OPINION BIRD’S WORDS
N Smith stuck out like a sore thumb in our detention centre in 1960, where a few hundred boys were being punished with a ‘short, sharp shock’. N Smith walked differently from us. When he marched it was as if he was a toy soldier. When he spoke, he spoke with rounded vowels and careful diction.
We were surprised. We who ran words into each other, who cut the corners of a word by dropping the ‘h’. Did not march like toy soldiers. Did not exude culture and careful rearing, good food and clean laundry. N Smith was picked on and humiliated – though not by me, I hasten to add – for the peculiar, middle-class culture he brought into our working-class world.
I was reminded of this last week when police recruitment was being discussed in parliament. The locker room roughness of many police officers. The struggle the authorities have been going through to get rid of misogyny, racism, homophobia and general chauvinism in the ranks.
I had to stick my three pennies’ worth in by pointing out that, like the army, the police are run largely by the educated and comfortable class, lording it over the ranks made up largely of working-class people. Until the middle classes get mixed in and assume a responsibility for law and order, it will always be the rough-hewn, not-quite-polished ranks of the working class that will provide the majority of the constabulary.
My contribution to the debate seemed to drop to the floor of the Lords like a cold chill. Usually a few “hear, hears” greet you when you sit down. But this time there was nothing of the sort. Later a former leading police officer told me that there were more graduates in the police force than all the armed forces put together. When I pointed out that they would mostly be on a programme to get out of the ranks into high command, he agreed.
Class is one of the last bastions of power over the daily running of our lives – in spite of the thousands of examples of working-class people who over the last 50 years have ascended into the comfortable classes. Class continues to be a hot potato.
We are always running into the problems thrown up by class. Middleclass life seems less real, less exciting, causing our children to imitate the language of people caught in the grip of working-class need.
But then you get the defenders of working-class life as if it was the highest point of r
