White Trash

by John King

  Praise for White Trash

  “Complete and unique, all stitched up and marvellous, the two sides of the equation brought together, realistic yet philosophical.”

  —Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

  “There are no white trash—that’s the point of the title…. The cumulative effect of King’s style is astonishingly powerful in its detail and depth. A quarter of a century after punk rock, the core punk ethos—of a robust and adaptable form of resistance, based on inclusive, DIY community-making and a concentration on immediacy—is still inspiring some of our most vital writers. An immensely timely and necessary book: stylish, witty, and passionate. It’s about time someone slapped the smugness from the face of broadsheet Britain.”

  —Mat Coward, The Independent

  “King is a writer who adeptly avoids cliché and caricature and is one of the most accomplished chroniclers of contemporary life. White Trash is very much a state of the nation book.”

  —Big Issue North

  “The sharpest commentator on modern times is back, with a plot running so close to the bone it’s almost skeletal.”

  —The List

  “White Trash tones down the severe language of King’s football hooligan trilogy, but his themes—rich versus poor, state versus individual—remain as explicit as ever.”

  —GQ

  White Trash

  John King

  © John King 2001

  First published by Jonathan Cape, a division of The Random House Group Ltd

  “From Cradle to Grave” © John King 2016

  This edition© 2016 PM Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

  John King has asserted his right to be identified as the Author of the Work.

  ISBN: 978–1–62963–227–8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948148

  Cover design by John Yates / www.stealworks.com

  Interior design by briandesign

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  PM Press

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  Oakland, CA 94623

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  Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.

  www.thomsonshore.com

  For my family

  ‘Old clothes are beastly,’ continued the untiring whisper. ‘We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better …’

  —Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

  FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE

  During the Second World War, the Conservative politician Winston Churchill led a coalition government that was essentially socialist, with the profit motive suspended and the nation working for the common good. In the decades that followed, those who lived through the conflict marvelled at the unity they had experienced, the success of Britain’s cross-party cabinet dependent on what became known as the ‘spirit of the Blitz,’ a determination by the wider population to never surrender their country, culture and democracy to the might of Nazi Germany.

  Hitler planned to build a European empire, and it was going to be one that was stocked with a race of Aryan supermen. This would be achieved through careful breeding, an unnatural selection where obsessions with race and eugenics meant there was no place for ‘subhumans’ such as Jews, while a secret policy of euthanasia led to the extermination of the incurably sick, those with physical and mental disabilities, the elderly and infirm. These murders were described as ‘mercy killings’ and had the bonus of saving the state money. In some ways, the supremacism of the Nazis reflected the monotheism of Christianity, with its single, all-powerful god who can never be questioned. The destination of a person’s soul became a decision for the righteous, as was the nature of their heaven or hell.

  In the immediate aftermath of the war, and despite his popularity, Churchill was easily defeated in the 1945 election by a Labour Party led by Clement Attlee. People wanted a new sort of society and were not about to accept the unemployment and hardship that had followed the First World War. Their victory had to continue into peacetime, so they rejected the old system operated by the rich for the benefit of the rich. After six years of bloodshed, Britain was in ruins and its population exhausted, but while there was austerity, the nation would be reborn under the Attlee government, and this was a time when everything seemed possible.

  The 1942 report on Social Insurance And Allied Services—known as the Beveridge Report, after the economist William Beveridge—had already laid the foundations for a welfare state, and this was now implemented by the minister of health, former miner and trade unionist Nye Bevan. The plan was to confront what the report called the ‘five great evils’—want, idleness, ignorance, squalor and disease. The plan had universal support and the country was energised.

  Funded by taxes, the welfare state belonged to the people and was part of a post-war consensus that would see a mixed economy aiming for full employment, which would in turn lead to freedom from want and the dignity that comes with fair labour. Incentives and protections were built in, while the pre-war slums and bombed-out areas were going to be replaced by the building of council houses to rent and a series of new towns. Education would broaden and encourage free-thought, things such as free school meals and milk introduced to strengthen the children. The nationalisation of core industries would allow for efficient forward-planning, the idea of common ownership one that reaches back through Britain’s rebel traditions.

  The Transport Act of 1947 established an efficient, joined-up system, while the nationalisation of the mining industry meant investment and increased safety for its workers, neither of which had been a priority in private hands. Water, gas and electricity were natural monopolies and also went into state ownership. The country needed to start producing quickly, and there was no time to waste on wasteful competition and vested interests.

  To this day, the National Health Service remains the jewel in the crown of the welfare state. It was established to provide socialised care for every single person from the day they are born to the day they die—from cradle to grave. Improved housing and nutrition were important in the fight against the causes of disease, but the way of treating the sick had to change as well. Previously help had only been available to those with the cash to buy it, and doctors could be exploitative and judgmental, the poor causing their own suffering by being lazy, dirty, even immoral. Condemned for their poverty, it is an ongoing truth that those who do some of the hardest and most necessary jobs are often paid the lowest wages. For the lack of proper housing, food and care, thousands were dying. The welfare state offered compassion and unity, and this was the foundation of what some saw as a new Jerusalem, with the satanic mills of William Blake firmly in its sights.

