Class, dignity and self-esteem

By George Maier, a master’s student of Critical Theory and Politics at the University of Nottingham. His research interests focus on complicating perspectives of inequality. @GeorgeMaier During a House of Commons debate on the government’s flagship Universal Credit programme this January, Erewash MP Maggie Throup asserted: ‘let’s face it, self-esteem and dignity are so much higher when income comes from earnings rather than from the taxpayer’. Her remark speaks to the extent that demonisation of the working class has became embedded within our political system, it is framed as if general knowledge, as if this is accepted and depoliticised speech. In reality, her comment is deeply divisive in a community already weakened by six years of regressive austerity.