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

Estimated reading time: ten full minutes

Lisa Mckenzie

Estimated reading time: ten full minutes

Working-class individuals were more prone to vote for Brexit. Lisa Mckenzie (Middlesex University) takes issue utilizing the idea why these individuals were ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’. They saw Brexit, with the uncertainties it could 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 frequently does not grasp.

It’s 22 June 2016. I’m sat in a cafГ© within the East End of London with two regional women, ‘Sally’ – that is 23, has two small kids, and has now been from the council home 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 kids and grandchildren had recently moved from the area and into Essex due to the not enough an affordable house. It’s the afternoon ahead of the EU referendum, so we are speaing frankly about all of the politics of this time, including footballer David Beckham’s current intervention within the debate: he’s got recently announced his support for the stay campaign. The ladies aren’t delighted. The discussion goes:

‘What has that **** Beckham got to express relating to this?’

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

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

‘We don’t exist for them, do we?’

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

Prior to the referendum, I’d been using a combined band of regional working-class women and men in London’s East End as an element of ‘The Great British Class Survey’ during the LSE. We have gathered a huge selection of tales 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 stories that are small usually appear unrelated towards the big governmental debates for the time, in the event that you don’t realize the context in their mind. Being a woman that is working-class I appreciate the skill of storytelling: i understand that an account is not simply a tale. It really is employed by working-class visitors to explain who they really are, where they show up from, and where they belong. These little tales are way too usually missed in wider analysis that is political favor of macro styles, that has usually meant that the poorest individuals in the united kingdom go unrepresented.

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

Fortunately – as an ethnographer, a working-class scholastic, the child of a Nottinghamshire striking miner, and hosiery factory worker (and I also have actually lived in council housing for some 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 ordinary sight.

Having gathered these narratives since 2005, we knew different things ended up being occurring all over referendum. The debates in bars, cafes, nail pubs, additionally the hairdressers in working-class communities seemed infectious. Individuals were interested, and argued in regards to the finer points associated with the EU, but in addition made wider points about where energy rested in the UK, links that are making the 2. Nonetheless, for the majority of class that is working like ‘Sally’ additionally the other ladies, the debates had been centred upon the constant fight of one’s own everyday lives, in addition they connected those battles for their mothers’ and grandmothers’ hardships, but in addition with their children’s future. They saw hope that is little life would become fairer for them. The referendum was a point that is turning the ladies in eastern London. That they had maybe maybe perhaps not voted within the 2015 General Election: that they had small interest or faith in a governmental system seated just three kilometers away whenever their day-to-day and instant situation required constant attention. When ‘Sally’ told me she was going to utilize her vote when it comes to very first time to go out of, I asked 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 the exact same.