Class and Social Change

Chapter Class and Social Change It is often argued that the Second World War marked a watershed in British class relations Obvious class distinctions were set aside in the face of a common crisis, and this pragmatism can be seen to have accelerated a process of change in the perception of class status.1 This is not to deny the existence of inequality, or the persistence of class struggle in the post-war era What the change in perception instigated is a popular demand for a wider share in the new prosperity that emerged in the 1950s, after the years of austerity If the egalitarian social reconstruction proposed during the war did not materialize, it is still true that the post-war Labour government enacted policies that ‘in general favoured the working class’.2 The broad trend since then has been towards greater prosperity for working people, a process that undermines the economic basis of class affiliation Despite this, however, class in British culture was (and remains) fraught with contradiction and confusion, especially where persistent class loyalties are shaken, or even rendered irrelevant, by social and economic change, and yet are not relinquished The shape of British politics, however, helped to consolidate a more simplistic understanding of the class struggle In David Cannadine’s reading, perceptions of class for ‘the Welfare State generation of 1945–79’ were governed by a presumed instrumental link between economic change and social change, and by the assumption that class conflict governed the key economic and social debates Lying behind this dominant mood of political and social conflict was the formation of the Labour Party, which in 1918, in the infamous Clause Four of its constitution, had made ‘the common ownership of the means of production’ a defining goal A phase of class struggle, polarized along party-political lines and that was to dominate twentieth-century British politics, was thus ushered in, with the Labour Party advancing the interests of the workers in a direct clash with the Conservatives, the party of capitalism.3 Arthur Marwick has shown how conventional images of class have persisted in surveys of public opinion Referring to data from 1945 through to 1984, he demonstrates that the distinction between the ‘middle’ and ‘working’ classes remained constant in the popular imagination, with the 49 50 The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 term ‘upper class’ remaining in view, but with a dwindling relevance (In 1984 only 0.2 per cent of those surveyed placed themselves in an ‘upper’ class In 1945 the figure had been per cent.)4 Of course, ingrained class loyalty is often based on social markers that resist brute economics, so that the tension between the ideological perception of class and its material underpinnings becomes more and more pronounced Even so, there is also a common perception that the codes and offices of a ruling class are being steadily dismantled, and this implies a dynamic of social levelling, and the expansion of a middlebrow culture Narrative fiction has played its part in this changing perception, and the dominant schools of writing in the 1950s and 1960s were overtly populist ‘The Movement’ ‘The Movement’ of the 1950s was first given this significant appellation – the definite article, the capital M – in 1954 by J D Scott, the literary editor of the Spectator, in an anonymous leading article Two poets (Donald Davie and Thom Gunn) and three novelists (Kingsley Amis, Iris Murdoch – oddly, as it now seems – and John Wain) were named as leading figures in a developing tide of progressive robustness.5 Scott’s article was not the first to detect a new mood, especially in poetry, that was dismissive of modernist obfuscation; yet his piece did serve to consolidate this emerging critical view Even so, discussion of the Movement is sometimes complicated by its overlap with the (only slightly later) School of Angry Young Men, including the playwright John Osborne, and novelists like John Braine and Alan Sillitoe Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (1954) is sometimes seen to have heralded the impending arrival of the ‘Angry’ generation, associated with Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956) It may be more appropriate, however, to read Lucky Jim as embodying the sensibility of the Movement primarily, since its ‘anger’ is of a distinctly different hue to that of Osborne or Sillitoe Blake Morrison authoritatively defines the sensibility of the Movement, rooted in the qualities of rationalism, realism, and empiricism (He also makes a convincing case for Amis’s central role, despite the writer’s own disavowals.)6 Thus, despite the apparent ‘invention’ of the Movement in a piece of literary journalism, it did have a kind of coherence The shared values of the central Movement writers, Amis, Davie, and Philip Larkin, were expressed as impatience with complexity, symbolism, and opacity For Amis, it was retrograde to admire the modernists – Joyce, Woolf, and Proust all attracted his disapproval Effective writing, he felt, should be direct, transparent.7 Rather than an absolute rejection of formal values, however, Amis’s ‘manifesto’, according to Richard Bradford, was in fact a populist Class and Social Change 51 ‘technique of blending form and content’ so that ‘the intelligent reader will not require the professional critic’ to explicate their interdependence.8 Amis wanted to claw back