Reflections on free speech and English working-class identity - Bradley Strotten

I grew up in an English working-class community where, as a learned person might describe it, ‘right-wing populist’ beliefs were the norm. My parents, and their friends, speak in a language of patriotism and tradition. They would frequently express that they felt that there are double standards in popular attitudes towards the expression of their white British identity and that of ethnic minorities. They are critical of the effect that immigration has had on the country. And they feel that a liberal establishment excludes voices like their own; that ‘the people’ are treated as moral, and social, anachronisms by the political and cultural elites who take their ‘cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow.’ Needless to say, these are the kind of beliefs that you may not find on a university campus but that you will find, without difficulty, among English ‘white’ working-class communities. 

From quite a young age, probably around fourteen, I rejected a lot of these ideas at a visceral level. And, since then, I would say that I have struggled to find a stable intellectual grounding. This perplexing uncertainty, and natural curiosity towards new ideas, is what has made free speech so important for me: free speech enables you to navigate the waters of uncertainty, to experiment with new ideas, and, indeed, to criticise where necessary.

Growing up, I lacked a sense of identity with my local community: I did not have shared interests and values based on my nationality, that men like my father, who has never moved away from Kent, and has worked in blue-collar professions all of his life, hold. 

During my early teenage years, I gravitated towards Marxist ideas. They seemed ready-made to explain away a working-class chip on my shoulder. I began to see all of the injustices in the world neatly fitting together under the rubric of capitalist oppression. It is something of a bitter irony, characteristic of Marxism, that these ideas naturally put me at odds with my old boy (the best telehandler driver in Kent, ay dad). Whilst he complained about being neglected by his country, I was there with vague Marxist theory to explain to him how he was not just uneducated but manipulated, too.

I would inform him that migrants were not the issue, that he was being manipulated by demagogues, that racism was perpetuated from the top down to maintain hierarchies, and that workers have more in common with each other than with the capitalist class who oppress them. I would’ve done well to realise that even if on a basic, and strict economic, level of analysis, workers have more in common with each other, as Paul Embery articulates in his book Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, there is more to identity that economic class. He writes,

‘most workers didn’t see themselves merely as some kind of stage army in a war against capitalism. They were social and parochial beings for whom a sense of cultural attachment – around such things as tradition, custom, language and religion – meant much. In the end, economic factors are far from the only consideration when it comes to what may unite (or, indeed, divide) people.’

Fortunately enough, as I am sure you might’ve guessed, Marxism wasn’t strong enough to budge that chip all the way off of my shoulder. Whilst more intellectually sensitive to many left-wing ideas as a teenager, the obvious middle-class landscape of the left today never escaped my judgment (and nor did it require exceptional insight to spot). In fact, my eventual departure from the left I think is, in large part, due to that chip still being there. The irony of middle-class (il)liberals studying the oppressive nature of the bourgeoisie at university whilst excluding, and rejecting, majority working-class opinions as ignorant, and anachronistic, seems entirely lost on my peers.

Still worse, the new lefts’ obsession with protected identity characteristics, and move away from economic concerns - or even empirical reality, for that matter - naturally excludes the white-working class. This is because the postmodern conception of power and oppression understands whiteness, and men, pejoratively (as privileged). But what about white working-class boys? The least likely to attend university and the group consistently performing the worst in education. What about us? Ay? Leave it dad. It ain’t werf it.

I am far from stating that an educational system is rigged in such a way that burdens poor white children. Instead, I believe that many white working-class communities place little importance on academic education and that this drives their underperformance. With this said, however, I think that a sensible argument can be made that ‘white privilege’ – which posits that white people are ‘structurally privileged’ in our society - lacks empirical substantiation and is far too vague a concept to explain the world in a meaningful way.

ONS recently published findings that most ethnicity groups, in age ranges 18-30, are earning more than their white-British counterparts today. The results also strongly suggest that educational attainment is a strong predictor of income potential – which, in part, explains why many white-British employees are being surpassed in terms of pay. Chinese, and Indian, pupils are the least likely to be excluded from school, are the most likely to take the traditional ‘A level highway’ to higher education and are better qualified as entrants. They are also significantly out-earning their white-British peers.

But even to challenge the empirical basis of ‘white privilege,’ by Robin Di-Angelo’s standards, is coded as evidence for that privilege existing – your ignorance to your own privilege could only be possible since you are, in fact, privileged; the privilege is a veil that blinds you from reality. These Kafka-trap fallacies leave such an ideology beyond refutation. And as a consequence, there is no room for nuance or disagreement.

I decided to join the Free Speech Champions because I believe in the necessity of disagreement, and do not believe that largely unsubstantiated, reified, claims should hold a monopoly over public discourse. Furthermore, unlike my younger self, I do not think that the expression of national pride, a sense of belonging, and concern over immigration, should be rejected as ignorant, and bigoted, nonsense outright. Instead, I believe that free speech, as a universal value, can develop a common ground of understanding - a sphere of tolerance towards diverse opinions - within our heavily bifurcated political landscape. 

The Free Speech Champions project is a collaborative endeavour of young people, supported by the Battle of Ideas charity and the Free Speech Union, to reconnect with the virtue of free speech and to reimagine our public domain as one of open enquiry. I do not want to challenge ideas – whether they be the excesses of woke-ism or populism - because I think that their proponents are necessarily bad. But because I believe that, as Hegel saw it, an idea unchallenged is an idea in its nascent form. It needs to pass through its antithesis, that is to say, to be challenged, in order to become synthesized, to become more refined and closer to the truth. Free speech is the mechanism underpinning society which enables bad ideas to be challenged; it affords us with a capacious domain of enquiry directed toward a common good.

Bradley Strotten is a writer and ambassador for Free Speech Champions, MA (current) Modern and Contemporary Literature, University of Manchester, BA (2019) English and Philosophy, University of Nottingham