Post on 31-Jan-2023
The stigmatised and de-valued working class: the state of a
council estate
It is widely recognised that over the last thirty years in the
United Kingdom there has been a distinct movement towards neo-
liberal politics, public and social policy. The argument that
Britain has become a progressive one vision polity since 1979
with the election of Margaret Thatcher followed by 18 years of
conservative neo-liberalism, ensued by 13 years of Tony
Blair’s ‘Third Way New Labour’1 became more robust during the
general election result in May 2010. With what appeared to be
a further move to the right when the Conservative Party joined
with the Liberal Democrat Party to form a coalition government
after New Labour’s election defeat. Although 2010 is a clear
and distinctive point in mapping where the UK currently sits
socially, politically, and economically, the experiences of
suffering, disadvantage, and real hardships have always been a
significant part of the story for the British working class.
Inequalities and social class disadvantage are embedded in the
political and social history of Britain as demonstrated in the
works of Friedrich Engels, E. P Thomson, George Orwell,
Richard Hoggart, Richard Titmuss, and Peter Townsend to name
only a few of the social historians, political commentators
and sociologists who have been concerned about the condition
of the British working class over many generations.
This chapter focuses upon a community in Nottingham, St Anns,
a council estate housing 15,000 people, who rely upon social
housing and public services to as they say ‘keep their heads
above water’. The families who rely upon public services,
welfare benefits and social housing are the poorest and most
disadvantaged people in Britain, and are now being subject to
harsh cuts in their welfare benefits, and local services. They
are also the most vulnerable to unemployment caused by
shrinking the size of the public sector, as they were also the
most vulnerable to the loss of the manufacturing industries in
the early 1980’s under the Thatcher Government. This has lead
to a situation where there are families living on council
estates who have not known regular and stable paid work since
the loss of security that the manufacturing industries
provided within Britain for working class people. Consequently
there has been a significant change in representation, of how
council estates and working class people who live in them have
been negatively re-branded and stigmatised over the last 30
years with successive Conservative and New Labour
Governments2 .Being a resident of a council estate in the UK in
this century has a different meaning from being a resident of
a council estate in the last century when social housing was
connected to the employed working class, keeping extended
families close together, and allowing communities to grow
around work, and local services3. The working class residents
who live on council estates today are not a homogenous group
as they are often portrayed; they are also no longer employed
within similar and traditional occupations. The residents of
council estates in the UK are made up of those who work in
what is left of the traditional industries employing working
class people, factory work, warehouses, and low level
engineering, however there are new service industries which
have provided employment albeit low paid, and often part-time
in local authorities as teaching assistants, youth workers,
childcare assistants and also within the large chain operated
supermarkets. However because of the changes in social housing
policy4 there are a large and significant group who are not
employed either through sickness, disability or unemployment.
However there is a cultural element to being working class in
the UK, which is as significant to class inequality as the
economic material forces which produce it. Skeggs5 (2005)
argues that the consequences of stigmatisation, and re-
branding the working class as valueless, are central in
producing new ways of exploitation through the fields of
culture, and media, inventing new forms of class
differentiation which are being produced through processes of
symbolic violence6. The research I have undertaken over the
last 7 years in St Anns in Nottingham has allowed me to focus
upon a community through a time of adversity, when working
class people are suffering from the consequences of increasing
class inequality, class prejudiced, and the harshest of
austerity measures.
Although Engels in 18447 recognises that class inequality can
be linked to living space, but also how the restriction of
space can be responsible for poor working conditions, poor
health, and insanitary conditions. In 2012 we can add that
‘limited space’ is also social and linked to value, who has
the space to be valued, and become a person of value, and who
1 Savage S, Atkinson R (2001) Public Policy Under Blair p.5, London: Palgrave
is limited through class prejudice and class inequality and
consequently de-valued. It is a painful recognition that there
is still the need to highlight, critique, and argue that class
inequality is as relevant to British society, and British
identity in 2012 as it was in 1844 when Engels documented that
unfettered capitalism was responsible for ‘the brutal
indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private
2 Skeggs B. (2005) ‘The Re-branding of class: Propertising culture’ in Devine F., Savage M., Scott J., Crompton R. (2005)Rethinking class, cultures, identities and lifestyle, Hampshire: Palgrave
Skeggs B. (2004) Class self and culture, London: Routledge
Haylett (2003) Culture, class and Urban Policy: Reconsidering Inequality, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Haylett C. (2001) 'Illegitimate Subjects? Abject Whites, Neo-Liberal Modernisation and Middle Class Multiculturalism', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19 (3) pp.351-370.
Haylett C. (2000) 'Modernisation, Welfare and 'Third Way' Politics: limits to theorising in 'thirds'?' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26: (1) p.43-56.
Lawler S. (2008) Identity; Sociological Perspectives, Cambridge: Polity
3 Welshman J. (2006) Underclass: a history of the excluded 1880-2000 London: Hambledon Continuum
4 Malpass P. Murie A. Pp. 82-86 (1999) Housing Policy and Practice Hampshire: Palgrave
5 Skeggs B. (2005) ‘The Re-branding of class: Propertising culture’ pp.48-50 in Devine F., Savage M., Scott J., CromptonR. (2005) Rethinking class, cultures, identities and lifestyle, Hampshire: Palgrave
6 Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a theory of practice, p.192 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
interest’ noting that ‘space’ becomes limited, and the poor
are crowded together as they become more repellent and
offensive.