whatever cultural power resides in literature on behalf of the ordinary intelligent reader, and it is this kind of challenge which identified the Movement with a spirit of social transition.9 Movement writers thus appeared to ride a tide of class change, standing in opposition to the writing elite of previous generations This was an impression instantly confirmed by those older writers, such as Stephen Spender, Edith Sitwell, Evelyn Waugh, and Somerset Maugham, who associated the Movement with declining social standards.10 The Movement’s rebelliousness, however, was less substantial than it seemed Indeed, it was riven by contradiction in its three main areas of assertion: the challenges to the class system, to cultural elitism, and to the metropolitan centre Lucky Jim, which reveals contradictions in all three areas, thus supplies an excellent summation of the Movement’s values and its limitations The inferiority of Jim Dixon, the ‘shabby little provincial bore’ as Margaret Peel calls him, in a moment of anger (p 158), is conveyed in class terms, and in such a way apparently to reverse the assumed hierarchy: his escapades make him a kind of lower-middle-class Everyman exposing the sham gentility of people like the Welches Even so, the object of his desire, Christine Callaghan, clearly occupies a higher social stratum and without the sham Her uncle Gore-Urquhart, particularly, seems to be the epitome of upper-middle-class metropolitan values There is, then, a distinct blurring of social status and sexual status in the novel’s love plot, particularly in the portrayal of Christine Callaghan as the object of Dixon’s social and sexual desire The novel’s contradictions are systematically laid bare in the conclusion, where Dixon, the champion of ordinary provincialism, is rewarded by being stripped of his middlebrow credentials: his relationship with Christine, and his new job as private secretary to her aristocratic London-based uncle, a ‘rich devotee of the arts’ (p 47), remove him from his class, cultural, and geographical bases It would be ridiculous to suppose that Amis was unaware that his provincial fairy-tale undermined his own intellectual position For Amis there appears to be a kind of inevitability about this, and this is the root of the quiet, but significant anger in Lucky Jim: it is a wry exasperation at the status quo and the compromises it seems to enforce What the novel demonstrates historically, beyond its identification of a new cultural mood and the glimpse of social change, is a tacit acknowledgement of the gradual nature of these changes It also dramatizes the Movement’s impotence and incoherence, its inability to mount an effective challenge to existing institutions in the terms it set for itself Jim Dixon’s ‘luck’, the 52 The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 unmerited success that dislocates him so radically, reveals the absence at the heart of Amis’s comic mode; but Amis identifies the source of this absence, and so offers a quiet warning about the essentially conservative nature of English society, and the obstacles that block the path to a genuine meritocracy A similar paradox is discernible in John Wain Looking back on Hurry on Down (1953), nearly a quarter of a century later, John Wain suggested it originated in a young man’s dissatisfaction with ‘the shape of English society’ He claims to have been ‘impatient’ with ‘class-distinctions’ but only in the manner of a ‘typical young person’.11 Wain’s hero Charles Lumley is burdened by middle-class expectations, but seeks to remain ‘outside the class structure altogether’ (p 52) The series of jobs he takes on place him either in a lower-class bracket (window cleaner, hospital orderly, chauffeur), or outside the legitimate structures of society (drug-runner, bouncer in a seedy nightclub-cum-brothel) The limited challenge or rebellion he embodies tallies with Morrison’s overview of the Movement writers, presented as less class-conscious or responsive to social change than their reputation suggests Writers like Amis and Wain identified with socialist agitation early in their careers (both Lumley and Dixon put forward socialist arguments), but never mounted a serious challenge to class distinction or privilege.12 Indeed, the Movement writers have ‘tried to discourage critics from thinking of their work as class-conscious and responsive to social change’; novels like Lucky Jim and Hurry on Down then appear to belong to ‘a literature resourceful in managing to play down class differences whilst at the same time making class one of its central themes’.13 George Orwell is sometimes revealed as the influence behind this partial rebellion, and as the justification for a later inclination towards the Right, in the name of anti-totalitarianism in the careers of writers like Amis and Wain.14 There are certainly contradictions in Hurry on Down particularly with regard to its treatment of class, though it may be possible to ascribe these to the broader sense of social upheaval rather than simply to an inherited literary quietism Anger and Working-Class Fiction The contradictions that accompany class transformation are particularly marked in the working-class fiction of the 1950s and 1960s This body of writing, often associated with ‘Angry Young Men’ John Braine and Alan Sillitoe, amounts to a school of gritty realism associated with the depiction of (especially) northern life This apparent resuscitation of the workingclass