Jonas Patrick Marvin is joined by Aamna Mohdin and Sivamohan Valluvan to discuss his new book *The Breaking of the English Working Class*.
Jonas Patrick Marvin is joined by Aamna Mohdin and Sivamohan Valluvan to discuss his new book The Breaking of the English Working Class.
What has become of the English working class in the twenty-first century?
After a decades-long absence, class is once again central to our understanding of ailing Britain. But what does it mean to be working class today? As Jonas Patrick Marvin shows, questions of class have often been replaced by talk of race and geography. Meanwhile, a collective identity capable of pushing for change has become increasingly weakened and sidelined.
Retelling the story of the working class over the last forty years — from Thatcher’s war against the unions to New Labour neoliberalism – Marvin shows how power and capital have combined to shatter a radical identity into many parts: white, male, northerner, homeowner, immigrant, unemployed, disabled. These fragments are then set in conflict against each other. Blending political analysis with an account of his own experiences of class in London and the rustbelt Midlands, Marvin shows how the working class have been demonised and managed into impotence.
The working class is more than just an identity. As Marvin argues, it embodies a collective will to demand change, one that can — and must — be rekindled.
Jonas Patrick Marvin is a writer, researcher and campaigner based in Stoke-on-Trent. He regularly contributes to Salvage and Novara Media and is a host of the popular podcast Life of the Party.
Aamna Mohdin is the Guardian’s first community affairs correspondent, reporting on the social, political and economic experiences of the UK’s diverse communities, with a particular focus on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. Mohdin spent her early years in the Kakuma refugee camp, Saudi Arabia, Germany and the Netherlands, before arriving in the UK aged seven. Mohdin is the winner of the British Journalism Award 2022 and her work has been shortlisted for the British Press Awards. She was previously a reporter at Quartz where she led the publication’s coverage of the European refugee crisis.
Sivamohan Valluvan is Associate Professor of Sociology at Warwick University. He is author of The Clamour of Nationalism: Race and Nation in 21st Century Britain (Manchester University Press, 2020), and has published in Salvage, Renewal, Red Pepper, Progressive Review and The Guardian.
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