In March, Professor Joan C. Williams of the University of California kicked off the 2026 Modern Cockney Festival with an hour long lecture offering profound insights into polarisation and populism. Our YouTube channel is now carrying key excerpts from her talk (below).
Joan is the author of Outclassed – How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back (2025) and White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (2017), a work described as “really worth a read” by former US President Joe Biden. Though the books primarily discuss and focus on the US, we believe Prof. Williams offers a powerful prescription for what needs to change in the UK too.
The UK faces similar pressures to those reshaping American politics, highlighting how precarity rather than poverty is a major driver of support for right wing populism. Recent successes by Reform UK in the English local and Welsh Senedd elections echo a famous Trump supporter: “We’re voting with our middle finger!”
The first video explores the big theme to her work of the rise of far-Right Populism, and the inability to stop it, unless we address the issue of class dynamics.
The second covers her critique of Centre and Left responses to the rise of Populism by ‘fixing the voters’.
Video three explores how changes within the Left have contributed to the rise of Populism.
The fourth video highlights the cultural difference between working-class communities and those they perceive as ‘elites’.
The fifth video investigates the differences between the aspirations of working-class parents with their middle-class counterparts.
Video six reflects on the ‘politics of scorn’ and how the Centre and Left should talk about immigration and overcome what she calls ‘the class culture gap’.
The final video takes stock of the new dynamics that have propelled progressives away from working-class communities.
The Modern Cockney Festival is a partnership between Grow Social Capital and the Bengali East End Heritage Society.
