Imagine the following trailer: the face of a white, bald man somewhere in his forties is shown in close up while Billy Bragg’s interpretation of Jerusalem plays. A hand moves in view and starts writing on the man’s skin in black paint, in a clearly non-western looking script. A second hand follows and writes in another script. More hands follows, until the man’s whole face is covered in black paint. He then closes his eyes and the text appears below: “is Britain’s white working class becoming invisible?” All hands shown look Black or Asian.
sounds like a BNP ad? You would think so, but if you’ve been watching the BBC this weekend you must’ve seen it come past, as a trailer for their coming season of programmes devoted to “the white working class”. According to the press release the BBC have put out about this, these programmes are meant to examine “why some sections of this community feel increasingly marginalised yoday” and why it is that “some white working class people to say they feel under siege and as if their very sense of self is being brought into question“.
Because until now the working class has largely featured on BBC2 as gormless chavs who need to be taught how to feed their children properly, it’s not hard to feel skeptical about the intentions behind this. The BBC has rarely cared about the working classes, white or otherwise, staunch bastion of middle class priviledge that it is. Why suddenly discover them now and sell this with images and a narrative that play straight into BNP scaremongering? A white man’s face that disappears under a layer of black paint; how obvious can you get?
This season could’ve been worthwhile if the BBC had made it working class season rather than white season because the issues it presents are issues that concern the whole working class, not just the white part of it. Britain in the last thirty years has been forcibly shifted from a manufacturing to a services orientated economy and that’s the reason the “white working class” feels “increasingly marginalised today”, because the jobs their fathers and grandfathers had for life have disappeared. It’s the economy, stupid.
Of course the programmes themselves may very well be much better than the trailer makes them out to be; the BBC has a long tradition of making shit trailers for good shows. These programmes might just examine the economic background to the plight of the English working class, -white, black, Asian and other–. For the moment however whatever the BBC thinks it’s doing, it’s mostly providing ammunition to the BNP and other bigots, as a Google search on “BBC white working class” makes clear. The first hit is to the St*rmfr*nt hate site.
The last word is for Theloonyfromcatford commenting on a similar article in the Guardian lamenting the loss of “white working class identity”:
I’m a white,working class man.
The idea that I’ve become invisible, maligned and need a hug/season of programmes from ex public schoolboys in order to feel better about myself is absurd.
Yes, the man who owns the local shop has brown skin. Yes,my work colleagues include Polish girls and black blokes.
So what?