Cagney & Lacey and the Boffs on the White Working Class

We're back again people. Yes Cagney and Lacey are here giving our views on an interesting breakfast meeting we attended on Friday the 1st of April at London. We were so pleased that we had been given a chance to spend time learning ‘What does migration mean for the White Working Class in the UK?’.

http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/files/pdfs/Ben_Gidley/5557%20Compas%20Briefing%20Doc%206_LR7FINAL.pdf


As you may well know myself and Danielle ain't up with all the big words so we had our famous Mohammad Hoshi with us to help when we needed it.


So what is the ‘white working class’? Is there such a thing as white working class nowadays?
I don’t think so, if that’s the case then only a small amount of people could be classed as that. It has nothing to do with colour, or how much money you have or even faith, cos ‘white working class’ people may have come from a migrant background themselves but don’t know it. Their parents, grandparents or even great grandparents may have moved from another country to the UK. So white people may think they are British but are they really?
Have a think about that when you are complaining about asylum seekers and refugees.


The interesting part of the meeting was when we were told about ‘how the white working class has featured in policy and media debates?’

Well that’s when it started getting confusing. We wrote what we thought they were saying, but a couple of people have read it and thought we have got the wrong end of the stick. We was looking at the hand outs and we thought they had split up the ‘White Working Class’ into two ways, the Chavs and Beleaguered Natives, but actually we have figured it out now.

Apparently its all about stereotypes. A stereotype is when you define a certain thing based on what you think. So like boffs at Oxford, who we thought would be really posh but they aint. (Your actually really nice).


People usually think a ‘chav’ is classed as people from council estates backgrounds, single parents or poor. A chav is what other people think you are, but a beleaguered native is what some journalist, MPs and boffs think is white people who think they are hard done by.

So im a chav then, as I’m from Barking and Dagenham, which is largely populated by council residents. But I know I ain a chav, it shouldn’t matter about where you come from or how much money you have.


The boffins then went on to talk about how some of the ‘white working class’ could get vexed (beleaguered, I had to google it though), about not having houses and jobs, which is what our local BNP went on about. I have been thinking hard about this ‘beleaguered native’ bit, and do I think there wont be any white people left in Barking and Dagenham in ten years time?

Yes and No. People in Dagenham reckon that there won’t be because they are moving asylum seekers and refugees from places like Stratford to Dagenham. And like the school opposite us, the parents are complaining due to the fact their children can’ get places in local schools.


None of this would be a problem though if they built bigger schools to accommodate (think I’m getting a bit posh as well now) the children. Like my old school has took away half the playing field to build another part to the school, so if they had done this in the first place, the parents wouldn’t be moaning.


So when you hear in the media about migrants or asylum seekers taking all our jobs and getting more money then us, there is no proof of this. I think personally that the media has to take part of the blame for people having bad judgements surrounding asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. If the media actually showed the good and bad things surrounding this, people would be more understanding like me and Danielle.


As we said to Becky Taylor one of the speakers at the meeting. We live in Barking and Dagenham, and the BNP advertised a lot and was always in our local paper, only saying the bad things regarding asylums seekers, refugees and migrants. If the local media also pointed out what asylum seekers, refugees and migrants have to go through, how they don’t get everything as soon as they come here, then the BNP wouldn’t of had any supporters, but the media didn’t, they just allowed people to see one side.
If it wasn’t for RAMFEL we would of probably have been like everybody else, but we aint cause we have been shown a different side.


God, didn’t realise i wrote that much. I liked attending the breakfast meeting, the breakfast was nice and it was very interesting, made us think about what who we are and how people sees us and how we sees them, and it was a pleasure to meet Michael, Ben, Ben and Becky.

Cagney  and Lacey attended the COMPAS Breakfast Briefing http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/events/forthcoming/forthcoming-breakfast-briefings/#c1125

You can also join Cagney and Lacey next week at the

Barking & Dagenham Coming Together St George's Day Quiz Night on 

Thursday  14th April 7-9pm at the Ripple Centre, 121-125 Ripple Road,

Barking, IG11 7PB.

Drinks and refreshments, entry £1.00 per person, with all monies going to a registered charity of the wining teams choice http://www.ramfel.org.uk/news.php?action=displayItem&id=85