My working-class background: Estrangement, divorce and reconciliation

This is a blog I have been meaning to write and ruminating on for a long time. Mostly because it is painful and has forced me to confront some unpleasant truths about my won behaviour, but also because it makes me angry at the way society has been and continues to be rigged to keep the working classes down. 

I was born in a council house in Warrington, Cheshire - an industrial town equidistant from Manchester and Liverpool - during Thatcher's reign, in 1983. My mum is a remarkable woman, but I didn't really see it until recently sadly. She was pregnant with me while still in school and decided to raise me alone, until she met a kind man who took me on as his own and became the father to my two sisters. The marriage didn't work out and my mum later met my Step-Dad, who was only a young man when he took us three girls on and had another three kids, making me the eldest of six siblings. 

When I was about 12, we moved to a council estate to a four bedroom house. The council estate had been built in the 1970s and the house felt ginormous, as we had all been squashed into a two bedroomed house before this. I had an unhappy childhood. Not because I didn't get on with my family or get treated well. We were lucky in that respect. My unhappiness was intrinsic. I fel restless and uncomfortable. I didn't enjoy socialising really and preferred to read and write, dreaming of a time when I could escape and travel and be somebody. It is this obsession with being 'somebody' which has caused me the most joy and the most pain in my life as I never seem to be happy with what I have achieved and am always looking and striving for the next thing, never resting on my laurels. It is only now as an adult and have read a lot about Bourdieu that I am starting to understand myself.

Pierre Bourdieu's work, particularly on capitals, has had a resurgence in popularity over the last few years - mainly when it comes to curriculum. Bourdieu argued that the children of middle-class or wealthier parents are likely have cultural assets - knowledge, behaviour, attitudes and cultural experiences - that ensures that they succeed in education and society. Capital is usually used to refer to money. According to Marxists, having capital gives the wealthy power. But Bourdieu argued that it is not only money that gives the wealthy power, but cultural assets too as the children of middle-class or wealthier parents are likely have knowledge, behaviour, attitudes and cultural experiences that ensures that they succeed in education and society. There have been numerous studies conducted which have found that teachers will perceive cultural capital as intelligence, and this in turn leads to them applying a positive label to the pupils. As teachers, it is important that we provide the opportunities for students to build their cultural capitals, but not at the cost of them believing their own working class cultures are rubbish and unworthy. As Phil Beadle says in 'The Facist Painting,' cultural capital isn't just something that can be fed to people on a medicine spoon, passively. I am convinced that this is why I have previously felt ashamed of where I have come from...more about that later.

Bourdieu also developed the concept of habitus, which means a culture or worldview that is associated with a social class or social group. Our life experiences, as a member of that group, deeply embed in us habits, skills and ways of behaving and thinking. As such, cultural capital is not just knowing the names of classical composers or slipping into a bit of Latin but can also be demonstrated through much more subtle and deeply-ingrained attributes. Because teachers are often middle class themselves, they have a middle-class habitus and therefore find it easier to relate to pupils who are similar. Aspects of a working-class habitus can be interpreted negatively or unconsciously associated with being less academic or intelligent. And there is the catalyst. These depply ingrained ideas about what the working-class is like have seen me have a tumultous relationship with my background. From feelings of disgust and enstrangement, which I am now deeply ashamed about, to a complete divorce and my reasonably recent reconciliation. I am not sure why I am writing this to be honest. Perhaps it is carthartic, perhaps I hope it will highlight how pervasive and deeply entrenched opinions on class still permeate our society and just maybe, it might resonate with those of you who have been on a similar journey. 

Estrangement

At 16 I became the first person in my family to go on to study A-Levels. I always knew I would as from being a very small child and being informed I was 'clever' by my relatives, university had seemed like a natural step. I wanted to become a journalist and I was quite single-minded in my vision. Only the nationals would do; while other teens adorned their walls with posters of the Backstreet Boys and 5ive, I dreamed about rubbing shoulders with Piers Morgan and Matthew Wright (I know!). While at college, I met a boy from a very middle-class background. They lived in a big house, had two cars and went on foreign holidays every year. Both his parents had degrees and they spoke in RP, I felt completely enamoured with them. It makes me sick to think about the way I tried to distance myself from my own background as I was ashamed. His mother used to call me the 'KFC Kid' and make disparaging comments abotu me behind my back, which his sister would tell me about. I wish I could go back in time and say something but at the time, I didn't really possess the strength or pride in my roots which I now have. 

University only exacerbated this feeling, as nobody else in my family had ever been. I remember reading a section in 'Boys Don't Try,' I think it was Matt Pinkett's section which detailed how he felt when he went away to university and it resonated so much with me, I almost wept. Bourdieu talks about the ceremonial codes and language of the university and when I arrived at Leeds, I felt like I was from another planet. I knew nothing about politics or socialism or Kafka or any other high-brow reference my peers slipped seamlessly into the conversation. I decided that to get anywhere in life, I needed to break the bonds of my background, consign it to the history books and reinvent myself.

Divorce

At 21, I applied for the Graduate Traineeship at News International and got it, beating 600 applicants to work at the newspaper as the youngest staff journalist at a national. Part of the programme was completing a PgDip in Newspaper Journalism at the prestigious City University - training ground for the national media. I was one of very few Northerners on the course and even fewer working class folks. Instead of making me feel proud of how hard I had worked and where I had come from, this made me feel more ashamed. They were a fantastic bunch but the banter fell into the trap of Northern jokes, with one of my good friends at the time often good-naturedly mimicking me in a Liam Gallagher-esque voice, complete with hand gestures. I struggled with money while living in the capital, as I was payed a miniscule wage at the newspaper which had to pay rent, travel, food and other bizarre expenses (buying flowers for rock stars on behalf of the paper, taxis across London to drop wheelchairs off at Downing Street etc.) Many of my course mates were being bank-rolled by their parents, so they were able to go out to eat or to the pub most nights and I felt like I had to keep up. I sank deeper and deeper into debt in a desperate attempt to prove I was one of them and keep up. Interestingly, I was hobnobbing with the wealthy and successful in the capital and had never seen more drugs. Growing up on a council estate, I had never been exposed to drugs but here it was widespread. In a desperate attempt to belong, I even joined the Young Conservatives and went to a party they held at Stringfellows. Watching my 'betters' enjoying lap dancing and swigging champagne all around me was a bit of a wake up call. These middle class folks I was desperate to be like were not what I thought. Needless to say, it all went wrong and I returned to Warrington to my family and decided to train to teach.

I rarely went home during this time and had no visits from my family at all. It was a different world and I suddently realised I was an outsider in London and an outsider at home too. I occupied this bizarre liminal space of my own making, due to my negative feelings about my backgound. 

Reconciliation

After returning home, it took time to build bridges with my family. I had been a nasty, spiteful brat who had looked down my nose at them and lorded it over them, to fill a hole in my own self-esteem. 

My family are great. They are all hardworking, have strong morals and would give you the shirt off their back if they thought you were cold. I am now so proud of where I come from, of my own culture. As a Senior Lecturer in a university, I want to encourage more people from my background to come and study a degree, if that is what they desire. But when they get there, their own backgrounds and cultures and the vibrant life experiences they bring with them needs to be embraced, just as much as how much reading of academic journals they've read or where they travelled in their non-existent gap year. Perhaps if this had been the case in my own experiences, it wouldn't have taken me almost 40 years to finally feel comfortable with my background. To feel, finally, like I belong and am worthy.