The Results of State, Municipal, and Organized Private Action on the Housing of the Working Classes in London and in Other Large Cities in the United Kingdom

The creative and cultural sectors in the United Kingdom largely exclude the working classes. Even the small number of working-class people who do ‘make it’ into these sectors often find themselves and their work badly treated by those who hold the real power. This article explores some of the experiences of working-class artists navigating the cultural sector and how exclusion, prejudice and precarity impacted and continue to impact them. It takes as its focus the filmmaker Alan Clarke and the playwright Andrea Dunbar, who were at the height of their success in the 1980s. It also considers the writers Darren McGarvey and Nathalie Olah, whose work has achieved prominence in recent years. It is through this focus I hope to demonstrate the long continuum of challenges for working-class creatives. This article also considers how, on the occasions when they are allowed the space they deserve, working-class artists have created powerful shifts in cultural production. Finally, it details some of the changes needed for working-class people to be able to take their rightful place in contributing to cultural life and the societal risks involved if they are denied that place.

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Egalitarian Music Education in the Nineteenth Century: Joseph Mainzer and Singing for the Million

Journal of Historical Research in Music Education ◽

10.1177/1536600619848104 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 29-45

Author(s):

Jane Southcott

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

United Kingdom ◽

Music Education ◽

Small Towns ◽

Music Educators ◽

Education For All ◽

Music Educator ◽

Working Classes ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

New System

In the 1840s, massed singing classes led by charismatic pioneer music educators such as Joseph Mainzer (1801–1851) sprang up across the United Kingdom. Mainzer was a much respected composer, music journalist, and music educator. Born in Trèves (Prussia), he traveled across Europe and settled in Paris, where he was part of the revolutionary Association Polytechnique that offered free education to the working classes. His mass singing classes were a remarkable success but aroused the suspicions of authorities. Mainzer left Paris for political reasons and moved to England, and after teaching across the United Kingdom, settled in Edinburgh. His arrival in Scotland was greeted with a degree of adulation reserved for celebrities. Across Scotland classes were established to disseminate his new system that was taught in larger centers and most small towns. Although Mainzer’s fixed-doh system did not long survive him and the subsequent arrival of the tonic sol-fa method in the 1850s, his work (and that of others) created an environment in which popular singing classes in schools, churches and the community could flourish. Mainzer was a skilled and charismatic educator. He advocated tirelessly for lifelong music education for all. Mainzer has been overlooked and deserves recognition.

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Seaside Resort Blues

Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies ◽

10.30608/hjeas/2021/27/1/4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Virginia Richter

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

Popular Culture ◽

Interwar Period ◽

Women Authors ◽

Female Agency ◽

Working Classes ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Seaside Resort ◽

The Uk ◽

A Site

In the interwar period, seaside holidays had become accessible to more people in the United Kingdom than ever before. It was not least the unapologetic hedonism of the working classes that gave places like Blackpool and Scarborough their vibrant energy. However, a notable number of English travelogues in the 1930s depict seaside resorts as overcrowded, vulgar, debilitating, and in fact un-English. During the years in which the UK faced the rising threat of fascism, the seaside became a site where ideas of Englishness, popular culture, and masculinity came under scrutiny. In my paper, I explore these ambivalent constructions of the English seaside resort, from J. B. Priestley’s English Journey to the collection Beside the Seaside, in which women authors, including Yvonne Cloud and Kate O’Brian, celebrate the seaside as a catalyst of female agency. (VR)

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On the self-imposed taxation of the working classes of the United Kingdom

Journal of the Franklin Institute ◽

10.1016/0016-0032(50)90199-2 ◽

1850 ◽

Vol 50 (5) ◽

pp. 350

Author(s):

G.R. Porter

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

The Self ◽

Working Classes ◽

The United Kingdom

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Brexit will not make Poles leave en masse

Emerald Expert Briefings ◽

10.1108/oxan-db246978 ◽

2019 ◽

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

Skilled Workers ◽

Content Type ◽

Large Cities ◽

Large Group ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Polish Migration ◽

Highly Skilled ◽

Polish Migrants

Subject Polish migration to the United Kingdom. Significance Despite the fact that so far only 27% of Polish immigrants have applied for 'settled status' in the United Kingdom, most of them have not decided to leave the country after Brexit. Impacts Polish migrants returning from the United Kingdom will settle in large cities and search for highly skilled jobs. Whether a large group of Polish migrants returns or not, Poland will still need low-skilled workers, coming mostly from Ukraine. PiS will not necessarily benefit electorally as returning migrants will include many Civic Coalition and Confederation supporters.

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The New Cultural Marketplace

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199593736.013.008 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 480-506

Author(s):

Robert L. Patten

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

British Empire ◽

Print Culture ◽

World History ◽

Reading Public ◽

Working Classes ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

The World ◽

At Home

The British Empire ran on print. The manufacture of printed material industrialized, speeded up, expanded, and cheapened through the century. Printers and publishers prospered as financing stabilized and markets expanded. Transportation carried print all over the United Kingdom and to colonies and other countries around the world. Literacy increased; education became more widespread and more extensive. Governing bodies churned out reams of investigative ‘blue books’, laws, reports, charts, maps, and examinations. Science progressed, published its results, and created controversy as well as machines, medicines, and commodities. Authors began to obtain rights in their writings, both at home and by the end of the century abroad. Journalism grew at a compound rate as taxes on knowledge were repealed and markets for inexpensive publications swelled. The reading public enlarged to include the working classes and women. Britain’s material print culture helped create and sustain the empire and its place in world history.

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