How to be poor

budding barrister; a
greengrocer makes more money than a bank clerk. Also, in working-class families
more members are at work than in middle-class families. If you want to look
middle-class, you must make yourself look poorer than you really are.
    5) Politics, too, are more
complicated than they used to be. Voting Conservative used to be a good ploy.
The Tory Party was the bosses’ party and if you voted Tory (or belonged to the
Tory Party) you were one of the bosses. Not any more. Many ex-Labourites vote
Tory for no snobbish reasons at all. Nowadays to be a Tory means nothing in class
terms.
    To belong to the Social Democrats is
slightly better. They are fighting, not very successfully, against the image of
being labelled as a middle-class debating society. By the way, never repeat
those stupid jokes about Roy Jenkins loving claret. He is not the only
politician who enjoys an occasional drink, but one of the few who appreciates
good wine and can tell an outstanding claret from plonk. You should be on Mr
Jenkins’s side, someone who loves good wine and knows good wine when he tastes
it. Long live Roy Jenkins and claret!
    The best idea, however, is to
advocate the silliest extreme left views, the Trotskyite and Militant Tendency
sort of ideas. They are an almost exclusively middle-class lot, not a true
working man among them. To belong to these extreme left groups is a clear proof
that you have nothing to do with the working class and do not care a damn about
them. The movement often has a strong academic tinge. The whole thing is a
purely middle-class aberration, and nothing short of a year under a Communist
regime would cure these people. But that would certainly do the trick.
    6) Gestures may expose many class
secrets. Sometimes I watch elderly ladies who try to look young. They think of
almost everything: they get their hairstyle right, and, of course, the colour
of their hair; their dresses are impeccable, they talk and laugh like young
girls — but they forget one thing: they always walk like elderly women.
Similarly: one may have acquired the right accent, clothes and political
attitude, but certain gestures can still give one away.
    Few people nowadays put their knife
in their mouth, and still fewer scratch their head with their fork. In any
case, I am not speaking of such uncouth extremes. Some people, however, will
gesticulate — just a little — with their knives and forks, and that, of course,
is fatal. It is almost as bad as blowing your nose into your table napkin. No,
worse: it is as bad as calling your table napkin a serviette. No worker
will ever use a long cigarette holder, and no middle-class person will speak
with a tiny cigarette stub hanging from his lip. Or take another example: some
working-class people take a cigarette from their mouth in a way no middle-class
person would ever do: they turn their palm towards their mouths, and use three
fingers — index and middle on top, thumb below — and put the cigarette back in
the same way. Such a gesture will tell one’s life story even if one speaks like
an Oxford don.
    7) And do not be polite when driving
a car. You just must not give way to your natural instincts, even if you are a
really polite person by nature. This used to be a middle-class habit but it has
changed. On the road so-called gentleman have — on the whole — the manners of
pigs, and the few remaining gentlemen are the lorry drivers. Not all but many.
They are also some of the few people who have no desire to “pass” but remain
unashamedly, nay proudly, working-class.

The Karl
Marx of the Bourgeoisie

     
    That’s me. The Karl Marx of the bourgeoisie. Marxism has failed in many
respects, Mikesism (Mikes to be pronounced in this exceptional case, to
rhyme with likes) is to prevail.
    Vanitatum Vanitas — Vanity of Vanities — is an old and
destructive slogan. But, alas, only too often a precise description of human
motives. Indeed, if we watch matters sub specie aeternitatis, from the
viewpoint of eternity (please forgive me my slight attack of Latin, it will
pass) all our efforts seem pretty futile. A few million years ago there were no
human beings; a few million years hence there will be none. So why bother? But
as we are not eternal, why should we observe matters from the point of view of
eternity? Another version of the same attitude is this: when grave threats hang
over our heads why bother with trivialities? This was a fashionable attitude
during the fifties: the