Britain's Tribal Warriors
ALAN, RAY
Euro vista BY RAY ALAN Britain's Tribal Warriors "How can these English be considered civilized?" asked a Rome daily. "Europe is tired of English vandalism," declared Spanish, French and Dutch...
...The taproot of what has been called the yuk (yobs UK) Syndrome probably springs from the first industrial revolution, when British landlords cleared peasants off the land and packed them into urban tenements...
...Wherever they go, to soccer matches or resorts, these lower-middle thugs leave a trail of debris, foul graffiti and, often, bloodshed...
...Every country has its social classes, of course, but in no other Western society are the ditches between classes so deep...
...We're lucky they focus on sport, not politics," a Conservative member of Parliament told me last year...
...They are brutal when facing working-class fans, mocking their poverty and appearance, and leave gilt-edged cards on those they beat up...
...and the lower-middles now use the vulgar-pretentious "lounge" for what they once called the parlor or front room, while the middles call its equivalent a sitting or living room and the uppers speak of a drawing room...
...The upper classes have often been violent, directly or through proxies...
...The two systems have a lot in common...
...We tend to make a lot of noise and to engage in what is called 'jostling' or 'scuffling.'" This sick-rowdy-shabby image is not a new one...
...While Mrs...
...They are hostile to education that has no cash value, and weirdly indifferent to the welfare of their children, who may have money thrown at them to pacify them but are thrust into the labor market with minimal preparation...
...Unlike her contemptible minister for sport, who tried to shuffle blame onto the Brussels police, Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did not prevaricate...
...We're not going to be tied down by the children," I heard a mother of three screech recently as she rejected an educational opportunity for her small son...
...The better dressed you are, the harder you are.'' These stylish savages have jobs, live in relatively affluent London suburbs and new towns, travel to games by first-class train, and watch their teams from expensive seats which they sometimes throw at rival gangs or the police...
...schools, occupations, words, accents, even eating habits, so divisive...
...Lower-middles are more likely to buy a house (bearing a name on its gate to distinguish it from working-class houses) and pile up debts buying clothes plus other maximally visible goods in order to impress the neighbors...
...Continental ex-peasants trickled into cities with institutions and beautiful buildings they learned to be proud of...
...When we are not eating we are drinking...
...A careful recent survey by the Gower Press showed that 69 per cent of Brits privately consider themselves working class...
...private) schools and class criteria buttress upper-class mediocrity, cramp the horizons of the underprivileged, and put a premium on outward conformism, sycophancy and deceit...
...Europe was almost united at last— in abhorrence of the English "yobs" whose hooliganism had caused 38 deaths and injuries to400 in a Brussels stadium...
...Most uneducated lower-middle Brits are crudely materialistic and Philistine, more impressed by conspicuous consumption and sly opportunism than by achievement and integrity...
...Many working-class Brits, after rol-lercoasting from Keynesianism to monetarism, feel derelict...
...Princess Anne sought for a time to improve her dull horsey image by adopting a less up-market enunciation, until Oxford students obstreperously mocked her...
...She had already apologized to several continental governments for British vandalism...
...Unlike the middle-middles, they dislike the working class because they are so near to it ("There, but for the grace of God...
...who are as ignorant of each other's habits and feelings as if they were inhabitants of different planets...
...Newsmen have noticed that some of the most ferocious soccer gangs wear "smart" clothes to distinguish them from the proles and hoodwink the police...
...The rootless youths from Merseyside who ran amok in Brussels know only the tawdry and the mass-produced...
...The majority of them have never seen a work of art or eaten a civilized meal...
...Class Revenge Contrary to what tax officials, market researchers and old-fashioned Marxists believe, class in the UKis less an economic condition than a mishmash of cultural and psychological ingredients...
...the few planks over the ditches so treacherous...
...Disraeli's two Englands—"between whom there is no intercourse, no sympathy...
...Bidding for the patronage of the millions of Brits who live in maze-like " housing estates, "Ford-UK rebaptized its station wagons "estate cars...
...Perhaps...
...These change periodically as the lower classes imitate the middle classes who in turn copy the uppers—who then adopt new terms...
...Thus the many names for what most Americans call the toilet have been reshuffled since I was a boy...
...But violence is not a working-class monopoly...
...Simpson because the actors who played their forebears were rather plebeian...
...It is time to reflect on what we can do about our society which produces thousands upon thousands who can only find an outlet for their energies and passions in supporting a football team...
...When I first went to the Near East, my understanding of Lebanese and Syrian society—divided into clans and sects, each with its own status, linguistic idiosyncrasies and internal pecking order, some with degrees of initiation—was helped by my acquaintance with English social mores...