The study
The St Anns estate is one of the poorest 10% of neighbourhoods
in the UK today8, and has a long history with social research,
and community studies. Ken Coates and Bill Silburn first
brought to light the poor conditions the people of St Anns
were living in, raising their children, and working in during
the study ‘Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen’ which was
undertaken during the early 1960’s9. Ken Coates and Bill
Silburn conducted this study in response to a paper published
by Peter Townsend in the British Journal of Sociology in 1954
raising serious questions relating to government assurances
that poverty had been eliminated in the UK during the 1950’s
through social policy, full employment for men and the welfare
state. Townsend and Coates and Silburn argued that instead of
poverty being eliminated it was taking on new forms, through
the tensions between the new demands of the individual
consumer and the need for basic public amenities. Coates and
Silburn 10argued that must ‘the new society always be typified
7 Engels F. (1845/1987) The Condition of The Working Class in England London: Penguin
by private affluence and public squalor’, when in 1965 they
discovered that the consequences of poverty was still being
lived by many sections of the British working class, and
within St Anns in Nottingham.
Over decades, this neighbourhood has been subject to a number
of harsh social realities: loss of manufacturing jobs in the
city leading to unemployment and insecure low paid work, and
the lack of social goods such as decent housing and education
for a changing workforce. Locally, it has become stigmatised
with a reputation as a place to avoid, supposedly full of
crime and drugs, single mums, and benefit claimants. Through
media reporting relating to gun and gang related crime on the
estate in recent years, and the perception nationally that
council estates have become holding pens for the undeserving
poor11, St Anns in Nottingham has gained the reputation as a
place to avoid. The neighbourhood also has a long history as
the place where the poorest and migrant workers have resided
in Nottingham; people from Ireland, the West Indies, Italy,
8 Office for National Statistics (2010) The English Indices of Deprivation 2010, London: HMSO Communities and Local Government Publication
9 Coates, K. and Silburn, R. (1970) Poverty the Forgotten Englishmen,London: Penguin Books
10 Coates, K. and Silburn, R. (1970) Poverty the Forgotten Englishmen,London: Penguin Books (1970 pp25-28)
11 Rogaly, B. And Taylor, B. (2009) Moving Histories, of Class and CommunityLondon: Palgrave Macmillan
Poland, and South East Asia have been documented as living in
St Anns since the early 1950s12. The neighbourhood has always
been in flux, with people moving in and then, as they become
more financially secure, often moving out. However the West
Indian and especially Jamaican populations who arrived from
the 1950s have stayed constant, creating homes, families, and
communities, alongside a large population of migrant people
from Ireland, and the existing English working class
residents. Therefore the estate today is mostly made up of
families which have been St Anns residents for several
generations, with a high percentage of mixing from both white
and black families on the estate, which was the motivation for
this research 7 years ago13 .
The initial research in 2005 focused upon a group of 35 women
who are white and are mothers to mixed-race children living on
the estate. The study examined how this group of women find
value for themselves and their families when the place where
they live and they themselves are often represented as spaces12 Coates, K. and Silburn, R. (1970) Poverty the Forgotten Englishmen,London: Penguin Books (1970 pp25-28)
Solomos J. (2003) Race and Racism in Britain third edition, Hampshire: Palgrave,
Johns, R. (2002) St Anns: Inner City voices Warwick: Plowright Press
13 Mckenzie L. (2012), Finding Value on a council estate: Voices of white working class women in International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing Edited by Edwards R. Ali S.Caballero C. Song M. London: Routledge
Caballero, C. and Edwards, R. (2010) Lone Mothers of Mixed Racial and Ethnic Children: Then and Now, London: Runnymede
and people of no or little value. The first four years of this
study was spent ethnographically mapping this group of 35
women, and their families, spending time with them on the
estate, in the local community centres and cafes. I
interviewed the women, in their family and friendship groups
but also one to one in their homes. I took part in local
community activities, and public meetings, as a community
member. I have lived on this estate for over twenty years, and
I am also a white mother with mixed-race children, therefore
my integration with the women was not difficult. There was
commonality between us, and we shared the same interests and
fears regarding the neighbourhood, all our children were
growing up in St Anns, and we all had stories about how we had
felt ‘looked down on’ because of our council estate status,
and that we were white mothers with mixed-race children.
Although the initial study focused upon women, the last two
years have concentrated upon men. They were absent from the
first four years of the ethnography, because they had little
involvement in the community activities and daily lives of the
women I was engaged with, and appeared to be ‘missing’. There
were many reasons for their absence some of which I knew at
the time, mostly the men did not live with the women they had
relationships with on a full time basis because it made no
economic sense to the family to have a man ‘officially’ living
at the address who was unemployed, or employed in very low
paid work. Sometimes the men were involved in the underground
criminal economy which thrives in this neighbourhood, handling
stolen goods, and drug dealing at various levels, therefore
having a man full time in your home often carried too much
risk, the women told me they did not want the police ‘kicking
down the door’ looking for whoever, or whatever, with the
added risk of losing your tenancy, in addition these men have
an occupational hazard of going to jail and were unreliable as
full time partners. Initially I was unsure as to where I might
find the ‘missing men’ I knew they were not in the same places
on the estate as the women, the community centres, and at
community projects such as youth clubs, community cafes, and
at the local schools.
