Class politics

Giving the poor a good kicking

Unfairly, by its snobbish fellow citizens

See article

Readers' comments



@bike ding

"Why don't we see it outside of Europe and the US?"

Yes we do. And in some countries, like Zimbabwe, they are even a majority...


It seems to me that this word and the issue that underlies it are less related to income level and more to a form of 'second level' class conflict, which is challenging established social values.

Traditionally, even in the US, income has been a marker that tended to indicate a class or level of society in which one moved. But these different levels or classes tended to share a common set of values: that education and hard work are good, that sloth and living beyond one's means are bad. It was something of a social compact that stabilized society.

There were outliers to this set of values, for example Travelers, and they were looked down upon by rich and poor alike.

The problem with "chavs," what makes them so offensive - that is to say disturbing and troubling - to the non-chavs, both rich an poor, is that they have rejected this value system as irrelevant to them. In the "chavist" view, it does not matter if you study or if you work, if you save or if you spend money you don't have. Their markers of cultural solidarity, including language, dress, food, etc. display this clearly. Though I can't think of a name for it in the US, it's quite clear in many urban situations where groups of people are marked by poverty and ethnic identity

Why? Why now? Is it all due to Dame Maggie? Why is it an urban phenomenon? Why don't we see it outside of Europe and the US? These are hard questions to answer in a short post, and so as soon as I log off I'll get to work on a proposal for a Department of Chavist Studies, preferably at Oxbridge or UofL.


I have lived several years ago in Glasgow. I am an emigrant from Poland and have attended the university and worked to support myself.

I feel that the comments here about the society failing those people are extremely offensive.


Because those people failed themselves. I have supported myself during the studies, finished them, got a great job. So did many, many Poles that came with me.
My girlfriend has arrived in the country with almost now money, graduate from university and on her way to finish the PHD. Worked all the time, starting with really shitty night cleaning work....

So if anybody here tells me that it is the fault of the society I tell them to look at the hard working emigrants that pay normal rent, pay normal taxes and do not get council houses...


Love of Leisure
Noticeable garments
Subsidised public Housing
Free Pocket money
Strange accents
Supported but feared by bourgeois rentiers and taxpayers

The House of Windsor/Croydon-SexCoburg-MountBurberry perchance?

CHAV Charles has a Viva


Since the start of the Industrial Revolution over 200 years ago in Britain, working people with "get up and go" have been climbing the income ladder. If there is any genetic component at all in the ability to get on in a capitalist society then by now it is hardly surprising that society has become stratified and some people have got stuck at the bottom. By the 1980s anyone with two brain cells could see that deep mining for coal in the UK was finished. With the redundancy payments on offer there was plenty of opportunity for miners to move to areas where jobs were going begging. Few did which tells you a great deal about what happened. Two of my great-grandfathers were miners. They made damned sure that none of their children were.


Until the slavish mentality of the Poor can be liberated, they remain an easy meat for the Capitalists, crony bureaucrats and other speculators that constantly seek to rob them of a decent wage for a honest day work.


"probably closest to the term Red-neck...someone who almost takes pride in their own ignorance and lack of culture"
Ohhh, I get it, you mean a republican.


Would somebody be able to clear up exactly what a chav is? As a Canadian, my exposure to the concept of a chav has been limited only to what I've (extremely rarely) seen on TV or read on the internet. My understanding was that they were the people who wear Adidas tracksuits and fake Burberry and pull knives on people on the street - a certain type of person based on their how they chose to fit into society. The article makes it sound as though a chav is just a poor British person. Am I that far off the mark?


guest-ijeimos is completely correct. On the definition of a chav I must say that the author of this article is mistaken - perhaps mislead by the book. Chav is no synonym for working class. For the Americans reading - it is probably closest to the term Red-neck. A chav is someone who almost takes pride in their own ignorance and lack of culture. They have their own style - tracksuits, and are usually lazy/free loaders. There are plenty of working class people who aren't chavs, just as there are some middle class who are. This review is misleading and perhaps misled itself.


Mis-management by the upper and middle classes is the cause. Lower-class chavs are the result.

