Are the white working class really ‘far right’, or just people reacting to the destruction of their way of life? In George Orwell’s tour of the industrial North, published in 1937 as The Road to Wigan Pier, there is no doubting his sympathy for his subjects. In the grime, squalor and poverty of Lancashire mill towns, he found that ‘in a working-class home you could breathe a warm, decent, deeply human atmosphere, not so easy to find elsewhere’.
In the economic depression of the Thirties, jobs were scarce. The coalmines and factories operated on a reduced workforce, forcing the unemployed into desperation. Mothers and children climbed the slag heaps in search of fragments of coal, to heat their cold and damp hovels. There was not much bread and circuses, just a fight for survival. .
Characterising the North-South divide as the ‘real men’ of the proletarian class versus bourgeois sophisticates, Orwell castigated the intelligentsia for spouting socialist ideology while displaying a patronising attitude to the poor, who they regarded as passive recipients of state aid rather than autonomous beings with guile as well as graft.
Nowadays, working-class folk are not so materially impoverished. They work in low-paid service jobs, as self-employed traders, or relying on the state system of social security. They have money for mobile phones, tattoos, nail parlours and branded sports clothing. But they have changed from the wiry, undernourished but somewhat muscular physique of a century ago to varying levels of obesity, caused by a sedentary lifestyle, pasteurised lager and kebabs. Improvements in life expectancy are beginning to reverse.
Jobs are disappearing, not because of an economic crisis as in the 1930s, but due to the overwhelming progress of mass immigration, ‘green’ dogma and automation. In Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell warned of the machines taking over, but he foresaw neither the dramatic demographic replacement in working-class areas nor the Net Zero regime that is destroying what’s left of industry.
Today, the metropolitan elite look on the descendants of the denizens of the terraced streets in Orwell’s Wigan with contempt. As a lecturer at a London university I often heard white middle-class students express snobbery towards regressive white Britons, using the insulting term ‘gammon’. These students were too young to remember the miners’ strikes of the early 1980s, but they identified as anti-Thatcherites. With their indoctrination to ‘saving the planet’, however, they would have been no friends of coalminers whose pits were threatened.
The BBC and Guardian respond to electoral upsets, such as Brexit, by blaming the uneducated people of the North for their jingoistic and xenophobic tendencies. The phantom of a reprise of 1930s fascism is raised. In reality the indigenous white voters of the former industrial heartlands are not seeking a demagogue, but want politicians to represent them rather than favouring incomers of other cultures.
Protests following the killing of three young girls in Southport were immediately smeared as ‘far right’. White consciousness is not permitted in multicultural Britain. Video footage of the various towns and cities where white men clashed with police and Muslims gathered in strength showed thoroughfares entirely lined by Asian businesses. Middlesbrough, Scunthorpe, Bolton – such towns no longer belong to the white British. Birmingham, Leicester and other cities were lost already. In the centre of Blackburn, a police dispersal order apparently applied to white protestors, not to the hundreds of Muslim men who gathered there instead.
We need a new George Orwell for our times. But would the publishing houses allow a genuinely concerned advocate a platform? The furthest they go is with the likes of Owen Jones, a politically-biased scribe who regards anything to the right of the Labour Party as potential or actual fascism.
Let me conclude with a question for the establishment, which is currently enjoying a mass round-up of protestors (some of whom were indeed guilty of violence, but two years in jail merely for shouting at police in riot gear?) and state-sponsored anti-racism rallies. If demonstrating against the murder of white children by migrants is not acceptable, how should the voices of the white, working-class be heard?
Niall McCrae is the author of ‘Green in Tooth and Claw: the Misanthropic Mission of Climate Alarm’ (2024).
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“…how should the voices of the white, working-class be heard?”
These days it’s only acceptable if it’s a black person speaking up for them. Lord Sewell in the Telegraph yesterday, and Kemi Badenoch; they are allowed to speak the truth without getting called names. That’s how far reverse racism has gone.
Very good point.
