‘We don’t exist for them, do we?’: why people that are working-class for Brexit

Estimated reading time: ten full minutes

Lisa Mckenzie

Estimated reading time: ten full minutes

Working-class everyone was more prone to vote for Brexit. Lisa Mckenzie (Middlesex University) takes problem aided by the idea why these individuals were ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’. They saw Brexit, with the uncertainties it can bring, as an option to the status quo. Austerity and de-industrialisation has brought a heavy toll on working-class communities – one which the middle-class usually doesn’t grasp.

It’s 22 2016 june. I’m sat in a cafГ© when you look at the East End of London with two neighborhood females, ‘Sally’ – that is 23, has two small kids, and it has been regarding the council home waiting list for four years, along side over 19,000 other folks – and Anne, that is inside her sixties and calls herself a ‘proper Eastender’. Her young ones direct lender for installment loans and grandchildren had recently relocated from the area and into Essex due to the insufficient a home that is affordable. It’s the afternoon prior to the EU referendum, and we also are speaing frankly about all of the politics associated with the time, including footballer David Beckham’s present intervention when you look at the debate: he’s got recently declared their support for the stay campaign. The ladies aren’t delighted. The discussion goes:

‘What has that **** Beckham got to state relating to this?’

‘He hasn’t ever reached concern yourself with where he could be likely to live, unless it’s which house.’

‘Well him and Posh can get and live where they desire if they want, it is not similar for people, I’ve been homeless now for two years.’

‘We don’t exist for them, do we?’

‘Well most of us ******* who don’t occur are voting out tomorrow’.

Ahead of the referendum, I’d been working together with a combined band of neighborhood working-class women and men in London’s East End as an element of ‘The Great British Class Survey’ during the LSE. I’ve collected hundreds of tales about working-class life within the last four years into the East End, and thousands during the last 12 years. These tiny tales can usually appear unrelated to your big governmental debates of this time, in the event that you don’t comprehend the context for them. Being a working-class woman, we appreciate the art of storytelling: I’m sure that an account is not simply an account. Its employed by working-class visitors to explain who they really are, where they show up from, and where they belong. These tiny tales are way too frequently missed in wider governmental analysis in favor of macro styles, which includes frequently meant that the poorest individuals in the united kingdom get unrepresented.

Waxwork David and Victoria Beckham at Madame Tussauds. Picture: Cesar Pics via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

Fortunately – as an ethnographer, a working-class academic, the child of the Nottinghamshire striking miner, and hosiery factory worker (and I also have actually resided in council housing for many of my entire life) – we rarely concentrate on the macro. My life and could work is rooted within working-class communities; my focus and my politics are about exposing those inequalities being hidden to a lot of, but stay in ordinary sight.

Having collected these narratives since 2005, we knew different things had been taking place around the referendum. The debates in bars, cafes, nail pubs, and also the hairdressers in working-class communities seemed infectious. Everyone was interested, and argued in regards to the finer points for the EU, but additionally made wider points about where energy rested in the UK, links that are making the 2. Nevertheless, for some class that is working like ‘Sally’ additionally the other ladies, the debates were centred upon the constant challenge of these own life, plus they connected those battles with their moms’ and grandmothers’ hardships, but in addition for their children’s future. They saw hope that is little life would be fairer for them. The referendum had been a point that is turning the ladies in eastern London. That they had maybe perhaps not voted within the 2015 General Election: that they had little interest or faith in a governmental system seated just three kilometers away whenever their day-to-day and instant situation required constant attention. When ‘Sally’ told me she would definitely make use of her vote when it comes to first-time to go out of, we asked her if she thought things would alter for the higher when we had been to Brexit. She said she didn’t understand, and didn’t care. She simply couldn’t stay things being exactly the same.