Working Class Community: Some General Notions Raised by a Series of Studies in Northern England

192 Pages·2003·7.656 MB·English

by  Brian Jackson

The International Library of Sociology
WORKING CLASS COMMUNITY
Founded by KARL MANNHEIM
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WORKING CLASS
COMMUNITY
Some General Notions Raised by a Series of
Studies in Northern England
by
BRIAN JACKSON
First published in 1968 by
Routledge
Reprinted 1998, 2002
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Transferred to Digital Printing 2007
© 1968 Brian Jackson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders
of the works reprinted in The International Library a/Sociology.
This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would
welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies
we have been unable to trace.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Woding Class Community
ISBN 0-415-17639-5
Class, Race and Social Structure: 21 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-17826-6
The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-17838-X
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent
CONTENTS
I Voices page 1
2 Styles of Living 3
3 Brass Bands 21
4 At the Club 39
5 In the Mill 69
6 On the Bowling Green 99
7 Riot III
8 Jazz Club 120
9 School Ends 132
10 Change and Community 147
II Some Proposals 167
INDEX 178
v
for
BRIAN, DOUGLAS, SHEILA
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My chief debt in preparing this book is to Dennis Marsden who
did so much of the early fieldwork and writing up, and in partic
ular put far more than I did into the section on the Mill. If life
had been rather different this might have been a joint book with
him, and the better for it. The cost of the initial interviewing
was met by the Frederick Soddy Trust who got the venture off
the ground. It was saved from collapse by further help from
Michael Young and the Institute of Community Studies. And that
it was written up at all is due to the generosity of the Department
of Applied Economics and its director W. B. Reddaway who
during my time as a visiting member there gave me the space and
quietness I couldn't otherwise have had.
I don't suppose I would have stuck at the project at all had I
not only had initial help from Sheila Jackson with the fieldwork
and writing up, but generous and selfless encouragement all the
way through. Drafts of this book have been circulating for five
years, and many people put long hours, sometimes at con
siderable personal inconvenience, into helping me with it. Perhaps
I've drawn most on the help of Jeremy Mulford, David Grugeon,
Peter Laslett, Sonia Abrams, Richard Hoggart, Royston Lambert,
Jennifer Platt, Kim Townsend and Douglas Brown. But the
crises, complications and pressures of other work have been so
strong that this book has had to be fitted into odd days over the
last six years, and to do all that has meant that I've leaned more
heavily than I care to acknowledge on the perception and patience
both of the people I mention, and many other friends and
colleagues.
vii
Chapter One
VOICES
'I got hit with a frying pan one day. When I got married and
lived with my husband's mother, there was a do up our street. I
was fascinated, and I got a bit too close. Old Ma Ryan threw a
frying pan at her husband and I got it. My mother-in-law said it
served me right for being too nosy.'
'We've been in Millbank Methodist Chapel all our lives, we've
been connected but no, we never went, not after we were little
you know. Bah, you had to go, it were a case of your parents
making you go in them days, you had to do as you were told.
What, don't you forget it, it were real in them days, but when we'd
taken each other like, we didn't go no more.'
'I'll tell you what, I've noticed this with old folk that's been
moved away-they don't seem to have reigned long. It's too bad
rehousing old people, they should leave them alone. I'll give you
an example, that woman over there, her sister and her husband
they were moved from Brow Road. Well he were a big mate 0'
mine, used to go about a lot, and they were moved up Crosland
Moor. Well nothing wrong with Crosland Moor, up top end it's
a nice district, but do you know they were both dead within twelve
month. Somehow it seemed to knock all t'stuffing out of them,
down here you know everything and everybody, I know Millbank
stone by stone as you might say.'
'I know one or two Indians. I go drinking with them, they're
nice blokes. Of course since this Mau Mau job we've got some
thing against the Jamaicans. We're not so keen on them.'
'We used to think it was real going down to Chinny's, to the
dance. Getting black drainpipes on, and a long duffle coat, and
you looked exactly like a bopper. I couldn't bop, but I used to
think it was real, and we felt it was smashing going out with
greasy faces. We just used to put Hi-Fi on, smear it all over our
I
Voices
faces, no powder or anything and lots of black mascara. Then
we'd go down in the dark and we'd feel exactly like boppers. It
didn't last though, you don't stop at Chinny's very long. Then
after Chinny's, you go to the Empress or Charlie Frost's. Oh I
remember a time down there, the first time I ever went to
Chinny's, and I wasn't wearing the right clothes or anything, I'd
gone in a sort of party frock. And everybody else they all looked
at me, and I cried upstairs because I couldn't get anybody to dance
with me, and then somebody danced with me and I thought I'd
got a partner, but it turned out it was a girl I went with, that had
put him up to it. So next time I went, I got the proper clothes on,
except I'd got a blouse on under me sweater and the neck was
all showing you know. When I got there and took me coat off,
they all looked at me and they said, you don't wear a blouse under
your sweater, and they made me go upstairs and take it off straight
away.'
'I always give to the blind, but I don't like these other things.
What I want to know is where does all the money go ? There's too
many of these things. There's somebody filling their nests. Where's
it go? Congo? Why, we've enough of our own refugees in
England without bothering sending money to that lot. They want
to get some work done, that's what they want. Like the rest of us
have to do. I work with a black woman and I should know.'
'There's this guy next door, Mr. Nugent, an Irishman. When
he's sober he dresses quite smart, but when he's drunk-he shouts
out "Get out! Get out of my house!" And they have to get out. All
twelve. He has twelve children. And some nights he shouts out
"which is the finest race?" And they have to shout back, all in
unison they have to shout back "The Irish!" Or else he might
have them all saying "Heil! Heil Hitler I" When the police
come, he gets out of the bathroom window.'
'On this estate you've got more community spirit than you
would have, say, down Edgefield-real community. We've got
to think first of all of getting this on a local scale; everybody in
Huddersfield being co-operative and community-minded. Then
on a national scale. Then on an international scale. I take it that's
brotherhood.'
2.