Page 81 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

70 SUBCULTURAL CONFLICT AND WORKING-CLASS COMMUNITY

more East Enders are forced to work outside the area; young people especially
are less likely to follow family traditions in this respect. As a result, the issues of
the workplace are no longer experienced as directly linked to community issues.
Of course, there has always been a ‘brain drain’ of the most articulate, due to social
mobility. But not only has this been intensified as a result of the introduction of
comprehensive schools, but the recruitment of fresh talent from the stratum below
—from the ranks of the respectable working class, that is—has also dried up. For
this stratum, traditionally the social cement of the community, is also in a state of
crisis.
The economic changes which we have already described also affected its
position and, as it were, destabilized it. The ‘respectables’ found themselves
caught and pulled apart by two opposed pressures of social mobility—downwards,
and upwards into the ranks of the new suburban working-class elite. And, more
than any other section of the working class, they were caught in the middle of the
two dominant but contradictory ideologies of the day: the ideology of
spectacular consumption, promoted by the mass media, and the traditional
ideology of production, the so-called work ethic, which centred on the idea that a
man’s dignity, his manhood even, was measured by the quantity or quality of his
effort in production. If this stratum began to split apart, it was because its
existing position had become untenable. Its bargaining power in the labour
market was threatened by the introduction of new automated techniques, which
eliminated many middle-range, semi-skilled jobs. Its economic position excluded
its members from entering the artificial paradise of the new consumer society; at
the same time changes in the production process itself have made the traditional
work ethic, pride in the job, impossible to uphold. They had the worst of all
possible worlds.
Once again, this predicament was registered most deeply in and on the young.
But here an additional complicating factor intervenes. We have already described
the peculiar strains imposed on the ‘nucleated’ working-class family. And their
most critical impact was in the area of parent/child relationships. What had
previously been a source of support and security for both now became something
of a battleground, a major focus of all the anxieties created by the disintegration
of community structures around them. One result of this was to produce an
increase in early marriage. For one way of escaping from the claustrophobic
tensions of family life was to start a family of your own! And given the total lack
of accommodation for young, single people in the new developments, as well as
the conversion of cheap rented accommodation into middle-class, owner-
occupied housing, the only practicable way to leave home was to get married.
The second outcome of generational conflict (which may appear to go against the
trend of early marriage, but in fact reinforced it) was the emergence of specific
youth subcultures in opposition to the parent culture. And one effect of this was
to weaken the links of historical and cultural continuity, mediated through the
family, which had been such a strong force for solidarity in the working-class
community. It is, perhaps, not surprising that the parent culture of the respectable