The men who were often the older sons, brothers, partners, and
baby fathers of the women I had previously engaged with were
rarely present in the spaces on the estate the women occupied,
often ‘passing by’. To ‘pass by’ is a term which is used by
men to describe their plans for the day and has its origins
within the Jamaican community, ‘pass-by’ meaning to visit,
however ‘passing by’ described a lifestyle, and a transient
identity on the estate for men. Searching for the missing men
was not as difficult as it might seem, they were never far
away and always on and around the estate, but in specific
spaces rarely frequented by women and children; I joined a
local boxing gym and started to train alongside the men, I
also spent many hours sitting in a barbers shop opposite the
gym. This is where I made contact with the missing St Anns
men, and where they spent most of their time during the day.
Being Valued and Being St Anns.
The women’s lives were full of risk management not only
through the dilemmas of what to about the ‘missing men’ but
also because they had an acute understanding of how they were
known and ‘looked down on’ more widely in society because they
lived on a council estate, or were single parents, often
living on welfare benefits. Bev Skeggs14 (1997) noted in her
study of women in the North West of England the specific
disadvantages regarding women and class, where she identified
that there was an understanding and general acceptance by the
women that ‘being respectable’ and adopting middle-class
values were important in working-class life if you were to
avoid being ‘looked down on’ and known as ‘rough’. The young
women in Skeggs’s study knew their valueless social position,
but were always trying to leave it by using culture, through
dis-identifying with being a working-class woman, disengaging
with what they thought was ‘common’, and engaging in the
‘respectable’ (1997 pp.81-94). However the women in St Anns
never denied where they thought they were positioned, often
saying we are ‘at the bottom’, or ‘lower class’ they
recognised their de-valued position because of where they
lived, and their constant interactions and associations with
the welfare system, and statutory services15. However instead
14 Skeggs B. (1997) Formations of Class and Gender, London: Sage
15 Gillies V. (2007) Marginalised Mothers: Exploring working class experiences of parenting, London: Routledge
Welshman J. (2006) Underclass: a history of the excluded 1880-2000 London: Hambledon Continuum
of looking for value in what Skeggs has described as ‘middle
class values’ the women in Nottingham found value for
themselves and their children from within the community, and
through engaging in a local culture they described as ‘being
St Anns’. This was a local identity which was valued and had
meaning for the women within the estate, but was often
ridiculed, demeaned and feared by those on the outside of the
estate.
Being a person of value is important here as it is in any
group within society, and there was an overall consensus
throughout the estate and particularly within those families
who had lived on council estates for several generations that
they were ‘looked down on’, and should feel ashamed of their
council estate resident status, or worse laughed at and
ridiculed. Mandy was a mother with 3 sons, and her family had
lived on the estate ‘a long time’ she described herself as
‘proper St Anns’, however she recounted on many occasions, how
she had experienced various forms of class prejudiced,
Mandy ‘it’s like people looking in I mean it’s when you’ve heard it on the telly about the gun crime and everything I mean my friend she actually made a complaint the other year cos she went to a pantomime at the Nottingham Ice Stadium and one of the people in the pantomime he turned round and said ‘oh I don’t want to go into St Anns cos we’ll get shot’ and they brought that into the pantomime and my friend actually made a complaint about it’
Lisa ‘so they actually made a joke and other local people in the audience could laugh at it’
Mandy ‘yeah but for us that’s not funny’.
As Mandy stated what was happening on the estate regarding
gang related crime was not funny for the residents especially
when your children are living, growing and playing in the
neighbourhood. Louise who was in her 40’s and lived with her
adult daughter, had been raised on the estate, her family had
been given a house immediately after the slum clearance
programme in 1970. Louise’s family was one of the Irish
families which came to St Anns in the 1950’s, and they were
extremely proud of their ‘new’ house when the council handed
the keys over in 1970. Louise told me how her mum had thought
that they were ‘posh’ in the brand new house, and tried to
keep it immaculate in spite of having 5 kids. However Louise
told me that since the 1980’s she had noticed that,
‘when you tell people where you come from yeah you feel like you know that
they class you like rough and ready’
She expanded on what this meant that not only were you
‘rough’ because of the notoriety of the estate; you were also
‘ready’ and as a woman living on a council estate, and
particularly with a mixed-race child ‘ready’ meant sexually
available, or as Louise said ‘council estate slag’. This
stigmatisation based upon local knowledge, but also wider
assumptions about council estates in the UK , was recounted
particularly by the women as the most distressing parts of
their lives, they talked about ‘never being good enough’,
‘being looked down on’ and ‘made to feel ashamed’.
