kittian. We didn’t just put down roots, we put down down-payments on those areas, or at least our parents did. And like the law states, if you own a piece of this green and pleasant land, it’s yours.
Nobody can take it away from you (unless you divert the mortgage payments to buy a Ferrari).
But 27 years on, Brixton no longer belongs to us. I went down there the other day and discovered another country. Oh, we were still evident. It wasn’t like ”spot the black man” but we no longer own it.
The bars, the clubs, the resturants and shops no longer belong to us. With the exception of a pattie shop or two, Brixton belongs to everybody but us. It’s the same in Tottenham and Hackney. We spend most of the money, but virtually the only things we own are barbershops and hairdressers.
We’ve got ourselves to blame. Look at the Asian community. They came here at more or less the same time we did. They didn’t just put downpayments on the areas they claimed, they bought them outright.
Often jointly, communally, together as one family. So when you go to Southall, Alperton, Ealing, Whitechapel, and the other london areas they own, it’s all about Indiashire, Londonistan and Bangla-Brick Lane. They own the houses, the businesses AND the councils.
So who do you think makes the rules in those areas? It’s not the Women’s Institute and the Rotary Club and the Freemasons, I can tell you. Forget the local parish church and the sound of Bow Bells, it’s the Hindu temples and the mosques that call the shots, and if the Imam wants to call the belivers to worship at five in the morning, that’s up to him.

Like I said, we’ve got ourselves to blame. We had it all in the palm of our hands and we threw it away. We could have been contenders. We could have controlled entire neighbourhoods, businesswise and otherwise.
We should be in control of our local councils in those areas where we are/were the majority.

VICTORIES

But after the street battles that won us our victories of the past (and not just us, because let’s face it – Asian communities benifited from the blood we shed in the eighties) we rested on our laurels. Like ex-slaves, we indulged our new found freedoms far too long and partied until it was 1999. By then of course it was too late.

During the eighties and nineties more drugs were pumped into the black communities of Britain than ever before. I lived in and worked in Brixton at the time. Previously it had been all about the good sensi (or collie or lamb’s bread, as it used to be known). After the riots of 1981 and 1985, we began to see the emergence of hard drugs – heroin, speed, then cocaine, and then, of course, crack.

The drugs did their job, They subdued our people into submission. Those very same crack addicts that you see in ‘black’ neighbourhoods are the same guys who used to live on the frontline ready to protest at the injustices we suffered. Those injustices are still here, but if you ask the warriors of old to come out and demonstrate, they’ll fall prostrate, begging for one more hit.

You see, in winning the streets we really didn’t win anything. the streets belong to everybody, whatever your local gang might think. Real power and real wealth is all about who controls the means of production, the judiciary and executive.

The Nigerians of Peckham know this. They are the new Jamaicans. It remains to be seen whether they will be seduced into not buying the freehold of that corner of south east London that will forever be ‘Lagos’.

the wwc thing comes in when people who normally wouldn’t be thinking about anyone’s right to welfare, suddenly pretend they do, because they want to say something about ‘incomers’ people who they still perceive as having some rights to welfare. they’re behind times, the right of recourse to public funds isn’t something handed to new incomers. so they should just relax

good point.

it seems a lot of people when they talk about the so-called working classes they are really referring to people on state benefits. i.e. usually not working.

Yes, and totally agree diversity is used as a scapegoat for lack of the former. Shame.

To refer to ‘WWC issues’ is really holding out a hostage to fortune. Scratch the surface and I suspect that the whole ‘WWC’ idea is not much more than a perception.

Where I think it might have some substance is in the idea that it is part of a wider backlash against diversity and the (perception?) that diversity has been oversold. I’m sure we can go on all day about how far that is real and how far it is perception.

Sunny has written a good article, but I think he needs to take a step back and think about whether ‘WWC’ is real or a phantom like so many other laden terms beloved of all sides of political debate.

Perhaps the wider question is how far have New Labour’s quiet redistributions helped the ‘real working class.’

I thought you went to school just off Brick Lane.

Yup, yup. I meant to say agree with almost everything on your post on this topic.

Some might say the bee is a chip ( that’s another description people use for working class or black people when they express attitudes that er.. don’t fit in with the views of others.).

These days I walk with TWO GREAT BIG CHIPS on each shoulder. It compensates for the arrogance I find in my slightly male posh colleagues.

they’ve had to fight for workers’ rights.

a lot of it through the union movement.

with the union movement eclipsed, it’s worth asking how it fights its corner ? Perhaps that’s the more relevant question.

I sort understand where the white of the ‘white working class’ bit fits in, but for me , it’s more about the latter.

Very good point. Being working class to me was much more about hard work and the work ethic.

Somewhere along the way this got hijacked …

Is it more that there is a battle over belonging …

It’s dangerous to talk about a common culture, as the average culture pundit at school will tell you culture is the most complicated concept to define in the English dictionary. So very tricky to explain as a common policy.

Culture is never static anywhere, it’s fluid and changing, and any concept of Britishness that tries to fix itself through such a slippery concept is bound to fail. I would hate to define it – very dangerous.

I like this definition of multi(culture).

“people have competing attachments to nation, group, subculture, region, city, town neighbourhood and the wider world. They belong to a range of different but overlapping communities, real and symbolic, divided on cultural issues of the day. Identities, in consequence, are more situational. This makes Britain, contrary to stereotype, more open (The Parekh Report, 2000:25).”

Sadly this is why I never understood why multiculturlism is suffering so much in the UK.. Sure, we can argue it undermines structural reform ( that’s another word to be looking at when we discuss class isses) and social justice which is why the Left has issues with it, but is the above definition such a bad thing..

I also liked the old concept of Britishness – even though it came under pressure from devolution, so much that Englishness, Scottishness and Irishness was then unpacked. But the Britishness I had in mind was about respect and values for fair play, decency, reciprocity, helping each other..

The battle over Britishness is also about defining Britishness more inclusively in terms of political devolution. It ain’t just about class and the belonging of new and old ethnicities. In other words, it’s also fuelled politically because the concept of Englishness was always priviledged over other British identities.

“I must say as a white man I am uncomfortable with the term “white working class”. I REALLY DO.”

I had a that reacion, but not because I am a white man.

Because the tone of the article assumes only the white people are workingclass.

They are not.

Plus I am waiting to see an article in the media, here, or anywhere, one day on other working classes. It’s as though only white people have class but Asians only have culture. When we discuss British South Asians we never discuss class in relaton to it.

It’s divisive.

An article about the working class should even nominally talk about the unions – even though not much of it remains. Collective orgnising, minimum labour standards and all .

If we aren’t talking about the unions, then er… we’re slightly off topic..