In your editorial (the guardian’s view on class politics: it declined because the culture war rose, February 5th), you say, “Class is not economics, not where you sit, taste and tradition I wrote about politicians who treat it as a cultural issue about. In relation to power.” The reality is that it is not your culture that defines your class, but your culture, or at least some aspects (however incomplete and shifting).
When you encounter institutional racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, etc. in the police or military, you may have already had those views by the organization’s culture or when you participate. You need to ask if it was a culture created by people. . If there is a problem with such bias being common in the classes where rank and file members of these organizations are primarily portrayed, we need to recognize it and tackle it there. If someone who is 18 and joining the police is racist, it’s already too late.
Mike Perry
Ickenham, London
Around the world, the Centre’s policies have rights in effect. Because people may not really want Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni, Nigel Farage, but in that regard they don’t really want any leftists who will challenge their wealth. For this reason, they will not adopt the policies necessary to defeat their rights, but they continue to have policies that the Guardian identifies correctly.
A proper victory is a comfort award that protects their wealth if they don’t have the center they like. When the left gets the best vote, the center panics and makes a deal with the right to keep the left out. See Emmanuel Macron. This is not a bug, it’s a feature.
Jonathan Fanning
Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor of International Strategy at York University
Working class people can be defined by relying on doing their jobs. Work is not a career. These jobs do not empower workers. Workers simply do what they say in the way their employer wants. It is unlikely that they will make a decision or be promoted to a level where they can participate.
They come and go. They are paid less than work despite the equal pay law. Complaints can be fired by reducing the time they are given to the point they have to leave to survive. For many workers, weeks or months are longer than wages, leaving debt or deprivation as normal by payday.
Working class life may seem different to the Victorian situation, but the reality is that it is not. Pawn shops are currently cash converters. Credit cards and savings clubs still offer ways to grow your funds.
It’s no wonder that Reform Britain is attractive when Labour doesn’t seem to want to reduce inequality.
Margaret Ingram
Bridgewater, Somerset
Your leader seems to make the mistake of assuming that class politics is practiced only by the left/weak section of society. The right/reactionary sector has never stopped the practice of class politics against the poor and less powerful people of society. The media may have ignored this or called it out on what it is, but it has never stopped and is definitely not fading.
Mike Daniels
Stoke Golding, Leicestershire
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