novel (which had previously been strong in the 1930s) might seem to reinforce class distinctions, or an ‘us’ and ‘them’ view of society.15 A closer Class and Social Change 53 look at these novels, however, reveals that the identities on which such an opposition depends are now insecure The discordance between established class credentials and material selfadvancement determines the mood of John Braine’s Room at the Top (1957) This is probably the most famous post-war novel of class mobility, charting the material success of its working-class protagonist Joe Lampton, whose triumph flies in the face of more conventional power structures – Oxbridge, family connections, inherited wealth The novel is narrated retrospectively by Lampton ten years on (p 7), and this establishes a temporal framework of particular political significance The novel’s ‘present’ is established as 1946–7, so the time of narration a decade later is made to conform to the date of publication, with the wealthy Lampton reassessing his avaricious drive.16 This dual temporal focus determines the reception: strictly speaking, Lampton’s experiences belong to the immediate post-war years of rationing and austerity; yet the impetus towards re-evaluation by the older and wiser Joe connects the action with the later 1950s and the consumer boom.17 In this way the novel invites its initial readership to make an anachronistic identification with Lampton’s predicament, and so to think again about the preceding decade, which results in the material affluence of the later 1950s The older wiser Lampton leaves us in no doubt what to think about his ‘success’: he acknowledges that his younger self ‘was of a higher quality’, more emotionally sensitive and responsive to others (p 123) This is an explicitly cautionary tale, with Lampton, whose rise is ‘the classic sell-out’, appearing as ‘a modern Faust’.18 It is immobility rather than mobility, however, that characterizes the predominant mood of the northern working-class novel of the period, indicating that ideological convictions not keep pace with economic reality In This Sporting Life (1960), David Storey produced an affecting work that is not easily explained Usually taken as a piece of provincial documentary realism, the book draws on both the author’s and his brother’s experiences as professional rugby league players.19 The success of Arthur Machin as a rugby league professional opens up an intriguing treatment of working-class ambitions Despite his status as a local celebrity with spending power, Machin is still caught in a familiar class trap, crystallized in the episode in which he takes his landlady Mrs Hammond and her children out for a meal in the restaurant of ‘Howton Hall’ This converted old country house has separate eating areas: a caf´e for the hoi polloi, and a more exclusive restaurant, which Machin favours The waiter seeks by intimidation to make them feel that they have ‘strayed over to the wrong side’ He points to the high prices on the menu with his pencil, and even underlines one or two prices for emphasis Machin retaliates by ordering the most expensive items, by pedantically querying the 54 The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 bill, and by leaving a derisory tip The ‘sense of achievement’ that Machin reports on their departure is belied by the sense of class stigma, and the failure of mobility that the episode underscores (pp 82–4) A sense of ossification pervades the novel, and the relationship between Machin and Mrs Hammond is doomed by the exploitative environment that has conditioned them She lives in a state of perpetual shock after the death of her husband in an industrial accident (possibly suicide), and is by turns impassive and resistant in the face of Machin’s aggressive (and confused) passion It is not simply that she can no longer respond (p 28); more significant is the fact that when she begins to tolerate Machin’s interest, she knows he defines her, partly, as an acquisition (p 145) She understands that his passion is of a piece with the exploitative system that has destroyed her husband and her happiness, and when Machin finally declares his love for her, she tries to spit in his face (p 175) Storey underscores the circular viciousness of a world of brute commodification Machin works as a lathe operator at Weaver’s, the same factory in which Mrs Hammond’s husband had been killed Weaver is also one of the two main backers of Primstone, the club for whom Machin signs, and for a handsome fee This reward stands in pointed contrast to Weaver’s refusal to admit liability for Eric Hammond’s death An iniquitous system of evaluation and human commodification links the worlds of sport and industry, and undermines the notion of escape through heroism and sporting prowess Professional rugby, like manual labour, emerges as harsh, dangerous, and destructive: its element of alienated aggression has been falsely glamorized Alan Sillitoe’s short story ‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’ (1959) presents a similarly petrified class structure, but puts this observation into something that approximates an existentialist framework The emphasis is on the ways in which individual free will is curtailed by pervasive systemic controls The narrator of the story is the teenage Smith, sent to a borstal in Essex for stealing the takings of a bakery Smith defines his social experiences in terms of an inescapable struggle between ‘us’ and ‘them’, that