Lottery winner Michael Carroll, the footballer Wayne Rooney, ex-glamour model Jordan, and Cheryl Cole have all been celebrated as "chav royalty". In Cole told Marie Claire: "I'm proud to be a chav if by that you mean working class made good. The term chav just shows how jealous middle Britain is about working class people having fun. It is used in envy by the lily livered, privileged, pale, besuited bank clerk who sees people dressed up to the nines and going to the West End.
Mocking chavs' perceived bad taste and excess has become a popular sport. In the Sun reported that Prince William and his fellow officers at Sandhurst dressed in chav fancy dress to celebrate finishing their first term.
According to the paper, the future king "donned a loose-fitting top and bling jewellery then added an angled baseball cap and glare to complete his menacing lookalike of Lotto lout Michael Carroll". Whatever the complicated arguments over class, there is always a suspicion for some that the word represents contempt for the "other". When what they mean is 'my taste'," notes Pound. Delingpole says chav is an acceptable word in polite society.
All that happens when you put a word on the prohibited list is that another equally offensive one comes in to fill the gap. Jones cannot even accept the word as a demarcator of taste. The word chav "is deeply offensive" and should no longer be permitted as a smokescreen for class hatred. Jones disapproves of the word "toff", but asserts it is far less wounding as it mocks the powerful rather than the poor.
It's common practice these days to try to reclaim offensive terms, "queer" and "slut" being notable examples. But this is not the way to deal with the word chav, Jones says. Ten years after it started filtering into the national consciousness, this term continues to be seen through the prism of Britain's complex class attitudes. Image source, Getty Images.
People say you can tell a chav because they drop their Hs. The chav stereotype fits into this long-standing very old stereotype. Joe: More in the way that people saw other people as speaking. So more stereotypes than chav culture. I dispute there really is anything called chav culture. Joe: Yeah, I think to some extent the stereotypes have sort of stuck. So the stereotypes sort of stick while the language changes and while people change and culture changes and society changes.
So Ali G just keeps coming back and -. Joe: He did. I am on the circulation list for all DWP press releases, so why didn't I get this one and why wasn't this tacky rubbish put up on their website? Anecdotes smearing all on housing benefit or tax credits help make the working class disappear. In his triumph, Tony Blair declared class over, we're all middle class — except for a "socially excluded" lumpen rump.
So who are the 8 million in manual jobs and the 8 million clerks and sales assistants who make up half the workforce? In my book Hard Work , I reported on the remarkably strong work ethic of those in jobs paying little more than benefits, the carers and cleaners doing essential work well, despite lack of money or respect.
In Unjust Rewards , David Walker and I charted how since the decline of the unions people have lost their bearings on class and incomes: the mega-wealthy are clueless about ordinary earnings and even the poor are misled into thinking their pay is quite middling.
Aspiration and social mobility are the useful mirage, laying blame squarely with individuals who should try harder to escape their families and friends, instead of seeking great fairness for all. It suits life's winners to pretend this is a meritocracy: we well-off deserve our luck, anyone can join us if they try.
A superb and angry new book, Chavs by Owen Jones , published next week, pulls together the welter of evidence on the demonisation of the working class.
Read it for a strong analysis of the conspiracy to deny the very existence of a working class, even to itself. New Labour colluded with this vanishing act but Ed Miliband's espousal of the "squeezed middle" may be tiptoeing towards giving a voice back to the great disappeared.
Polly Toynbee has responded in the thread here and here. This article is more than 10 years old. Polly Toynbee. Fostering the loathing of a feral underclass allows public resentment to be diverted from those above to those below.
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