Class act or class dismissed?: The 1930s and working-class culture & identity
View/ Open
Date
01/03/2022Author
Anderson, Ian
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis responds to the question of what it means in practice to bring the terms
class, culture, and identity together; and is, in effect, a rejoinder that asks: ‘Should we bring
them together?’ In short, the answer it asserts is ‘No’ – it rebuts the idea that class should
be considered in terms of a ‘cultural identity’ at all.
It draws on the works of a handful of now largely ignored working-class writers
from the 1930s (to varying extents): Jim Phelan, John Sommerfield, George Garrett, Ellen
Wilkinson, and Lionel Britton. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, given their
obscurity, it is a reclamation project: all deserve renewed attention. Secondly, they all
engage with the concept of class in different ways, and will be shown to address issues
surrounding the working class that remain pertinent today.
The thesis lays claim to an approach inspired by F. R. Leavis, one that is necessarily
syncretic and subjective. This is intended as its own oblique response to the issues
addressed in the first chapter, in which the creation and maintenance of working-class
identity is assessed utilising three interlocking frames of reference: namely, three
disciplines beloved of the academic left which have traditionally shown very specific
concern with thinking about (and on behalf of) the working class: Marxism, sociology,
and pedagogy.
In chapter two, the works – and identities – of Jim Phelan and John Sommerfield
will serve to draw out a number of issues crucial to the understanding of the term
‘working-class literature’ in general, and the rubrics, assumptions, and limitations entailed
by it. In chapter three, the writings of George Garrett will illuminate the impact of material
reality on working-class authorship. Chapter four will explore how Ellen Wilkinson
dramatises the porous nature of the class divide. In the fifth chapter, an immersion in
Lionel Britton’s Hunger and Love will draw out issues relating to form and genre, towards
ultimately combining and distilling the work of the thesis at large towards a conclusion.
In addition, the thesis is underpinned by certain key insights of Jacques Rancière,
chief among these being the formulation: ‘Equality is not given, nor is it claimed; it is
practiced, it is verified’. This thesis ultimately argues that an equality practiced and verified
requires a form of emancipation that necessarily transcends the crude circumscriptions of
bogus ‘cultural identities’.