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

Estimated reading time: ten minutes

Lisa Mckenzie

Estimated reading time: ten minutes

Working-class everyone was very likely to vote for Brexit. Lisa Mckenzie (Middlesex University) takes problem using the idea why these individuals were ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’. They saw Brexit, with all the current uncertainties it can bring, instead of the status quo. De-industrialisation and austerity has had a heavy toll on working-class communities – one which the middle-class usually does not grasp.

It’s 22 June 2016. I’m sat in a cafГ© within the East End of London with two regional ladies, ‘Sally’ – that is 23, has two small kids, and has now been regarding the council household waiting list for four years, along side over 19,000 other folks – and Anne, who’s inside her sixties and calls herself a ‘proper Eastender’. Her kiddies and grandchildren had recently relocated out from the area and into Essex due to the not enough a home that is affordable. It’s your day prior to the EU referendum, so we are dealing with all of the politics of this time, including footballer David Beckham’s present intervention into the debate: he’s got recently announced their support for https://loansolution.com/payday-loans-wa/ the campaign that is remain. The ladies aren’t delighted. The conversation goes:

‘What has that **** Beckham got to state about any of it?’

‘He hasn’t ever reached worry about where he could be planning to live, unless it’s which house.’

‘Well him and Posh can get and live where they desire if they want, it is different for all of us, I’ve been homeless now for 2 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 using the services of a combined team of regional working-class both women and men in London’s East End included in ‘The Great British Class Survey’ during the LSE. I’ve gathered a huge selection of tales about working-class life within the last few four years in the East End, and thousands over the past 12 years. These tiny tales can usually seem unrelated into the big governmental debates for the time, in the event that you don’t comprehend the context in their mind. As a working-class woman, I appreciate the art of storytelling: I’m sure that a tale is not simply a tale. It really is employed by working-class visitors to explain who they really are, where they come from, and where they belong. These little tales are way too usually missed in wider governmental analysis in favor of macro trends, that has usually meant that the poorest individuals in the united kingdom get unrepresented.

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

Fortunately – as an ethnographer, a working-class scholastic, the child of a 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 entire life and could work is rooted within working-class communities; my focus and my politics are about exposing those inequalities which are hidden to numerous, but stay in simple sight.

Having gathered these narratives since 2005, we knew different things ended up being taking place round the referendum. The debates in bars, cafes, nail pubs, therefore the hairdressers in working-class communities seemed infectious. Individuals were interested, and argued concerning the finer points for the EU, but in addition made wider points about where energy rested in the UK, making links between the 2. But, for many class that is working like ‘Sally’ therefore the other ladies, the debates had been centred upon the constant fight of the very own life, and additionally they connected those battles for their moms’ and grandmothers’ hardships, but also with their children’s future. They saw hope that is little life would be fairer for them. The referendum had been a turning point for the ladies in eastern London. That they had perhaps not voted when you look at the 2015 General Election: they had little interest or faith in a governmental system seated only three kilometers away whenever their day-to-day and immediate situation required attention that is constant. When ‘Sally’ told me she would definitely make use of her vote when it comes to very first time to go out of, I inquired her if she thought things would alter for the greater whenever we had been to Brexit. She said she didn’t understand, and didn’t care. She simply couldn’t stay things being similar.