The Language of Class Warfare

For being a reasonably modern first-world country, the United Kingdom can be decidedly old-fashioned and primitive about a few things. One is dental hygiene; another is the all-pervasive class-consciousness that still lingers on, several decades after it should have ceased to have meaning. The funny thing is, though, that it’s not completely the fault of the intolerably well-to-do upper-crust; while there’s undoubtedly some class snobbery and elitism among these oppressors of the working class, the perpetuation of the frankly retarded class-consciousness owes quite a bit to the self-described underclasses, as well.

There’s an entertainingly stupid story in the news today about how calling “chavs” “chavs” is bad. Apparently, by using a derogatory term to refer to a segment of the population, Class Warfare(tm) is being perpetrated. Never mind that chavdom has nothing to do with heredity, ethnicity, or - quite honestly - social status, but is the result of conscious effort on the part of its outlandish tracksuited disciples.

Being racist is clearly intolerably offensive, as is any other sort of discrimination based upon characteristics over which one has no control. Some of course argue that class warfare should be afforded similar consideration, because one cannot help the station in life one is born into. This seems highly fatalistic to me, and sends rather the wrong sort of message about self-improvement, I think. But, where “chavs” are concerned, it’s immaterial.

Some - indeed, many - of these louts may be… what’s that quaint expression? Ah, yes - “working poor” - but to suggest that “chavdom” is a social class of its own - as, apparently, one “think tank” believes - is extraordinarily stupid. Rather, I would argue, if chavdom is undesirable - which I and quite a few others feel it quite obviously is - then chavs are chavs because their parents have failed to prevent them becoming so. Let’s face it, DILIGAF is not a viable parenting strategy, despite its widespread popularity. At the risk of sounding like a crusty old curmudgeon, kids these days are the way they are because their parents didn’t raise them to be any better. (If you’d like, you can probably shift the blame back a generation - the parents of today’s parents didn’t raise their children to be competent parents, hence chavdom, drug culture, knife violence, binge drinking, et cetera. Whatever generation you pin the blame to, it’s - I think - clearly a social issue, not a class one.)

“Chav” is a label - nothing more, nothing less. Changing the label - or removing the label - isn’t going to address the underlying problem - the fundamental chavness of chavs. Labels - at least, labels for groups of people voluntarily engaging in certain types of behaviour - aren’t automatically bad, nor do they automatically promulgate class consciousness. Nobody complains that “goths” are labeled “goths”, nor whinge on about the social injustice of calling them such. Calling “emos” “emo” is, I’m sorry, not an act of class warfare. If some people sneer when they say chav, well, tough. Some sneer when they say Tory, or conservative, and they’ve done just as much as the chavs have to deserve their scorn. As old farts like to say, they’ve brought it upon themselves, haven’t they?

“Chav” is never going away - at least, not as long as it’s an useful and clearly-understood label for a group of people who intentionally and deliberately act the way they do. If chavs want to not be labeled chavs - which I’ve yet to see any evidence of - remember, it’s not chavs who have their panties in a twist over the label, but some bleeding-heart socialist think-tank whose lofty if misplaced idealism has quite smothered their common sense - then the best course of action is… wait for it… to stop dressing and acting like foppish, loutish ninehammers.

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