‘We don’t exist for them, do we?’: why working-class individuals voted for Brexit

Estimated reading time: ten minutes

Lisa Mckenzie

Estimated reading time: ten full minutes

Working-class individuals were prone to vote for Brexit. Lisa Mckenzie (Middlesex University) takes problem using the idea why these individuals were ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’. They saw Brexit, with the uncertainties it might bring, as an option to the status quo. Austerity and de-industrialisation has had a heavy toll on working-class communities – one which the middle-class usually does not grasp.

It’s 22 2016 june. I’m sat in a cafГ© within the East End of London with two regional females, ‘Sally’ – that is 23, has two small kids, and contains been regarding the council household waiting list for four years, along side over 19,000 other folks – and Anne, that is in her own sixties and calls herself a ‘proper Eastender’. Her kiddies and grandchildren had recently relocated out from the area and into Essex due to the insufficient a reasonable house. It’s the afternoon prior to the EU referendum, therefore we are dealing with all of the politics for the day, including footballer David Beckham’s present intervention within the debate: he’s got recently announced their support for the campaign that is remain. The ladies aren’t delighted. The discussion goes:

‘What has that **** Beckham got to express about it?’

‘He hasn’t ever reached worry about where he could be likely to live, unless it’s which house.’

‘Well him and Posh can get and live where they need if they want, it is not similar for people, I’ve been homeless now for 2 years.’

‘We don’t exist in their mind, do we?’

‘Well most of us ******* who don’t occur are voting out tomorrow’.

Ahead of the referendum, I’d been working together with band of regional working-class both women and men in London’s East End included in ‘The Great British Class Survey’ during the LSE. I have collected a huge selection of stories about working-class life within the last four years into the East End, and thousands during the last 12 years. These stories that are small https://worldloans.online/payday-loans-ak/ frequently appear unrelated into the big governmental debates associated with time, in the event that you don’t comprehend the context for them. As a woman that is working-class we value the art of storytelling: I know that an account is not simply a tale. It really is employed by working-class visitors to explain who they really are, where they come from, and where they belong. These tiny stories are way too frequently missed in wider governmental analysis in favor of macro styles, that has usually meant that the poorest individuals in the UK get unrepresented.

Waxwork David and Victoria Beckham at Madame Tussauds. Photo: Cesar Pics with a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

Fortunately – as an ethnographer, a working-class scholastic, the child of the Nottinghamshire striking miner, and hosiery factory worker (and I also have actually resided in council housing for some of my life) – we rarely concentrate on the macro. My entire life and might work is rooted within working-class communities; my focus and my politics are about exposing those inequalities which can be hidden to a lot of, but sit in ordinary sight.

Having gathered these narratives since 2005, we knew different things had been taking place across the referendum. The debates in bars, cafes, nail pubs, therefore the hairdressers in working-class communities seemed infectious. Everyone was interested, and argued in regards to the finer points for the EU, but in addition made broader points about where energy rested in the UK, making links between the 2. Nevertheless, for many working course individuals like ‘Sally’ therefore the other ladies, the debates had been centred upon the constant battle of one’s own everyday lives, plus they connected those battles for their moms’ and grandmothers’ hardships, but additionally with their children’s future. They saw little hope that life would be fairer for them. The referendum had been a switching point for the ladies in eastern London. That they had perhaps perhaps not voted within the 2015 General Election: that they had small interest or faith in a governmental system seated only three kilometers away whenever their daily and instant situation required attention that is constant. When ‘Sally’ told me she would definitely utilize her vote for the first-time to go out of, I inquired her if she thought things would alter for the higher when we had been to Brexit. She stated she didn’t understand, and didn’t care. She simply couldn’t stay things being similar.