  The real immorality lay in a system run for profit, as there is always going to be the temptation for a doctor to invent or exaggerate illness, prescribe needless treatment. To this day, the majority of people in Britain believe that the privatisation of healthcare is wrong, and the NHS retains a special status in the national consciousness. It is one of the last gems in a crown that has been stripped bare. American lobbyists may invent the idea of NHS ‘death panels’ when arguing against socialized medicine, but we are shocked by the idea that walking into an American hospital leads to the question: ‘Are you insured?’ The NHS is an example of a genuine community, and it is people like nurse Ruby James, the star of White Trash, who make it work.

  Set in an unnamed town on the edge of London, the novel is part of The Satellite Cycle, which begins with Human Punk and ends with Skinheads. It is easy to work out that this is Slough, one of the areas Londoners moved to when they left the blitzed inner
cities at the end of the war. More than half a century later, this is Ruby’s home, the place where she was born and raised and has always lived, the hospital in which she works a microcosm. For Ruby, every person is unique and has a story to tell, and she encourages the patients to tell their tales, thrilled by the images created. Outside of the hospital she drinks, dances and lives her life to the full, at the same time doing her best to deal with her mother’s Alzheimer’s and a memory from childhood, aware that physical and mental health are precious and easily lost.

  Ruby is a hero. There are no doubts, and the way she is presented is deliberate, aims to show a clear division between good and evil. This is reflected in the prose, with different styles applied. If the NHS is part of the new Jerusalem of post-war idealism, then Ruby is one of its angels. The text reflects her natural positivity. It is essential to be optimistic.

  The soundtrack of this novel would be dominated by the techno of Headrillaz and Spiral Tribe. Fast and driving, there is no need for lyrics. Ruby leaves work and wants to try and live in the moment. She feels the emotions of the sick and elderly, grasps how fast time flashes past. Inside, we are all the same age. It is the body that breaks. A hospital ward can be one of saddest places on earth. The old and dying are defenceless and scared, wish they could go back to better days, or at least become well enough to return home, where they can at least sleep in their own beds one more time.

  Ruby absorbs the social history passed down by these people, pictures a merchant seaman’s trips around the world, imagines the tragic loss of love and a career in service as a teacher, sees the magic-mushroom munching of a good-time pagan and his Green Man pals. The epitome of positive thinking, she sees the best in everyone—until the day true evil comes to call.

  White Trash is a defence of the NHS and socialised medicine. Most of those post-war achievements have been lost now, the consensus that started in 1945 lasting to around 1979 when there was a shift to monetarism. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, linked to Ronnie Raygun, was able to appeal to an element of a disillusioned working class, one that needed a show of patriotism and a rejection of what they saw as the disruption of industry by communists and the takeover of the left by middle-class intellectuals. A right-wing press powered the interests of the bosses. Thatcher took on the trade unions and won, pushed through privatisation and rewarded greed, and yet there were other factors in her success.

  Thatcher appealed to a belief in individuality and the sort of freedom that built America. She offered long-term council-house tenants the right to buy their homes at prices well below market value, which in itself was a good idea, if only the return was invested in building more properties. But it was not. She also encouraged the self-employed, who would no longer be regarded as petit bourgeois that had to be punished. Some trade-union leaders did not help themselves and were seen as anti-British and controlling, a restrictive cadre that suffocated free thought.

  Years of industrial unrest in the 1970s, including power cuts and food shortages, eventually led to the Miner’s Strike of 1984, and this is symbolic of the clash between capital and labour in the UK at the time. The Tories wanted to crush socialism and the trade-union movement, and they were successful. It was an ideological battle, the sad irony being that the ‘spirit of the Blitz’ so often referenced blended a genuine people’s patriotism with socialism, and that was what gave the nation a more caring dynamic.

  The majority of the nationalised industries have now been privatised. This has destroyed entire communities. Casual labour and zero-hour contracts are the result of ‘liberalisation,’ never mind the long-term unemployment imposed on working people in the likes of the old mining towns. Even the Post Office, dedicated to providing a service to every part of the country, however remote, has been sold off with the help of European Union directives. Granny Smith, a symbolic figure for postal workers, represents the elderly lady who lives alone and connects to the wider world through her letters, the sort of person who must never be abandoned, but the wartime heroes and their children have been betrayed by big politics. Post offices have closed, the service has become expensive and complicated, while deliveries are less frequent and mail is often delayed.

