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.
That’s not the worst of it. The real boot in the balls comes when, having been deemed successful by society, you are repeatedly held up not simply as an example of a ‘diamond in the rough’, but as poster-child for the system itself. The system you succeeded in spite of. Having made your name railing aggressively against the status-quo, you are suddenly celebrated as living-proof of its enduring utility.
But one mustn’t complain. One must be grateful to have ascended the slippery snakes-and-ladders board of British society, right? Mustn’t rock the boat too much, for what is given can also be taken away and I (hubris alert) worked hard for my seat at the table. The fear of losing that seat now plays an intrusive role in my thinking, so utterly bowled over by my luck that I dare not protest too much in case the seat is abruptly revoked.
Rather than success, prestige or wealth giving me more freedom to tell society some hard-truths, it has become a rein which, when politely tugged, brings me reluctantly into line. Being granted a seat at the table, rather than unleashing my inner-revolutionary, has had an immediate, moderating effect.
Some of you know what I mean, don’t you? Those of you who can still recall the moment you were offered a seat. You recall the sudden tension between concerns about your community and concerns about yourself; your earnings, your social-standing, your legacy and your next move up the board. When you began to see yourself as your colleagues, contemporaries or an audience might see you, and your incorruptible principles developed a sudden and convenient elasticity which, rather than a lack of moral fibre, became evidence of your fair-minded maturity.
The previously strident views you once held and regularly espoused got easier to laugh off as naïve and idealistic. The jobs you called other people hacks for doing gradually gained your respect. Those expense accounts you once criticised as excessive were suddenly justifiable and fair. You changed. You adjusted not only to a certain quality of life, but also became intuitive to what it simply would not do to say, should you wish your run of luck to continue.
It’s amazing how quickly you attune to the prevailing sensibility in this lucrative domain of legitimacy. How grateful you are for the exacting dimensions of the professional sandbox you have been permitted to play in.
I’m now the guy who talks about poverty. My seat at the table is contingent on my willingness to regurgitate ‘personal experiences’ of class, addiction and trauma because that is the reheated vomit that guarantees my social mobility.
I still harbour radical beliefs. I’m still angry. But every seat at the table comes with its own unique restraint. Mine is no different.
I can still recall vividly the struggles I faced prior to moving up in the world, but that visceral sense of poverty’s all-consuming immediacy is impossible to retain. I am already beginning to forget what it felt like to struggle on a daily basis.
The impact of political decisions on me is now negligible. That’s why many in my tax-bracket can afford to lecture others about being ‘civil’ and ‘polite’. Affluence pampers you to the extent that you can no longer relate to those whose lives are routinely thrown into chaos because of ill-considered (or downright malign) political decisions.
Twelve months of living comfortably has partially numbed me to the reality millions face in the UK, so what hope is there for those with real power and influence, who rarely contend with reality at all, to bring about meaningful change? In the absence of enough seats at the table for everyone, I fear they will have to be rudely upturned at some point. After all, nothing captures the attention of the ruling class like poor table-manners.
From the moment I booked my first ever First-Class train ticket – the morning after the Orwell ceremony – I was different. The rules of the game changed the second I had something to lose. The moment I realised there is something worth conserving.
Perhaps some of you other ‘diamonds in the rough’, ascending the ladder, will identify with this description of bitter class-conflict? Not the class-conflict curdling public discourse in Britain, but the one quietly raging within your own heart. This is not to say that I don’t still have an appetite for radical change or am unprepared to make sacrifices in pursuit of social justice. But if revolutionary mischief is imminent, it is now highly unlikely that I’ll be firing the starting-gun.
Darren McGarvey is a Scottish hip hop artist and social commentator. In 2018, his book Poverty Safari won the Orwell Prize and his new book The Social Distance Between Us (Ebury Press) is out on 16th June.
lokiscottishrap 
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
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.