Northern Resident

The misbehaving underclasses are separated from the real working poor by one factor; they identify themselves as clients instead of citizens.


Australia is struggling at the moment with the meaning of a (possibly) similar concept - that of the "bogan". The problem with both words is that they are not able to be defined with any precision because they are used in vastly different contexts by vastly different users.
Sure, when some "snobbish fellow citizens" refer to chavs or bogans they do so disparigingly and with the intent of stirring up resentment towards the lower class, but to others the use of these words may be nothing more than a means of making a light-hearted jibe about a mullet hair-cut or an offensively bright "formal" track-suit (both of which, unlike one's social status, make the wearer an entirely legitimate object of scorn).


It sounds like the author of the book equates chavs with working class folk, and then bemoans society for criticizing them.

I think it's unfair to call chavs working class (or vice-versa), because (by most definitions) chav's *don't* work. That's why people criticize them. To qualify as "working class" you have to work hard, right? After all, that's where the term "working class" comes from - from people who didn't have the wealth to *not* work.

I doubt people in Britain joke about the "working class" - people who work hard. Whether they work with their hands, in a store, in a restaurant, on a job site, on the 'phone or in an office, they don't really get laughed at.

My guess is that chavs get ridiculed because they're perceived as a cost to society, *and* they stand out (because they dress in a particular way).

Mr. Marcus

Chavs are not simply the poor, or those on estates. It is a specific mentality that is somewhat dissassociated with income or geography. There is a chap who sits opposite me here in the office, who has a good job and good income and lives in a nice flat here in London. He calls himself a chav, as he is a "bit ov a geez" who likes to "pull birds" and dresses like a complete moron. I have ink and metal on me. Does that make me a chav? To some perhaps. So what am I then? A snobby chav or something else?


I read completely as an outsider, as I am neither British nor ever lived in a council estate. I just want to say I noticed how classy the progeny of the old-days council estate dwellers are, if they are fairly represented by the comments in this blog. I cannot imagine any human quality more classy then honesty. I think the snobs shoud be rewarded by a good resounding kick.



Today is that they were given cheap credit. They were give a deal with the devil and now its all ended. So this is why those in politics and the MSM are blaming a tiny group of people who really aren`t signifficant when we look at the big picture.

Our country has been raped by the globalists and they succeeded by offering trinkets. Britain cannot recover, things have gone to far, but if it makes some people feel better about the mess they helped create, then fair enough....roll on WW3!!LOL


I live in a council house in Lambeth and wouldn`t live anywhere else. The composition of society has not changed, the rich are richer and the poor are poorer. About 1 in 3 men between the ages 16 and 45 have a criminal record and these are the ones who got caught. White coller crime is hardly touched..especially in the City.

I have two teens who don`t do any drugs, don`t smoke, don`t fetish their bodies with ink and metal. When we visit British towns, we hav a very good laff. The local kids/teens are a joke, their dress, the way they hang around McDonalds and the way they talk!!lol They don`t live on council estates, they are the product of nasty families, both parents work, probably long hours, they own a gas BBQ, with 6/7 older BBQ`s in the shed/garage and they have or aspire to a hot tube on the deck to aid their sad sex lives. Their kids dress like sex toys and these are your future Brits...Sun and Daily Mail readers!!!LOL

My teens call these "chaves". I am sad to say we do have these in our family and the shocking thing is that they have a big income.

The only difference betweeen the council house tennents of yesteryear and toda

Franklin D. Roosevelt

I am proud to be working class.
I am a hard working engineer, not an overpaid parasitic bureaucrat or banker.

The Tories created chavs along with their media owning friends, because they knew that chavs would not vote.

I joined the Labour party last year because I am so angry with what Maggie and her Tories have done to our country.

The last time society was this bad we saw the rise of fascism, and I am afraid we are going to see it again.

Why are the Tories doing this? They are as dumb as the chavs they have created.


Maybe the author missed something, we refer to 'Chavs' as the 'Thieving' or 'Criminal' class, i don't see what that has to do with the 'Working Poor'; unless there is a high correlation, anybody want to offer some numbers?


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