This lead to an anger, and a defensiveness throughout the
estate, and the residents rejected these de-valued terms,
stating they were proud of ‘being St Anns’. They understood
this identity as being ‘able to tough it out’, they understood
‘being St Anns’ as having qualities that had worth and meaning
on the estate, and to them as a group. Thus compensating for
the exclusion, and disadvantage on offer to them on the
outside of the estate, by relying upon what is local,
available and, importantly demonstrable, what is proven and
what works for those who live within this neighbourhood. An
example of this is how education is viewed, and especially
higher education, there is a low level of educational
attainment within the resident population in St Anns, and
gaining entry to a University is not common, therefore the
merits of gaining a university education is unknown and
carries too much risk of being rejected, ridiculed and not
good enough. This fear of ‘being looked down on’ and knowing
you are de-valued as a person on the outside of your
neighbourhood, is not specific to this group of people in
Nottingham on this council estate, Diane Reay16, Bev Skeggs17
and Simon Duncan18 have all highlighted the sapping of self
confidence when a group is subject to stigmatisation, and
inequality of opportunities. Therefore local practices formed
16 Reay D. (2001) ‘Finding or losing yourself?: Working class relationships to education’ Journal of Education Policy Vol.16 no 4, pp.333-346
17 Skeggs B. (1997) Formations of Class and Gender, London: Sage Skeggs
18 Duncan S. (2007) Whats the problem with teenage parents? Andwhats the problem with policy? Critical Social Policy 2007 (27) p.307
an autonomous entity which was defined by a negative
polarisation to the norms of wider society and creates an
alternative value system. By creating an alternative value
system, those who are marginalised can create feelings of
worth, power and status on the inside of their neighbourhood
and amongst those who recognise and take part in that system19.
There have been attempts to develop General Strain Theory20
into a community model to explain how added stresses upon a
community can lead to higher local crime. Community strain can
occur when there is poverty in a neighbourhood,
discrimination, inequality and lack of social mobility, this
has been noted by criminologists as elements of community
characteristics which can lead to the likelihood of residents
experiencing negative emotions, producing a charged
environment contributing to crime, and inter-community
violence21. However by using Pierre Bourdieu’s22 system of
capital exchange and value, strain theory can also explain
what happens in a community or within a group when there is a
lack of status and respect, and community characteristics are
developed under strain by local communities in order to
compensate for the de-valuing of the neighbourhood and its
residents in the form of an alternative value system.
Due to the complex nature of the estate, the alternative value
system, and the elements which make up this system, is19 (Cohen 2002 p.28). Cohen, S. (2002) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: 30th Anniversary Edition: Creation of Mods and Rockers London: Routledge
20 Agnew (1999) A General Strain Theory of community differences in crime rates. Journal of Research in Crime and delinquency. (36) pp. 123-155
difficult to pin down, as the system takes different forms for
different groups within. For women, a high value is placed on
motherhood and therefore being a mother ranks highly on the
estate. Indeed, being a mother and coping with the
difficulties of living on the estate are often the only things
the women cite as being proud of in their lives, and being ‘a
mother’ and a ‘sufferer’ another Jamaican term which is widely
used on the estate to describe endured hardships, even though
being a ‘sufferer’ and enduring those hardships are always
listed as personal achievements. During a discussion about the
drug dealing on the estate with some of the men involved in
the research, the discussion turned to how difficult life was
for those who are part of the drug and gang culture on the
estate. Following is of a discussion between ‘Della’ a white
single mum of five children, ‘Dread’ her partner a black
African-Caribbean man in his 40’s who spent his time between
Della’s council house, and a flat he rented in the
neighbourhood and ‘Raphel’ ‘Della’s’ eldest son who was mixed-
race and 18 years old, who lived between his mums house and
his grandma’s house both on the estate.
21 Anderson E (1990) Streetwise, Race class and change in an urban community Chicago university of Chicago press
22 Bourdieu et al 2002 Weight of the World Bourdieu, P. Accardo, A. Balazs, G. Beaude, S. Bonvin, F. Bourdieu, E. Borgois, P. Brocolichi, S. Champagne, P. Christin, R. Faguer, J. Garcia, S. Lenoir, R. Euvrard, F. Pialoux, M. Pinto, L. Podalydes, D. Sayad, A. Soulie, C. Wacquant, L. (1999) The weight of the World; social suffering in contemporary society, Cambridge: PolityPress
Raphel ‘buoy its tough out there mans killing man, you have to be ready, its not easy to live in Notts especially when you are Stannz (St Anns) dem man out there wouldn’t survive in here’
Dread ‘yeah but..if you’re gonna die for Nottingham die for Nottingham not just NG3 die for NG that would make life a lot easier if that’s what you want just be NG there’s enough crackheads here for all of you to sell drugs to them let’s be honest about it here… there’s enough crackheads for all of you to make money rather than dying let’s be honest..killing each other doesn’t make sense lifes hard enough here, just do your business and done’
Della ‘Well I try not to beat myself up about it anymore I’m proud that my son breathes today that’s it the way heis he does things which aren’t legal but he makes money and he’s still alive for now’.
