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Are the working classes revolting?

by | Mar 18, 2024 | Communities

Are working-class cultural identities such as Cockney, Scouse, and Weegie facing greater social stigma and prejudice that fuels greater division and polarisation in modern society?

Leading social commentator David Goodhart of the Policy Exchange explores the issue at a special online event ‘Are the working classes revolting?’ at 12 noon on Monday 25 March as part of the month-long Modern Cockney Festival.

The event explores questions on how shifts in British society, where people connect less with those unlike themselves, creates increasing marginalisation and stigmatization.

It addresses the Festival’s mission of how working-class cultures like Cockney do not have cultural institutions to define, defend, or advance their collective interests. As a result, their stories get told by others, leading to negative stereotyping, or even airbrushed out of existence.

In his works ‘Road to Somewhere’ Goodhart identifies how swathes of working-class communities, what he calls ‘Somewhere people’, have been demonised in post-Brexit Britain, while his book ‘Head, Hand, Heart’ investigates how technical, practical abilities using the hand, and social and empathetic skills using emotional heart, are devalued, alienating and demoralising the people who do the jobs that require them.

Is there a need to recognise how social identities, like Cockneys – ‘non-posh Londoners’ – provide values of supportiveness and togetherness to face up to adversity.

Yet are we witnessing its marginalisation, even a denial of its existence?

As a result of being marginalised, are working class people increasingly being treated as second-class citizens, and their interests being overlooked? According to the British Social Attitudes Survey in 1989, 61% felt spending on the poor should be higher, even if it meant higher taxes. Today, it is 37%.

“Our society faces threats to its social cohesion, needing a stronger sense of commonality, greater sense of shared patriotism, and heritage, allowing respect for diversity while being open to understanding one another. Modern-day Britain has many achievements on greater gender equality and inclusiveness. Is there also need to address with vigour, discrimination based on social class? “

David Goodhart’s biography: https://policyexchange.org.uk/author/david-goodhart/


The Modern Cockney Festival is a month-long celebration of the culture, heritage, and future of ‘non-posh Londoners’ aka Cockneys. It features the launch of a virtual Modern Cockney Museum, live and online events, lectures, talks, family fun days, the Modern Cockney Kids festival, and the first-ever National Pie’n’Mash Week.

It is a community partnership between ourselves and the East End Bengali Heritage Society.

The Festival celebrates a Cockney identity of the ‘non-posh Londoner’, a term first coined by comedian Arthur Smith. An identity characterised by values of being resilient and defiant, resourceful, underpinned by a stoic and irreverent wit, with four key types:

  • ‘Old School Cockney’ found in traditional heartlands of inner London, akin to the popular stereotypes with a working-class London accent, language, and culture, use of rhyming slang, and other tropes.
  • ‘New School Cockney’ a product of the latest emergent culture of ‘non-posh Londoners’.
  • ‘Cockney Diaspora’ with an affinity to the ‘non posh Londoner’ living outside the traditional Cockney heartlands of inner London, and retaining aspects of the traditional heartland’s language, accent, and attitudes.
  • ‘Ancestral Cockney’ an affinity with the culture and heritage of the ‘non posh Londoner’ second, third or more generation removed from living in the traditional Cockney heartlands.

Further details about the Modern Cockney Festival, and to book tickets for the Festival’s other free events visit www.moderncockneyfestival.org.uk

Written by Russell Todd

Russell is a Welsh-speaking community development practitioner of 20 years’ experience, researcher, digital inclusion trainer, project manager and co-operator with over 8 years experience of workforce development and support for those employed on the recently-ended Communities First (CF) tackling poverty programme.

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