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Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
I hate talking about class. At least I do now. It wasn’t always this way. It used to be fun to talk and write about it when I had fuck all. Class was the indiscriminate fist with which I would righteously ‘punch-up’, much to the satisfaction of my comrades.
It’s far trickier, however, to touch the topic when you’ve made a few quid. When you’re no longer scraping to get by, questions are asked as to how authentically you can represent working-class experiences. In fact, aren’t you going to have to turn that righteous fist on yourself?
Having spent my life railing against middle-class people and the wealthy, certain that their affluence was in some way linked to my hardship, I now find myself at an uncomfortable crossroads. In the past year, I’ve been given a taste of how the other half live, as the material circumstances of my life changed dramatically. While I still feel like the same person, I feel that my claim to being working-class grows more tenuous by the day.
The pivotal moment came when my first book, Poverty Safari, won the Orwell Prize last year. The first thing I asked was: “Can anybody take this away from me?” That question revealed a lot – mainly how I felt the opposite of entitled to win or to even be considered.
That year still feels like a dream. I am now often introduced not only as an Orwell Prize-winner, but also as the writer of a book that George Orwell himself would have commended. This strange association with one of history’s most celebrated authors is flattering but, as I feel it, undeserved. And yet it has quite simply altered the course of my life forever.
The accolade parted the choppy sea of circumstance that for so long had obstructed my progress. Those invisible barriers that impeded my social mobility disappeared and the glimpse of a previously alien life, one without constant financial anxiety, came suddenly and surprisingly into view.
Some people seem bred for success. When people of a higher social caste become successful it is unremarkable and rarely something they must justify. When you grow up in poverty and become successful, you are never allowed to forget it. “Where did you learn to speak so well, Darren?”, is the innocent but rather offensive question I am routinely asked by people who haven’t won an Orwell prize. There’s a reason why some find my ability to articulate coherent sentences so surprising. Few would ask privately-schooled Glaswegian historian Niall Ferguson where he learned “all the big words” he uses.
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SubscribeA bizarre article, if you ask me. If you wish to return to a state of poverty you are entirely at liberty to voluntarily hand over more tax to HMRC. This is what they all do at The Guardian. Or you could give most of your money away to charity, as more or less all BBC employees do.
Apart from that, I think it would be quite entertaining to hear some hip-hop from a middle class point of view.
Very humble-braggy, isn’t it.
A good and honest article Darren….you may have lit the touch paper on your own excommunication from the leftist church of reheated vomit…that one telling and brilliant phrase,is an indication of your growing realisation that you no longer want to be an insider maggot,destroying the body of not just our political discourse,but the very fabric of this country.
But Id say,rejoice, as you don’t have to talk bollox with fairweather ‘friends’ any longer.
Yes there IS inequality in this country..but which country DOESN’T have it? But what this country does have is a general compassion and elects those that provide a safety net for the less fortunate.
You could even call it “the best of a bad job..” bit it beats Albania hands down.
Would it not be true to say that you just successfully used what raw material you had at your disposal to carve out a living?
You had a particular set of character traits and an environment which must have assisted you in some way. You were able to make more in life than many of your peers. There’s bound to be guilt in that.
Now you have experienced some success you have more materials available to you. You must be wondering what to do next?
The class stuff is trickier to justify, I think. People swallow the class struggle narrative- which is one reason why you made money and some fame. Is it true to say that one problem of the working classes (and all classes for that matter) is that they are too proudly defiant in their identity and this rigidity can so often hold people back from separating and individuating? If you define success as material comfort then it’s easy to create a narrative where the middle and upper classes have all the opportunities and the working classes have none. But what is true success? Presumably it has something with becoming truly your own person in life in love and in work. I would argue that that sort of aspiration is denied to a great many individuals in all classes.
Perhaps your current insecurity reflects some uncertainty about your earlier theorising -perhaps it doesn’t seem to make such concrete sense any more as you realise that true success is more complex than just having had money in your path and making money from it. I don’t denigrate the acquisition of wealth by the way but it is obviously not the only measure of success.
Your story might be proof of the aphorism that whatever sh*t people throw at capitalism, it always ends up selling it back to everyone in the end.
Ps..though I would say not to agonise too musmch about earning a few bob…you need only ponder just how much Corbyn has in his bank account..Jon Landsman…Seumas Milne and countless more victim-brokers..
I went to the same school as Seumas Milne and Rishi Sunak. I respect Rishi Sunak.
Don’t feel insecure about your place at any table. Everyone there knows that their place is tenuous and depends on the narrative they bring – your’s is just more colourful. As for guilt about moving on from what sounds like a pretty crap past, I figure you want for your kids what you can offer them now – not what might have been. No shame in that. Tell your stories and live life out the windscreen, not the rear view mirror. There’s some unsolicited advice from a random stranger who liked your article.
What a great article, summing up the internal conflict when the oppressed accidentally become the oppressor. One thing I wish I’d been taught earlier when I was spouting left-wing nonsense was the Pie fallacy summed up by the Peter Bauer quote: “Poverty has no causes. Wealth has causes.” Such a simple place to start forming a realistic worldview but immensely helpful in avoiding the trap of Marxist power struggles and shadowy “elites”.
What a beautifully constructed piece of (Augustan) prose. Agnes Poirier is obviously old school, with her extended syntax, and even her use of semi colons. Wonderful.