The white working class is nothing like what politicians think – or claim – it is

A new book, Underdogs, demolishes the myth that it is homogeneous in its hostility to immigration

- Kenan Malik

“Many of those who act as the champions of the white person against immigrants,” Labour MP David Winnick told the House of Commons in 1968, “have not in the past gone out of their way to defend the interests of the white working class.”

It was the first time anyone had referred to the “white working class” in parliament to describe a segment of the British population. Half a century on, that segment has become the focus of one of the most contentious and polarising of debates. For many on the right, the white working class constitutes a distinct group, both their distinctiveness and their problems, stemming largely from their whiteness. Many on the left have, Joel Budd notes, “fallen silent on the subject”, nervous of racialising issues of class.

In his new book, Underdogs, Budd deftly negotiates his way through this treacherous terrain. The white working class, he argues, constitutes a distinctive group but one whose distinctiveness is explained less by ethnicity than by geography. Minority groups are concentrated in the big cities, especially London. This provides benefits in everything from education to infrastructure. White workers, on the other hand, live disproportionately outside metropolitan areas, in and around small towns such as Blackpool, Gateshead and Paignton. These are places that, despite constant chatter of “levelling up”, have largely been neglected by national politicians; places in which social mobility is low, and which are often lacking in good jobs, schools and infrastructure. It is this, Budd argues, that makes the experience of the white working class distinctive.