The first time I became aware of class as a concept was when I moved to the UK. I had been a student at my independent girls’ school for precisely three days when I heard some girls in my class talking about “townies”. “What’s a townie?” I asked, all innocence.
A barrage of explanations came out, each mystifying me more and more. Then someone said, “Townies wear shell suits, you know, those shiny tracksuits.” Unwisely, I said, “But I have a shiny tracksuit.” Total silence fell, and then one girl said, “Well, she’s Australian, the rules don’t apply to her,” and everyone relaxed again. This was my introduction to the English class system. I later became aware that people could be categorised at 50 paces merely by the way that they dressed, stood and walked, a categorisation which was confirmed or denied as soon as the person opened her mouth. Accent and what one’s father did were the final determinants necessary to “put one in one’s place”. Luckily for me, I was impossible to categorise as anything other than a “colonial”, which meant that I had leeway to put my foot in it and generally make social gaffes all over the place.
The thing was that by and large, if you were born in a particular class, it was very difficult to get out of that class. If you were lower class, the educational opportunities were less and you were automatically hallmarked as someone who was “not quite right”. For the first time, I understood what Marx and Engels were on about (after all, they used Manchester as their primary example, which happened to be where I was living). Indeed, one of my best friends at high school was a neo-Marxist, but I noted that, although she had a keen sense of social justice which I admired, she didn’t actually like the lower classes very much in practice. They were constantly disappointing in their lack of interest in throwing off the shackles of class, and rather more interested in watching Man U rise to global dominance and downing pints of lager.
When I returned to Australia, I was more acutely aware of such divisions in Australian society. I was amazed that the main question when I started Law School was, “What school did you go to?” My answer made no sense to anyone, because of course I had attended a school in Manchester, but I liked the fact that I couldn’t be categorised.
Of course we have class divisions in Australia too, it is just that they are not quite as rigid as the English ones. Therefore, while my grandparents on both sides of the family had to leave school at the ages of 12 or 13, my parents were the first in their families to complete high school, undergraduate university degrees and postgraduate degrees. A pretty darn impressive acheivement if you ask me. I have always been aware of the fact that my education is an immense privilege.
Anyway, I was interested to read this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald about the English class system, and the author’s subsequent comment that Australians can’t be too smug - we also have snobbery:
But a new snobbery has also materialised in Australia. Where Britain’s middle classes look down on their chavs, ours look down on “bogans” - VB-swilling, mullet-sporting, flannel-shirt wearing, Holden V8-driving ockers. Once the ocker was a source of folkloric affection but today he’s an object of derision and ridicule. Earlier this year, residents in Wahroonga petitioned Ku-ring-gai Council to change a street name from Bogan Place to a more genteel Rainforest Close because of its negative connotations.
Someone also had to explain the concept of the bogan to me when I was about 13 (I must have been a very naive child really), and I seem to recall that this explanation also made no sense to me, as it revolved around the wearing of moccasins and flannelette shirts. How could wearing certain clothes make you a bad person?
As with my high school friend, I have noticed that often, those who deride the lower classes in practice are often those who also purport to espouse principles of social justice and equality. People who campaign loudly against discrimination laugh long and hard at Kath and Kim and think that it’s a very funny show. I’ve never been comfortable with this show: it reeks of middle-class snobbery and stereotypes of the “lower classes”. I find it to be cruel.
These kinds of considerations came sharply to my attention yesterday with Catherine Deveny’s piece in The Age about Brendan Nelson. Long time readers of my blogging will know that I’m no fan of Deveny’s. Deveny said:
I can’t tell you how often I seriously wish I were living in some outer suburb content with signed and framed football jumpers on the wall, no bookshelves and a coffee table covered in remote controls, happy to read romance novels over my Cup-a-Soup. At least I’d have some peace. In the immortal words of Radiohead: “No alarms and no surprises.”
Clearly she’s referring to the bogans who live in McMansions in the outer suburbs with their plasma televisions and their football jumpers. Let’s think about this. Deveny’s implication is that such people do not have informed political opinions. And even, as an extension of this, that their opinions are less valuable than hers. Here is a prime example of snobbery, while all the time she is protesting that she is socially aware and supposedly “left wing”. A supporter of the lower classes in theory: it is just that the actuality of the lower class doesn’t live up to her expectations, and she’d rather not have to listen to what they say where it conflicts with her view of the world. She’d rather resort to cruel stereotypes.
I really hate this kind of snobbery. Someone may read Mills and Boon novels rather than Dostoyevsky, but this doesn’t mean that her opinion is worthless. I think you have to take each person as he or she comes, not as a stereotype. My own experience is that, whether people are educated or uneducated, upper class or lower class, their opinions are interesting and valuable, and it is worthwhile trying to work out why they think as they do. We are all shaped by our different experience of the world, and in sharing our opinions rather than writing off the opinions of others, we may actually be richer for it.