This discussion went on to describe the difficulties that
Della, Dread, and Raphel had in maintaining a family
relationship amidst the problems on the estate. Della could
not afford Dread to live with her full time, but they wanted
to maintain a relationship, and Raphel struggled with his
mum’s relationship with Dread, there was also four other
children living at home and Della could not risk Raphel
permanently living at the address because of his involvement
with gang related drug dealing on the estate. However she was
proud of her son he was independent, he made money and helped
her out sometimes, and importantly he was valued on the
estate, and was respected.
There is a real and acknowledged value in engaging in the
local culture which has been heavily influenced by black
Jamaican culture, particularly for the mothers who have mixed-
race children. Being authentic to the neighbourhood, being
known and fitting in are other elements in becoming a person
of value on the estate, but also to whom and how you are
connected to the estate is equally important. In particular,
there has been an exchange of culture between residents,
noting that they are proud of their success in ‘mixing’, and
‘everyone getting on’. While this type of ‘cultural mixing’
has often been associated with ‘youth culture’, in St Anns it
is not limited to young people only; it has become a hybrid
and interchangeable culture that has grown throughout the
whole community over a fifty year period of the West Indian
and white working-class communities living side by side.
Particular ways of speaking ie: using words originating from
Jamaica, and in dressing, gold jewellery and expensive branded
sportswear are important, how you cook and eat is also
relevant to your value on the estate, rice and peas and
chicken is cooked and eaten by most families, these are
cultural signifiers and have all been noted as important to
what ‘being St Anns’ means, and who is valued on the estate.
Although the importance of ‘being St Anns’ came out of the
initial research with women, a far more comprehensive
understanding to what ‘being St Anns’ meant relating to ‘being
a person of value’ in the neighbourhood was reached when
focusing solely upon the men who live on the estate. During
the year prior to August 2011, which is a significant period
within the research, but also within the UK because of the
civil unrest, and rioting during this month in many English
Cities including Nottingham, I was engaged with a group of
men all living on the estate. It is hard to say how many
because of the transient and fragmented nature of their
relationships to the neighbourhood, and to the women they are
involved with and have family relationships with. There was a
core group of 15 men, however there were conversations and
informal meetings with many more, as they have ‘passed by’.
All of the men are black African-Caribbean, born in the UK or
in Jamaica, and mixed-race born in the UK, many of which were
the sons, partners, and brothers of the white women I had
previously been involved with, which means I have been able to
map the neighbourhood, and the relationships within it .
Consequences of unfair representation and stigmatisation
It had taken me many months to gain the trust of the women I
was first involved with, even though I lived on the estate and
we had very similar backgrounds, we usually knew some of the
same people, and found connections through friends and family,
this type of local knowledge always situated me as an insider,
and allowed the men and women to risk asses me through their
and my local connections. The ways in which working-class
people and neighbourhoods are represented is important within
this chapter as it is often through those negative,
stereotypical and patronising representations that the people
who live on the estate unfairly see themselves, and their
families ; the women in particular know they are ridiculed,
and ‘looked down on’, and ‘made to feel small’ because of
those representations, and because of this it was difficult
and hard work to win the trust of the women, they needed to be
sure that I would not represent them negatively. The women
were used to ‘the looks’, and the ‘snide comments’
particularly whenever they came into contact with what they
knew as ‘official services’. Gina who was 21 and pregnant and
lived alone with her six month and two years old sons, she
described as ‘quarter caste’ their father Jordan was mixed-
race and lived between the homes of his mum and Gina on the
estate. Gina told me how she felt an acute stigma particularly
whenever she went to any of the benefit agencies, although she
was studying at a local college she claimed income support and
housing benefit, and therefore was in constant contact with
‘officials’. Gina told me that every time she gave her address
to any of the ‘officials’ there was often a silence as they
mentally processed her single parent status, the ethnicity of
her children, and then her address in St Anns: ‘I know what they’re
thinking you can see it ticking over in their brain as you wait for them to think ‘oh its
one of them from there’.
The men at the gym and the barbers were far less suspicious of
me than the women had been, and appeared to be less aware of
others opinions of them, they talked openly about how they
made money, their time spent in jail, the problems they had
with the police in the neighbourhood and their relationships
with their girlfriends, and ‘baby-mothers’. This frankness was
surprising in contrast to the guardedness of the women,
particularly when the men talked about drug dealing, and
receiving and selling stolen goods. The women were constantly
involved in local schools, Sure Start centres, community
projects, housing officers, and benefit agencies they knew
they were scrutinised, and ‘looked down on’, in contrast the
men had very little engagement with anyone from outside of the
neighbourhood, and particularly with statutory services or
projects unless it was through the police and judicial system.