...most were able to retain rural and family ties and a taste for decent food...
...The Observer commented: "We are rightly condemned for knowingly visiting upon a friendly neighbor a crowd of vicious and uncontrollable I hugs...
...An American colleague who was reading a London paper asked me: "What do you make of this...
...In the 1950s the drunken violence of many conscripts, some of whom attacked their officers, earned several British Army units an odious reputation both at home and in Germany...
...Britain, saidtheEconomist, "hasbecome a byword in Europe for violence, drunkenness and dirt...
...Thatcher's accent sounds "posh" to lower-caste women, someofwhom try to imitate it, lapses in her diction that indicate her grocery-store origin provoke upper-class grins...
...Europe is tired of English vandalism," declared Spanish, French and Dutch papers...
...Sociologists put the objective figure higher...
...I explained that the constable meant what Americans, upper-middle-class Englishmen, and British writers and businessmen who use mid-Atlantic English call a station wagon...
...By contrast, urbanization came later and slower to continental Europe...
...Just as the folk memory of cruel backbreaking work accounts for much idleness, so the recollection of rude overbearing ways on the part of privileged groups in society accounts for much general cussedness...
...Nowadays," says columnist Toby Young, "there is a direct correlation between smartness of appearance and violent excess...
...A Communist housing development...
...If, in mid-August, you went to help the aristocracy massacre grouse, you would hear them call their station wagons "shooting breaks...
...It is the highest percentage in Western Europe, and some observers link it with high unemployment and low educational standards (under 9 per cent of working-class children attend school after reaching the age of 16) to explain a good deal of British violence and vandalism...
...To anyone wishing to understand the yuk Syndrome or any other British phenomenon, familiarity with Britain's caste system is as important as a knowledge of its Indian counterpart to the student of India...
...In the same paper, Alan Watkins wrote: "You can usually recognize us Brits on the cross-Channel ferries...
...While the nominal adults among them drank themselves sick, their children ran along the beach throwing sand in people' s faces...
...Some of us are sick, others are drunk, and others are both...
...and the lower-middle class has a turbulent fringe...
...As theEconomists&ys, "in instant slums, an instant urban underclass came into existence in Britain's damp introverting climate (no evening paseo, no street cafes...
...Eton and the top level of Whitehall, says John Le Carre, who knows both well, "are so fortified against the outside world that ihey have no personal eontact with the people they are meant to govern...
...The 90 per cent of them who received a skimpy education, and are unused to coping with ideas, react fatalistically or with abuse or violence...
...Unsurprisingly, many lower-middle youths—unprincipled and possessing neither the loyalties of the workers nor the culture of the true middle class—join the tribes of the alienated...
...We place our luggage where it impedes others...
...You have been serviced by the Anti-Personnel Firm," says the card of a Chelsea soccer gang...
...Broadly similar to outsiders, the working and lower-middle classes are distinct species to their members, with the lower-middles sharply subdivided into a small educated minority and a dismal uneducated lump...
...As Alan Watkins says, "there is a desire for class revenge...
...who are formed by a different breeding, fed by a different food"—are still there, plus three or four more...
...There it has lived unkemptly amid un-European litter for enough generations now to know nothing else...
...We are shabbier than the rest...
...The lower classes now call them "estates...
...Each class uses social synonyms for numerous everyday objects and ideas...
...Television has pierced some barriers...
...The police constable said the defendant escaped in a red estate.' What's a red estate...
...There is something about them that recalls the smug nattily dressed thugs one seesinphotosofBritishand continental fascist groups of the 1930s...
...All they seem able to take pride in is "their" soccer team and the fear they inspire...
...We eat [junk food] and throw litter on the deck...
...Many urban areas, railroad stations and pubs in Britain were just as dingy 35 years ago as they are today...
...She declared the yobs' behavior inexcusable, and serious commentators agreed that "the hooligan curse" on British society is not a mere matter of police deployment: It is a symptom of a profound social, cultural and moral sickness...
...Many carry knives...
...The Queen is said to watch a few ITV (commercial) programs in order to learn what makes the lower orders tick— though the royals were irked by an ITV serial about Edward VIII and Mrs...
...Something nasty has happened to the British working class [and perhaps] to the British middle classes...
...Whereas France's lycees and grandes icoies promote social mobility and meritocracy, Britain's public (i.e...
...It is still, however, broadly true that, as Bernard Shaw said, no Englishman can open his mouth without making another Englishman despise him...
...Alan Watkins reminded me of a description I wrote 25 years ago of British tourists on Spain's Costa Brava...
Vol. 68 • May 1985 • No. 7