  The NHS is still publicly controlled, but it is under threat. Attached services have been contracted out to private companies, and this is always going to affect their quality. There are long-term knock-ons that are uneconomic, so if a cleaning contract goes to the lowest bidder and the service is therefore shoddy, infection and illness follows, with a financial as well as personal cost. Even so, the NHS remains almost sacred to the masses as it represents life and death.

  Hospitals are where we are born and often where we die. The hospital I used as my loose model is Wexham Park in Slough. My parents were treated here and it was where they passed away, five and fifteen years after the novel was first published. Heart problems killed them both, and when I wrote the book, after my father’s first admission, the determined beats of Headrillaz and Spiral Tribe and the satellite-town racing escapes and returns of Orbital were in my mind and on my turntable. I don’t know if it was intentional. When my niece was born in the maternity wing, my mother and father were elated, yet they would later suffer and die a short walk away. On the second occasion that child, now fifteen, stood by her grandmother’s bed as she went to heaven.

  The NHS faces challenges, it can’t be denied, but for the most part these are down to increases in life expectancy and population, changes in treatment and the need for better organisation, and they could be solved by greater investment. A desire to privatise the system nags at a certain sort of politician, but they know enough to keep quiet and bide their time. Big business lurks. The unions are weaker than in the past, while the multinationals become stronger. The fact that people are living longer should be a cause for celebration, but elements of the political and media classes talk as if it is a problem. A seed is planted.

  Maybe it is hard for those under a certain age to fully grasp the idea of a common good in the way the post-war generations did. The sources of knowledge are increasingly second- and even third-hand. Corporate propagandists dress in casual-wear. Smooth, supposedly liberal presentations hide their deceit. In the recent referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, politicians arguing for the country to remain in an increasingly undemocratic organisation suggested older voters were ruining the futures of the young by choosing independence. This led to some pensioners being told they had no right to a say. In the aftermath of the decision to leave the EU, the fake-liberal mask of the elite has well and truly slipped, with their prejudices openly expressed. The white-trash masses are stupid, racist, too old, uneducated and their decision should be ignored.

  The idea that those who remember the spirit shown during the war—and it is more often their children now—might have a better understanding of the EU than a self-serving political class is dismissed by a complicit establishment. It is determined to overturn the people’s democratic decision, and the insults are familiar, but far from the truth. The EU is promoted as liberal and represents unity, yet it is ever more controlling and promotes austerity and privatisation across the continent, which in turn means backing for those within Britain who want to so the same. The proposed introduction of TTIP would open the way for American healthcare companies to move into Europe, and the NHS could well be an early target.

  The NHS reflects an idealism that is passed down by the sort of storytellers Ruby meets every day. Her love of social history captures its meaning. Everyone is of equal value. People should be seen as individuals and treated with respect. Care must not be rationed. No cost is too high, no cause is hopeless. To talk about money and the cost to society is the path towards euthanasia.

  Elements within the metropolitan elites of Britain and the US despise the white working class. It is a prejudice aimed at a part of the population they find distasteful. Worse, despite their lack of wealth, these targets do not respect their betters. In fact, they hate those telling them h
ow to live, feel rich in their roots and identities. This is not new. In White Trash, excuses are made and justifications applied by a person who wants to play god, and while set in England this novel could as easily be based in the US, where those making fortunes from health-care oppose any sort of reform.

  ‘White trash’ is an American expression and a deliberate choice of title, expressing a prejudice based on race, class and culture. Irrespective of party, those with power are allowed to insult large swathes of the country, hiding behind assumptions and slogans, much as they do in the UK. The term goes further, implies obligatory membership of a far-right group, a lack of morals and basic hygiene, inbreeding and incest. Their poverty and hardship is self-inflicted. So is illness. They are crackers, rednecks, hillbillies and trailer trash. Thing is, you just can’t win if you are in a tribe that no one values, one that has been demonised and nobody with influence is willing to protect.

  In England, white-trash males are called hooligans, thugs, yobs, chavs. Regional prejudices see the cockneys of London as lowlife villains, an urban gang of thick spivs. The scousers of Liverpool are thieves and knifemen. The Saxon south of the country that runs from East Anglia through the shires of Essex and old Wessex to Celtic Cornwall at the tip of the island is full of brain-dead bumpkins, the living scarecrows and cider-drinkers of King Arthur, an earlier version of the hillbillies of the American South. These are the same people, cursed for what they do and cursed for what they do not. Some behave badly; the majority are decent and generous.

  There are old ladies with crinkled faces and glasses held together with tape. Geezers with dented bald heads and bad shaves and banjos sitting across their knees. Middle-aged men with dirty hair and dungarees sitting on the bonnets of rusting Fords. Middle-aged women show off swollen legs and rotting teeth. The obligatory skinhead stands aggressive with a shaven head and staring blue eyes. This novel has a positive vision, sees polished pink Cadillacs and the escape of the open road, the soul behind the stereotypes.