The Left Behind

James Morrison

Description

'The Left Behind' is a defining motif of contemporary British political discourse. It is the thread that knits together the 2016 Brexit referendum, the crumbling of the fabled 'Red Wall' in the North, and the pernicious culture war being waged today. But who are the Left Behind?

James Morrison goes in search of the reality behind the rhetoric, offering the first comprehensive, historical analysis of the origins, uses and meanings of the term. He interrogates the popular archetype of the Left Behind - as a working class, leave-voting white male from a former industrial heartland - and situates the concept in the context of longstanding, demonising discourses aimed at communities seen as backward and 'undeserving'.

Analysing national newspaper coverage and parliamentary discussions, and drawing on interviews with MPs, community leaders, charities and people with direct lived experiences of poverty and precarity, The Left Behind grapples with the real human cost of austerity for neglected post-industrial communities and other marginalised groups across the world, and the stigmatising discourse that does little to serve them.

List of tables
About the author
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Inventing and appropriating ‘the left behind’
1. Working class, ‘underclass’ and collapsing-class identity: The roots of the left behind
2. Politics, the press and the construction of the post-Brexit left behind
3. How to solve a problem like the left behind: Condescension or contempt?
4. Fear and loathing on social media: Trolling and championing the left behind
5. Speaking up for the left behind: The voices of disadvantaged Britain
Conclusion: Towards a manifesto for ‘unite and rule’
Appendix: Research methodologies
References
Index

