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

Estimated reading time: ten full minutes

Lisa Mckenzie

Estimated reading time: ten minutes

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Working-class everyone was prone to vote for Brexit. Lisa Mckenzie (Middlesex University) takes problem using the idea why these social individuals were ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’. They saw Brexit, with all the current uncertainties it might bring, as an option to the status quo. De-industrialisation and austerity 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 young children, and contains been in the council home waiting list for four years, along with over 19,000 other folks – and Anne, that is inside her 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 an inexpensive house. It’s the afternoon prior to the EU referendum, so we are dealing with all of the politics of this time, including footballer David Beckham’s current intervention into the debate: he’s got recently announced their support for the stay campaign. The ladies aren’t delighted. The discussion goes:

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

‘He hasn’t ever reached concern yourself with where he could be planning to live, unless it’s which house.’

‘Well him and Posh can get and live where they need if they want, it is not the same for us, I’ve been homeless now for just two years.’

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

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

Ahead of the referendum, I experienced been working together with number of neighborhood working-class people in London’s East End as an element of ‘The Great British Class Survey’ during the LSE. I’ve gathered a huge selection of stories about working-class life within the last few four years when you look at the East End, and thousands during the last 12 years. These tiny tales can usually appear unrelated into the big governmental debates associated with time, in the event that you don’t comprehend the context in their mind. Being a woman that is working-class we appreciate the skill of storytelling: i understand that a tale is not simply an account. It really is employed by working-class visitors to explain who they are, where they come from, and where they belong. These little tales are way too usually missed in wider analysis that is political favor of macro styles, which includes frequently meant that the poorest individuals in the united kingdom get unrepresented.

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

Fortunately – as an ethnographer, a working-class scholastic, the daughter of a Nottinghamshire striking miner, and hosiery factory worker (and I also have actually resided in council housing for many of my entire 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 numerous, but stay in simple sight.

Having gathered these narratives since 2005, we knew different things ended up being taking place all over referendum. The debates in bars, cafes, nail pubs, plus the hairdressers in working-class communities seemed infectious. Individuals were interested, and argued concerning the finer points associated with EU, but in addition made wider points about where energy rested in the UK, making links between the 2. But, for many working course individuals like ‘Sally’ plus the other ladies, the debates had been centred upon the constant challenge of one’s own life, in addition they connected those battles with their mothers’ and grandmothers’ hardships, but additionally for their children’s future. They saw small hope that life would be fairer for them. The referendum had been a switching point for the ladies in east London. That they had maybe not voted when you look at the 2015 General Election: that they had small interest or faith in a governmental system seated just three miles away whenever their day-to-day and immediate situation required constant attention. When ‘Sally’ told me she would definitely make use of her vote when it comes to very first time to go out of, we asked her if she thought things would alter for the greater whenever we had been to Brexit. She stated she didn’t understand, and didn’t care. She simply couldn’t stay things being the exact same.