is social ‘Out-laws’ like him, in a perpetual contest with the ‘In-laws’, the forces of authority and conformity In Smith’s conception, this is essentially a struggle over wealth between those wage-earners in ‘shops, offices, railway stations’ (p 10) who uphold bourgeois standards, and an underclass, epitomized by his own family The focus of the contest in the story is the battle of wills between Smith and the borstal governor, who wants him to train as a long-distance runner and win the All-England Borstal Cross Country Running Prize Cup (p 39) Predictably, Smith throws the race on the big day, and is punished by the governor, motivated by petty vengeance (p 53) Smith has an unshakeable Class and Social Change 55 conviction concerning the integrity and honesty of his refusal to conform, to become the governor’s ‘prize race horse’ (p 12), and the story’s celebration of this ‘honesty’ goes beyond a confirmation of predetermined roles The governor is not interested simply in the rehabilitation of Smith; rather, he wants the glory that winning the Prize Cup will bring (p 39) It is this hypocrisy, this concealed use-function, that Smith resists As when he is running, Smith experiences rootlessness and isolation – together with an ambivalent sense of liberation – in asserting himself against the pressure to conform More rooted in its context is Sillitoe’s earlier Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), a frank treatment of the short-term aspirations and satisfactions of a working-class Nottingham community Arthur Seaton is a lathe operator in a bicycle factory who endures the hardships of factory life for the pleasures of Saturday night (despite the repentance that Sunday morning inevitably brings) He is a figure of ambivalent vitality On the one hand, his distrust of authority enables him to avoid the exploitative pitfalls of piecework, and to earn (he feels) a reasonable wage (p 32) Seaton is a distinctive example of the working-class protagonist in novels of this era since, unlike Joe Lampton or Vic Brown (in Stan Barstow’s A Kind of Loving [1960]), he has no aspirations for material advancement or class mobility Thus he betrays an element of class solidarity; but this political identity, an ‘instinctive working-class anarchism’ in Bradbury’s phrase, is merely embryonic, unfocused.20 And being ‘instinctive’, this anarchism is also ambivalent, since Seaton’s energy leads him to excessive acts of hedonistic self-assertion, drinking, fighting, and pursuing married women At one point he is conducting affairs with two married women (the sisters Brenda and Winnie) whilst also courting the girl he is to marry A pattern of personal development is implied after Brenda becomes pregnant by Seaton, and her sister Winnie’s husband arranges a sound beating for him He recuperates for several days, comforted by the loyal Doreen to whom he soon becomes engaged The novel ends with Seaton selfconsciously comparing himself to a caught fish, implying his willingness to be apparently ‘trapped’ in marriage, though he imagines his life will still be governed by the kind of ‘trouble’ that has characterized his youth (p 219) In Sid Chaplin’s The Day of the Sardine (1961), Arthur Haggerston relates the story of his gradual acclimatization as a factory worker in the North-East, another story of adolescent rebellion defeated by the necessities of workingclass life in an industrial city on the Tyne The title conveys the sense of an inevitable destiny for sardine packers like Haggerston, compared to the sardines, caught in their masses to be tinned (p 24) Haggerston’s awareness that he’s been ‘caught’ (like Arthur Seaton) only adds to the claustrophobia that this novel successfully evokes (p 263) Chaplin does not, 56 The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 however, offer a properly articulated class struggle; indeed, the novel demonstrates that Haggerston does not have an effective alternative to his looming fate In the novel’s one overt discussion of class, Haggerston’s elder co-worker George Flack insists that there is no such thing as ‘class’, that society is governed by ‘caste’ instead Arthur and his pals, advises Flack, ‘could get together and make a caste’ from which they would derive ‘as much satisfaction as the nobs’ (p 110) Much of the novel serves to underscore the inadequacy of this analysis Haggerston, in fact, becomes increasingly involved in gangland activities that culminate in a violent episode, after which his capitulation and conformity seem inevitable This gang culture is unstable, vulnerable to the emergence of individual interests.21 The only consolation for Haggerston (as is typical of the working-class anti-hero of the 1960s) is an ‘illicit’ sexual liaison with a married woman, the eventual failure of which leaves him bereft (p 263) An interesting aspect of many of these novels is how the narrative impetus often colludes with adolescent male desires for sexual gratification or initiation, and a selfadvancement that is linked to sexual assertiveness This is important because it sheds some light on the confused treatment of class issues I have been tracing, particularly where a sense of being contained or entrapped within the given social structure may coincide with the exhaustion of the youthful rebellion Maturity may then be confused with the need for social passivity as a necessary adult state This problem looms large in Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar (1959), which is comparable to Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in that the rebellious energy of its protagonist is, to a great extent, a question of male adolescent dissatisfaction The attendant class issues that are drawn into the vortex of rebellion are treated in a confused or contradictory fashion, though this seems less a part of the design than is the case in Sillitoe’s novel Waterhouse’s protagonist Billy Fisher is also a figure of transition, however, an office-worker with aspirations, whose father runs his own haulage business; and there is no evocation of class solidarity, since Fisher’s concern is simply to improve his lot and escape from his oppressive existence as a clerk for a firm of undertakers in the Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton By way of compensation, Fisher constructs various levels of fantasy thinking, and it is this characteristic that makes him a memorable protagonist, and which gives some credence to his dream of becoming a London comedy scriptwriter Does the novel, then, serve to expose ‘the myth of opportunity and upward mobility’ through Fisher, the deserving beneficiary-elect of a meritocracy that fails to deliver?22 Certainly, there is an element of authorial enthusiasm for the freedom and opportunity London is made to symbolize, Class and Social Change 57 as the focus for an aspiring writer; but Fisher’s choice to leave or stay is not really worked through in terms of a restrictive class structure Fisher’s dream of escape is really a fantasy by which he would avoid the class choices that define life in Stradhoughton Neither is he truly a thwarted talent: his club turn reveals his inadequacies as a performer, whilst his desire to write is not backed up by the willingness to apply himself (pp 124, 27–8) The larger social and political frameworks recede, since their contingency on Fisher’s predicament hinges upon the integrity of his aspirations In the absence of such integrity, the career of Billy Fisher is reduced to a tale of adolescent self-enlightenment Indeed, the most affecting moments in the novel are those episodes where the alternative perspectives of other characters – Liz, Councillor Duxbury, Fisher’s mother – serve to expose the arrogance or impercipience of Fisher The class issue, then, is often clouded in those narratives where youthful rebellion overlays perhaps more legitimate desires for social change The more serious obfuscation, however, emerges from the contradiction between ideological and economic definitions of class standing, such as are revealed in Storey’s This Sporting Life In other forms of social analysis, the categorization of class levels and distinctions is often conducted, as in the national census, on the basis of income and occupation, factors that are subject to objective measurement This understanding of the differentials that might underpin class distinctions is purely descriptive, sociologically neutral, and quite different from the sense of self-conscious affiliation implied in the process of class formation The objective measure of social strata used in market research – categorized as As, Bs, C1s, C2s, Ds and Es – establishes a six-stage rank order according to occupation that might support a simpler hierarchical class model for wage earners, with the middle classes distinct from the working classes.23 Evidently this descriptive approach is in tension with the idea of the self-aware adoption or promotion of class interests, an impetus that implies a challenge to the ‘given’ hierarchy, but sometimes, paradoxically, does so by reinforcing the basic opposition Education and Class Loyalty The conflicting and contradictory perceptions of the social order, which are often unresolved in discussions of the British class system, are particularly evident in the fictional treatment of education and its effects The dominant strand in the development of this theme has comprised those novels that investigate the ambivalent effects of educational opportunity It is worth remembering, however, that the impression of opportunity for everyone can be overstated In A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) Barry Hines’s theme is 58 The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 the lack of prospects for working-class school-leavers, let down by their schooling The only meaningful focus for Billy Casper, mistreated at home (on a northern housing estate), is the kestrel he has captured from its nest and trained The kestrel becomes an object of devotion for Billy – a living talisman – on account of its fierce independence (pp 118–19) The kestrel (‘Kes’) is eventually killed by Billy’s vicious elder brother, as a punishment to Billy for failing to place a bet on his behalf; but when Billy returns home at the end of the novel, having earlier fled the house in a ‘final’ gesture of anger and despair, there is a sense that he has adopted the world-view he had assigned to the kestrel: to appear ‘not bothered about anybody’ (p 118) But despite this closing mood of implied self-reliance, it is the sense of Billy’s predetermined and circumscribed future that prevails In a perfunctory interview, the Youth Employment Officer soon decides that Billy should be put down for ‘manual work’ (p 138), indicating the likelihood that he will follow his brother down the pit The bleak mood I have illustrated in The Day of the Sardine is linked to its pessimism about education In this