Sujets

• Human Geography
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Industries
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Left behind
• Leaver
• Linguistics
• Sociology
• Kaaron Warren
• Political geography
• Blyth Valley
• Social mobility
• Redwall
• Culture war
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• Social class
• Journalism
• Conservatism
• Anthropology
• General
• Social
• Industrie
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745344645
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Left Behind
A well written and engaging account that tackles the stereotyping of so-called left behind communities by journalistic and political opinion-formers. James Morrison questions how the most disadvantaged sections of society have been framed (or blamed) for delivering Brexit and in doing so he demonstrates why this kind of media representation is both over simplistic as well as problematic. The Left Behind identifies and explores the inadequacies of this account and in doing so examines the motives of those largely responsible for it. As Morrison observes, it was ironic that such stout defences of the disenfranchised masses should be mounted by elite commentators in papers which had long been passionate cheerleaders of the very neoliberal free-market policies that had so immiserated the erstwhile industrial towns they now championed .
-Dominic Wring, Professor of Political Communication, Loughborough University
The Left Behind
Reimagining Britain s Socially Excluded
James Morrison
First published 2022 by Pluto Press
New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright James Morrison 2022
The right of James Morrison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4463 8 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4462 1 Paperback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4466 9 PDF
ISBN 978 0 7453 4464 5 EPUB
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
List of tables
About the author
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Inventing and appropriating the left behind
1 Working class, underclass and collapsing-class identity: The roots of the left behind
2 Politics, the press and the construction of the post-Brexit left behind
3 How to solve a problem like the left behind: Condescension or contempt?
4 Fear and loathing on social media: Trolling and championing the left behind
5 Speaking up for the left behind: The voices of disadvantaged Britain
Conclusion: Towards a manifesto for unite and rule
Appendix: Research methodologies
References
Index
List of tables
2.1 Detailed breakdown of frames for five article datasets
2.2 Detailed breakdown of frames for four parliamentary record datasets
4.1 Comment thread snapshot 1: Left-behind discourse at Brexit referendum
4.2 Comment thread snapshot 2: Left-behind discourse at 2019 general election
4.3 Twitter snapshots: Left behind discourse at referendum and 2019 election
About the author
James Morrison is a Reader in Journalism at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His research focuses on media-political discourses around stigmatized groups - primarily people experiencing poverty and other forms of inequality - and their intersection with public deliberation, social attitudes and government policy. Before becoming an academic, he was a full-time journalist, working for a succession of newspapers, including The Independent on Sunday , before going freelance. He has since written for numerous publications, including the Guardian , The Times and Telegraph Magazine . He is a senior examiner and member of the National Council for the Training of Journalists Public Affairs Board and author of Essential Public Affairs for Journalists (Oxford University Press). His other published research includes the monographs Familiar Strangers, Juvenile Panic and the British Press: The Decline of Social Trust (Palgrave Macmillan) and Scroungers (Bloomsbury), as well as articles in Digital Journalism , the British Journal of Politics and International Relations and Social Semiotics .
Acknowledgements
In embarking on this book, I have been indebted to the many eminent academics (and more enlightened journalists) who have attempted to wrestle before me with the complexity of what one might call the left behind question . I am particularly grateful for the inspiration gained by reading the thoughtful contributions of Professors Danny Dorling, Peter Golding, Gurminda Bhambra and Imogen Tyler, and Drs Lisa McKenzie and Tracey Jensen, as well as the seminal earlier writings of McKenzie and Silver, Coates and Silburn, and Goldthorpe and colleagues. Thanks also to John Harris and John Domokos, whose insightful Anywhere but Westminster podcasts for the Guardian have always treated their subjects with a level of empathy and respect missing from many other mainstream media narratives - refusing to stereotype or patronize the residents of towns and communities battered by austerity, COVID-19 and years of wrangling and division over Brexit. Thanks are also due for the insightful advice, feedback and (above all) patience of other academics who heard me out as I harped on about the left behind through the various conference papers, articles and proposal drafts that led to this book. Chief among these have been my editor at Pluto Press, Ken Barlow; Dr Kayleigh Garthwaite at the University of Birmingham, Dr Kostas Maronitis at Leeds Trinity, Dr Jay Wiggan at Edinburgh, and Dr Ceri Davies at the National Centre for Social Research; Professor Darren Lilleker and Dr Antje Gluck at Bournemouth; and (again) Professor Golding (who must have read more of my book proposals and grant applications than any other single academic!) I would also like to thank the Political Studies Association for the Research and Innovation Fund grant which provided the resources to enable me to carry out the Scottish interviews which contributed to the testimony explored in Chapter 5 , and charities and user-led groups that helped me recruit interviewees, including the Poverty Alliance, Inclusion Scotland, the Black Triangle Campaign, and Mo Stewart of the Centre for Welfare Reform.
More importantly, this book would have been much less substantial (let alone useful ) had it not been for the honest and incisive contributions made to it by the various people who found time to speak to me, often while juggling extraordinary personal challenges in the midst of a global pandemic. Of the many interviewees whose testimony contributed, directly or indirectly, to the findings presented in Chapter 5 , I am particularly indebted to Janet Mason from Bentilee, Stephen Ruffley from Leigh and Keri Anderson from Edlington - all of whom went above and beyond granting me a single interview to offer additional pointers and insights that helped enrich the final result, by providing additional background and context.
Beyond this, I want to thank the family, friends and colleagues who have bolstered and encouraged me as I ve ploughed on with this project despite all the difficulties presented by the COVID-19 backdrop against which it was researched. As ever, I owe everything to my wife, Annalise - a frontline social worker who helps people affected by poverty and inequality every day of the year - and our three children, Scarlet, Rosella and Ivor Munro, who have been through so much themselves during the period in which this book was written, from prolonged periods of home schooling to (in Scarlet s case) final National 5 assessments. Of friends and colleagues, my thanks go out especially to Dr Fiona McKay, my partner in crime at RGU, and Kenny Lindsay - for keeping me sane during lockdown(s) with our weekly tennis matches.
Above all, though, I would like to close with a call-out to the various distinct and/or overlapping groups (and millions upon millions of individuals ) whose lives are needlessly and unjustly affected, day to day, by economic and other disadvantages it is well within our power to end. If we want to heal the political and cultural divisions that have so toxified latter-day social relations and public debate, we need to get serious about redressing the long-term industrial decline; precarious, low-waged, unsatisfying work; digital, health and educational disparities; and racial, gender and disability-related injustices that (for want of more precise or elegant epithets) have led so many people, for so long, to feel left behind.
Introduction Inventing and appropriating the left behind
Residuum, underclass, forgotten people, precariat: journalists and politicians have a compulsive predilection for inventing labels to classify (and disparage) people experiencing poverty, insecurity and alienation. But of all the popular imaginaries constructed to describe the nature and condition of latter-day social exclusion, few have risen to prominence so swiftly, or come to dominate public debate so comprehensively, as the left behind .
While use of the term left behind only became common currency during the weeks and months succeeding the 2016 European Union referendum - primarily as a go-to shorthand for neglected and/or economically ravaged post-industrial communities that had overwhelmingly voted for Brexit - its most recent origin in a UK context can be dated to several years earlier. In their 2014 book Revolt on the Right , political scientists Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin argued for the growing significance of an ageing, shrinking and left behind white, working class : a social group sharing a distinct set of social attitudes and viewing a cosmopolitan, multicultural and globalised Britain as an alien and threatening place (Ford Goodwin, 2014: 132). This they contrasted with the younger, university educated and more secure middle-class professionals who had hitherto set the political and social agenda (ibid.: 126). In a near-contemporaneous report, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) identified a similar pattern of social and political disengagement amon