They had minimum interaction with benefit agencies, and
housing departments, which amounted to signing on every two
weeks in order to claim job seekers allowance, and some of the
men did not do this, simply because they did not want to be
connected to any address. They told me about the cat and mouse
games they played with the police, they knew ‘how to get
around things’: if you have no address the police can’t find
you, and they need substantial evidence to search an address
you do not live at. The men spent most of their time with each
other and had strong friendship, and family bonds often
introducing new friends to me as their ‘cus’ or their ‘fam’,
sometimes they were blood relatives, mostly the family
relationships were more complicated and interwoven within the
estate, it was one of those things that if you had to ask how
people were related you are definitely an outsider. The
networks, family ties, and your relationship to the estate was
very important for both men and women, ‘being St Anns’ was the
most likely way women would described themselves and their
families, whilst the men subscribed to the idea that ‘Stannz’
was territory and belonged to them. I have met very few people
who imagined themselves ‘being’ or living anywhere else,
moving out was not an ambition in this neighbourhood as a
method of acknowledging social mobility, and ‘getting on in
life’ as Coates and Silburn discussed in the original study23.
Slow rioting
Loic Wacquant24 (1994, 2008) has noted that the halt in social
mobility and the structures of ‘new poverty’ are far from
fully explained, but what is happening within poor
neighbourhoods and to working class people are easy to read,
long term joblessness, and the proliferation of low pay and
part time employment and the build up of multiple deprivations
within the same households and neighbourhoods. Which has meant
there have been difficulties, particularly throughout Europe,
and fear within the US that established programmes of welfare
has had in remedying hardship without causing welfare
dependency. There has also been a widening gap between rich
and poor, and dissatisfaction and disillusionment with
mainstream politics. This level of distrust and
disenfranchisement particularly within working class
neighbourhoods have lead to undermine the legitimacy of the
social order, and as Loic Wacquant (2008) and Philipe Bourgois
(2009)25 argue, that hostility is directed toward the state
23 Coates and Silburn (1970) pp. 105-130
organisation of power and repressiveness symbolised and
represented in local communities as the police.
There is anger bubbling under the surface within poor
communities, because of the disappointments and difficulties
working class family life endures. However over the last 6
years there has been a definite and progressive affection of
despair, which can explode instantly and without warning into
anger and situations of violence within the estate and between
residents. The hopelessness and the feelings of constant hard
work in order to get through any day has been recounted by
both men and women, the women describe their lives as
‘fighting brick walls’, no one listening or caring about any
of the problems they have. Della was having problems with her
eldest daughter who was 14 and was truanting from school,
although Della was trying to keep her daughter in school she
said she felt exhausted by what she described as the constant
process.
24 Wacquant L. (1994) The New Urban Colour Line: The state and fate of the ghetto in post-fordist America pp.232-234 in Social Theory and the Politics of Identity edited Calhoun C. Blackwell: Oxford
Wacquant L. (2008) pp. 30-33Urban Outcasts: A comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Cambridge: Polity Press
25 Bourgois P. (2009) Recognizing Invisible Violence: A Thirty Year Ethnographic Retrospective pp 18-40 in Global Health and Violence Edited by Bauer B. Whiteford L, Farmer P. School of Advanced Research Press
‘it’s like fighting a brick wall; they hide behind policies like now if your child don’t go to school you get
a fine … I’ve had a fine for my daughter for not going to school even though she was made to go to
school every day. What she does, once she’s up there isn’t my fault so why should we get the fine?
The women are also disappointed by services coming in and
setting up projects offering ‘false hope’ of training and jobs
usually by offering voluntary work on the project, however
these projects often retreat as quickly as they entered the
community when funding runs out or when they realise the
promises they made cannot be realised. The men talk about the
hopelessness of ever getting a job that offers economic
stability, and respect amongst their friends and family, they
know that getting a low skilled, low paid job will not give
them a valued identity they need to live on this estate or
even the means to live as ‘a proper family’ which is usually
more of an aspiration for the future than a reality in the
present. When I spoke to Dread about working and getting a
job, his reaction was typical of many of the men on the
estate,
Dread There’s no jobs here for anyone, what can I do now, I used to work for the
council as a gardener I liked that but that’s gone now I’m not doing no gay job in a
call centre.
Macdonald26 et al (2005) have used the term ‘displaced
masculinities’ to describe the disengagement and difficulties
young working class men encounter in the transition from youth26 Macdonald R., Shildrick T., Webster C., Simpson D. (2005) Growing up in poor neighbourhoods: The Significance of class and place in the extended transitions of ‘socially excluded’ young adults,Sociology Vol.39 (5) December 2005 873-891London: Sage
to adulthood with the absence of ‘masculine employment’
offering status, and respect. In this neighbourhood status and
respect are important resources, and to look for employment
that may diminish local respect and status carries far too
much risk, and too much loss.
There is a dislike and distrust of anyone who does not live in
this neighbourhood, and the people of St Anns can spot a mile
off anyone who does not come from a similar background and
claims to, as many of the visiting service providers tend to.
There is an anger towards the police, even hatred, because
they are seen as policing the residents rather than the
neighbourhood, the women accuse the police of ‘doing fuck
all’, and the men recount stories of being harassed
particularly in their cars, and stopped and searched
constantly on the streets.