connection, Chaplin cultivates a sense of class defeat in his depiction of post-war Newcastle upon Tyne This element of self-defeat is most visible in the episode of the schoolteacher pelted with rotten fruit, a plot hatched by Haggerston himself (p 61) He later discovers that the teacher was George Flack’s nephew, whose university education Flack had helped to finance (p 111) Flack puts his nephew’s eventual suicide down to something more metaphysical than the torment of his work (p 234); but the suspicion remains that the cruelty meted out by his pupils has been a factor, and the tale of his persecution is one of self-advancement through education unwittingly destroyed by workingclass children The class point is underscored by the nephew’s adoption of the name ‘Carruthers-Smith’ as part of his pursuit of social superiority More importantly, the schoolteacher’s plight is associated in Haggerston’s mind with Flack’s tortured memories of the First World War trenches (p 88) As a coal-miner, Flack had been drafted to assist the effort of ‘undermining’ the German trenches in an operation of mass devastation that leaves him feeling ‘dead’ (p 88) The specific mineworker’s knowledge facilitates the operation, and the killing of other workers en masse in the opposing trenches: it is the same dynamic of self-defeat that structures the novel and that is Chaplin’s main concern Despite these examples of the unavailability of advancement through education for working people, there is still a general sense that the 1950s is the decade in which the traditional working class begins to be absorbed into an expanding middle class, and many novelists have sought to examine the ways in which educational opportunity participates in this process The distinctive feature of this development, and the reason why class becomes a central and 68 The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 This is the true source of the frustration or anger that characterizes this phase of writing, where the individual has no meaningful collective principle to rely on The technical ‘tinkering’ with realism, to convey, for example, a quasi-existential helplessness for Arthur Seaton, demonstrates the apparent impossibility of regenerating a constructive working-class realism In later representations this technical point is still more evident Pat Barker’s Union Street (1982) is diametrically opposed to Raymond Williams’s hopes for a fictional form that might fruitfully play off older perceptions of continuity with newer experiences of discontinuity The title makes ironic reference to class solidarity and community spirit, for the action of the book is, largely, a catalogue of narrow-mindedness, poverty, and brutality, especially that which stems from male oppression and violence Barker’s method is cultivated to emphasize this social breakdown The book comprises a cycle of seven short stories and, although some characters appear in more than one story, the dominant impression is of discontinuous and isolated experience Even in those moments of linkage between stories, an apparent connection can reveal a grim significance The clearest example of this is the loop that links the last story back to the first At the end of the first tale, young Kelly Brown, who is brutally raped in the course of the story, is seen linking hands with an elderly woman she has chanced upon in the local park Kelly cares little for the old woman, however, and the story ends with her walking purposefully home, apparently resigned to the dismal future that life in the locale of Union Street offers The final story reveals that old woman to have been Alice Bell, in the process of giving herself up to death through exposure rather than submit to being put in the home she equates with a workhouse Kelly and Alice are strangers to each other, and appear as anonymous ‘extras’ in each other’s story The cyclic organization implies continuity, but the legacy that Alice offers Kelly is one of isolation and despair James Kelman’s How Late it Was, How Late (1994) is representative, formally, of the direction fiction has taken to treat questions of poverty and inequality The novel is dominated by the interior monologue of the unemployed Glaswegian Sammy, who goes blind after a violent skirmish with the police, and whose story is a catalogue of oppression at the hands of the state The novel’s overwhelming sense of interiority imitates the oppression Sammy endures There is something laudable in this voicing of experience that usually goes unheard; but the method serves to mimic the protagonist’s ordeal What is evoked here, as Cairns Craig notes of Kelman’s earlier novels, is a world of ‘economic deprivation’ for which there is no ‘possible salvation through the political or economic transformation of history’.43 Kelman’s dialectal form is a lament in which there is no trace of the traditional ... development, and the reason why class becomes a central and Class and Social Change 59 compelling issue in British culture in the late 1950s and the 1960s, is that the novel of working -class life... understanding of working -class identity The car plant becomes a focus of class struggle, but the novel’s most powerful image shows, effectively, that this struggle is Class and Social Change. .. previously been strong in the 1930s) might seem to reinforce class distinctions, or an ‘us’ and ‘them’ view of society.15 A closer Class and Social Change 53 look at these novels, however, reveals that