- 11 Oct 2013 09:48
#14312109
Presently, I am working and living in a very very working class area of the country, and it is a seriously conservative world. It's the sort of thing you really need to experience, in order to understand, but everything feels like it is at least 30 years in the past. Women are treated differently, and gender equality doesn't really exist. Attitudes to race are still developing, and reactions to difference in general is closer to something you might expect on a playground, than from grownups. It can often be a challenging environment for someone like myself with a very middle class background, but it isn't in anyway malicious or driven by the sorts of hatred that you might see in American Conservative tradition. People are more weary of difference (skin colour, LGTB, cultures) than they are outright against. Their treatment of women is more protective, than it is oppressive, though it does very often come across as highly rude.
It has often puzzled me how the working class seem to have far more in common with conservative ideology, than that of the left, but then again the Conservatives would also want very little to do with them. The conservative party promote individual responsibility, family values, and very class-based attitudes to how you should behave. This really doesn't link up with a working class society who are surviving on benefits, very often single mothers or denying family responsibility, and actually have no real control over their lives at all. They are the forgotten group of our society, that just can't associate with anyone from the political class at all.
A Labour party that moved further to the right would be more successful, but in order to win the election they still need to retain the liberal voters who can't stand the sort of social conservatism that the right promotes. If Labour moved to the right, then the country would have two right wing parties, and a very low voter turn out.
It has often puzzled me how the working class seem to have far more in common with conservative ideology, than that of the left, but then again the Conservatives would also want very little to do with them. The conservative party promote individual responsibility, family values, and very class-based attitudes to how you should behave. This really doesn't link up with a working class society who are surviving on benefits, very often single mothers or denying family responsibility, and actually have no real control over their lives at all. They are the forgotten group of our society, that just can't associate with anyone from the political class at all.
A Labour party that moved further to the right would be more successful, but in order to win the election they still need to retain the liberal voters who can't stand the sort of social conservatism that the right promotes. If Labour moved to the right, then the country would have two right wing parties, and a very low voter turn out.