During the mid 2000’s it became clear that most families did
not consider that things might get better, ‘just managing’ was
ok as long as the neighbourhood provided friends, family, and
local value. However since the end of 2010 apathy has been
replaced by fear that things are getting worse, and that no
one cares, and it is state policy to purposefully decline
council estates, and their residents through death, prison or
both. The women attempt to work together for safety and
support, however the men are disconnected and further
disconnect through their belief that they are ‘on their ones’,
and making as much money as possible and by any means is their
only route away from their situation. I say away and not out,
because there is no appetite to ‘get out’ of the
neighbourhood: the goal is to stay within the neighbourhood
and be successful according to the rules of the local value
system, the logic being that being somebody on the estate is
always preferable to being nobody on the outside. As one of
the younger male respondents told me ‘its about money nothing else
matters, if you have got money no one cares who you are’ his Dad was ‘on
road’ (drug dealing) and this fourteen year old in St Anns knew
and recognised the respect and status that came with this
local position.
In this vacuum created by the lack of political connections
and the absence of communication between a marginalised and
excluded group of people and a society which they feel cast
out, it is no wonder that relations with the police and other
officials representing the state have become both important
and confrontational. The council, the social, and social
workers, have always been mistrusted; however when these state
representatives are moving out of working in poorer
neighbourhoods either through centralisation of bureaucracy,
or through redundancy, and increasingly as services close down
through current austerity measures and cuts it is the
repressive force of the police that becomes the sole
representative of the state.
I am not arguing that there is no reason for the police to
have such a high presence in this neighbourhood: there are
crack houses on the estate which are impossible to live close
to for other residents, there is prostitution and drug dealing
and there have been incidents of stabbings and shootings
linked to gang violence. Ann Curtis (1985)27 introduced the
concept of slow rioting in the 1980’s to explain the rise in
violent crime within urban areas of the USA and especially
when violent crime is committed by the local community onto
the local community, in the USA this was particularly
discussed relating to black on black crime. Slow rioting is
what happens in a neighbourhood when there is internal and
internalised social decay leading to mass school rejection
compensated by street knowledge, and unemployment leading to
street work, when a community or group are rejected by the
wider population, and become a de-valued people their source
of pride and success becomes local and relies upon the local
value system. Crime, drug dealing, and teenage pregnancy,
become accepted and provable ways in becoming successful, and
there has been a return to the imagery of the ‘underclass’,
with council estates representing a modern version of
Hogarth’s Gin Lane, with the two main characters the dangerous
and violent gang member and the welfare absorbing single
mother. The discourse of the underclass and their lack of
common societal values and morality, and their wilful self
destruction, and self destructive behaviour begins to
represent a real threat to British values and national life,
curbed only through punitive measures. Consequently it can be
argued that street crime28 is in many ways a form of slow
rioting: by committing crime on your own streets you are less
vulnerable to the police than a group of looters, and it is
possible that some crime became the safer and private
expression of protest against an individual’s social position,
powerlessness and location (Curtis 1985 p.8).
August 2011
August 2011 was significant in this neighbourhood but also for
the research, I had been involved with a group of men on the
estate for almost a year, and was winding up the ethnographic
study. I was focusing upon how disconnected this group of men
were from what we might consider everyday society. Employment,
and work featured little in these men’s lives, however making
money, and having money was all encompassing in their
practices, and discussions with each other. Premiership
footballers and what they owned, was a constant source for
discussion especially those who had come from Nottingham and
had similar backgrounds to the men. The rules of boxing and
cage fighting, and always football filled up the men’s days,
along with substantial and heated discussions with me
regarding conspiracy theories usually relating to the
relationship between the Freemasons, racism, and rap music,
they had watched on YouTube and believed explained their
situation of ‘being kept down’, and not allowed to prosper.
The discussion content was usually around the right to carry
weapons, and protect their territory, grow weed in their
‘yards’ and not pay taxes to a corrupt and racist elite. Some
of these ideas had come from a movement called ‘Freeman’ which
appears to be in line with American survivalist ways of
thinking. There was also a strong and anti-Semitic thread to
27 Curtis L A. (1985) American Violence and Public Policy Yale University Press New Haven and London.
28 Wacquant L. (2008) Urban Outcasts: A comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Cambridge: Polity Press
these discussions whereby the men believed that it was
predominantly the Jews who were to blame for their
powerlessness as black men; some of this belief had come
through their time spent in jail, but most from the internet.
This is when I began to understand just how disconnected these
men were, and their inability to situate themselves in society
in both real and conceptual terms, they were frustrated, and
angry, and the concept of slow rioting featured in my analysis
.