Lord Sewell’s article made so much sense, it echoed more or less exactly what most people think but can’t say, (or even think, the way things have been going lately). He offered to advise Starmer, which of course won’t be accepted, and apparently he was treated appallingly in the Commons, particularly by, guess who, a certain D. Lammy. I get what you say about it only being acceptable if the plebs are spoken up for by a black person. To be honest although I noticed he was black – how could you avoid it – it didn’t bother me in the slightest – I just wish so much that what he suggested could be put into action. I know, as if -TTK being far too arrogant and ignorant to listen to anybody. But after reading his piece I did feel a little less suicidal than for some weeks – since Labour began the destruction of the country in fact. Tony Sewell for PM!
Isn’t there a passage in TRTWP where Orwell notes that anger was directed against those who had just a little bit more than their neighbours, and that “landlords” were often nearly as poor as those who rented from them?
Thank you for writing so clearly and beautifully.
White working class voices should only be heard when there is a General Election (and then only as a cross in a box) – any other time is now unacceptable to LibLabCon & Green alike who openly sneer at swathes of their voters. The mystery is why do the white working class continue to lend their support to parties that no longer represent them and now openly hold them in contempt? Nothing will change or those places that overwhelmingly voted Brexit would have rejected their Remainer MPs.
I do what I can by never ever buying or subscribing to any MSM product nor have I voted for any establishment party for thirty years as it was crystal clear the British establishment went full on globalist when they dumped Thatcher.
ReformUK could be the only hope that white working class have left and it may be very sensible that all law abiding people from that group offer their help to get more ReformUK MPs in Parliament.
Tommy Robinson I fear is doing more harm than good for the white working class as he is being played by the establishment to slur anyone with right wing views.
How many non white people caused mayhem and destroyed areas and assaulted police? You live on a different planet. When you next go to a Hospital and a “foreign “doctor deals with you, what is your point of view then? How far do you have to go back to support your argument. You are a nasty person.
How many non white people were challenged by the police in these instances? Then there are riots in previous years to consider.
Last time I was in the foyer of King’s College Hospital waiting for my wife to emerge from her consultation, I was struck by the endless stream of “foreign” people coming and going, so it cuts both ways Ron.
“Today, the metropolitan elite look on the descendants of the denizens of the terraced streets in Orwell’s Wigan with contempt.”
Very true, and the fact that working class people from ethnic minorities are viewed as victims is contributing to the current anger.
Now the controversial bit. Although there is no doubt that working class communities suffer hardship as a result of forces outside their control, there is an element that regards education as something which is done to them rather than for them. Their lot will not improve until they get out of this frame of mind. The old jobs which paid relatively well with little formal education have mostly gone for good and those which are left will not be around for much longer. Some immigrants with little or no English, or even a background of familiarity with the Roman alphabet, are able to do well because they are not held back by this destructive attitude.
This is based on my own observations and experiences several decades ago. Old Labour understood the problem, the more recent socialists do not.
You are so correct about ‘the controversial bit’. Something we all need to bear in mind.
One of the best (of many excellent) articles I’ve read in recent days: a well-informed, reasonable and sanguine analysis of the situation past and present. Some interesting and varied comments so far (except for one where the writer has disappointingly descended into unjustified personal abuse).
Right and left, and even worse far right and far left, are terms created by politicians to turn us against each other and deflect our views from them. Politicians are our enemy. They claim to protect us but they do exactly the opposite and mainly because they have allowed bankers to create an unstable economy. It has been the same since at least the time of the Roman Empire when the emperors created inflation by coin clipping and debasing the value of the gold and silver coins. The bankers have ensured that inflation is a constant feature of the economy by effectively creating a gambling system using worthless money but ensuring that we end up with it as debt and have to pay it back with real money. This is one reason why people are poorer. But the real problem is that people no longer have enough money to save and this is partly because they are encouraged to buy consumer goods and constantly replace them. Wealth and economic growth is only produced through saving and investment in production, not financial gambling.
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I keep in touch with public opinion through the comments boards on political websites. The hatred and contempt that leftist commenters feel for white working class people is pathological and really shocking. “Racist thickos”, “beer gutted thugs”, “knuckle dragging Neanderthals” etc etc.
I just hope that, come election time, the honest, kindly, decent working people of Britain remember what Labour really thinks of them.
Unfortunately they don’t or all Remainer Labour MPs in places like Hull would not have been re-elected ever again. Rather pathetic tribal loyalty to habitual abusers probably explains.