On this week’s #SWYSI, our guest is Michael Collins, author of “Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class” (in which he argues that in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, the white working class were cast as wholesale racist cattle by the liberal press whilst the rightwing press mocked their tastes and attitudes). Brought up in London’s Elephant and Castle, where his family had lived for generations, Collins believes that middle-class condescension towards the white working class is nothing new. Missionaries from other classes have always descended to study, influence, patronise, politicise, socially engineer, and now to demonise them.