In the first week of August 2011 a 29 year old man, Mark
Duggan was shot and killed by a police officer in Tottenham,
north London; the police had been attempting to carry out an
arrest under the Trident operational command unit, which deals
with gun crime in the black community29. Following the shooting
there was a demonstration and march against the police in
London which resulted in almost a week of civil unrest,
looting and rioting in London, but which also spread across
many inner city neighborhoods in England. For two days 8th and
9th of August 2011 there was disorder and rioting within the
inner city of Nottingham, unlike other cities who was
experiencing similar disorder the focus of the anger in
Nottingham was the police, several inner city police stations
were fire bombed, and police cars were attacked as they drove29 The August riots in England understanding the involvement ofyoung people Morrell G, Scott S, Mcneish D, Webster S. Oct 2011 Nat Cen for social research
Ending Gang and Youth Violence; A cross government report including further evidence and good practice case studies HomeOffice 2011
through the estates. Some of the men I had been involved with
I found out the next day in the gym had been caught up in the
disturbances and arrested, they have been remanded in jail for
the last 8 months awaiting trial. They have not yet been
convicted by the court, although they have been judged by most
of the English media, and by almost all of our mainstream
politicians and the general public as morally bankrupt, feral
and, as Max Hastings in the Daily Mail put it: ‘Their
behavior on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which
attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing
what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot
them for it30’. The Prime Minister David Cameron argued in his
speech following the riots a week later that ‘The riots were not
about race, government cuts or poverty. They were about behaviour’ and
although England had seen some ‘sickening acts’ the big
society was working through the ‘Best of British’ with the
cleanup operation in Tottenham where the local community came
out and cleared the streets with their own brooms31. These
comments from media and political discourse are neither
surprising nor shocking, neither was the levels of crime,
anger and violence on the streets during that first week in
August 2011. There has been a gradual exclusion, de-valuing
and stigmatisation of sections of the British working class
for several generations, I have noted over 7 years through the
narratives of those who live in St Anns the feelings of
30 Hastings M. (2011) Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, un-educated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters in Daily Mail 12th August 201131 David Cameron Speech 15th August BBC News.
powerlessness and the rage which comes out of this level of
despair, consequently the community turns in on itself. The
residents of poor communities are looking inwards for
sanctuary; they find it locally, with the unintended
consequences of causing damage to themselves, and their
communities.
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to highlight the lives of working
class people living through a period of adversity in one
council estate, due to the consequences of thirty years of
neo-liberal policy on family life. Unemployment,
stigmatisation, and anger, feelings of utter powerlessness,
and a strong sense of identity and community are some of the
outcomes. Over several generations there have been some well-
intentioned politicians, and some not so well-intentioned who
have treated the disadvantages, and inequalities found within
council estates as a matter of morality, blaming the practices
of the poor for their poverty, and inflicting terrible levels
of symbolic violence on poor neighbourhoods, and people who
are already suffering from economic disadvantages. For several
generations in the UK there have been boundaries drawn around
certain territories: places where the poor live, places one
should avoid going if at all possible not because of the
poverty in that particular place but because of the behaviour
of those who live there. The boundaries drawn around council
estates have lead to limited space for those who live there,
space can be actual, and also social, linked to value, who has
the space to be valued, and become a person of value, and who
is limited through class prejudice and class inequality.
Consequently, for this section of the working class those who
are the least skilled, least educated, and to some extent
unlucky their lives are very much centred upon where they
live, and their family and local networks become important,
they become recognised and recognisable, and have been re-
branded from working class to underclass. They are living
through a period in history which is extremely unstable, they
are vulnerable to the market, and rely upon welfare benefits
and the state to keep ‘their heads just above water’. Although
they been de-valued as useful members of society they find
value for themselves locally, and from their adversity they
find an identity which is meaningful to them. This structural
instability has had massive consequences on family life, men
and women find it difficult to be a ‘proper family’ because it
made no economic sense to the family to have a man
‘officially’ living at the address who was unemployed, or
employed in very low paid work. The underground criminal
economy thrives in this neighbourhood, as it does in all
neighbourhoods, where there is a lack of employment linked to
financial autonomy and self respect. Long term joblessness
and the proliferation of low pay and part time employment, the
widening gap between rich and poor, and dissatisfaction and
disillusionment with mainstream politics has meant a build up
of internal and internalised social decay. Wacquant (1994,
2008) and Curtis (1985) have argued that the concept of slow
rioting in the USA seems an appropriate explanation for the
anger and apathy, violence and passivity of a group who has
been rejected by the wider population, and being somebody
within is always valued above being no one, or less than no
one on the outside.
Slow rioting in August 2011 gave way to actual rioting: an
opportunity had arisen for this marginalised group in the UK
to display their frustration, and anger with the state
represented by the police. For almost a week in England people
from these marginalised communities attacked, looted, and fire
bombed places that symbolised their powerlessness. There was
also destruction of property, and looting from people within
their own neighbourhoods which seemed unfathomable to the
media, and to wider society. It would have also been to me if
I had not spent a year with a group of men whom I learned was
so disconnected to society, and their existences were so
fragmented and fragile that employment and stable family life
was beyond their expectations and became aspirations for the
future, and their value, self respect and dignity came from a
local value system born out of stigmatisation, joblessness,
and the lack of space and mobility.
It seems that David Cameron’s vision of the big society is a
flawed concept it appeals to social cohesion, and localism,
the people who live in St Anns in Nottingham would agree with
this concept, and argue that there is a community spirit, and
a clear value system in operation already, however they argue
that it is lack of opportunities, paid work which enables
people to have respect for themselves by offering a living
wage, allowing families to live together. Offering hope in a
place where people fear what will happen to them next. This
puts the coalition government in a tight spot. Will they
invest in employment, a living wage, and security for those
who live within council estates, or will they continue the
rhetoric of the big society, expecting the least powerful in
our society, and the most disadvantaged, to create social
enterprises and get themselves out of a situation in which
they have no power to do.