THEY DON'T WHISTLE WHILE THEY WORK
Or smoke or drink ale. Digby Anderson reports on the embourgeoisement of the British working class WE ARE assured that Spanish fishermen called Pedro do it — 'always'. In America dwarves do it — in mines. In England workmen do it. It was hearing a Spaniard in Spain doing it the other week that made me notice that the lower classes here are not whistling any longer. (I hadn't noticed till then.) I don't mean wolf-whistling, which recent press reports say the Building Trade Association are about to ban because of sexual harassment, I mean tune-whistling. So it might have been going on, or rather not going on, a long time. But there's no doubt of it. Since I noticed, I've checked the places where it used to happen and it isn't happening. You can hang about under a ladder with a chap up it painting a window, peer under a car where another chap is lying on his back on one of those trolley things, follow the post- man or even venture into an allotment and you won't catch a note, not so much as a canary's bleep, not a single siffle. Whistling is an odd thing in terms of class. It is not, for instance, like spitting. Middle- class people strongly disapprove of spitting whoever is doing it, and that includes for- eigners even when they accept it among themselves and in their own country. In these terms, whistling is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Middle-class people do not whistle, at least in public. It is not for them. But they are perfectly happy for workmen to do it. Indeed they have come to expect it of them. They rather like them to do it. It gives us, perhaps quite wrongly, the impression that 'they' are happy going about their jobs. It plays to a feeling, again possibly quite incorrect, that working-class life is rather carefree and easy-going compared to the worries of the middle-class office, something `So you are going anywhere nice for the ceasefire?' to whistle about. 'Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go. . . . '
On continued inspection, or research as it is now called, whistling is not the only thing the lower classes are not doing. They have stopped doing almost everything they used to do. They do not call middle-class people 'squire' or 'guy'. Even that far less flattering invitation to collude in egalitari- anism, 'mate', is now rare. Their women- folk have stopped saying 'duck' and 'Itne. Even in street markets these names are going. So when they want to attract your attention they have to fall back on a vari- ant of '0i, you there'. There is far less use too of the rhetorical question tag as in, 'I was saying to the missus, wasn't I?' Or in, `I was just about to give you your change, wasn't I?' In London and the south, you will search in vain for a cloth cap (peak worn to the front). There are few working- class drinks left, no more light and bitter. Mild is for middle-class members of the Campaign for Real Ale. Everyone else drinks classless lager. There is no specifi- cally lower-class cigarette. And that exclu- sively lower-class method of holding a cigarette cupped in the hand and bending to take gasps is never seen. Nor are tem- porarily extinguished cigarettes parked behind the ear, or for that matter pencil stubs waiting to be sucked.
One should not push the argument too far. Even in the case of young people, where age counts for as much as class when it comes to identity, it is still fairly easy to guess someone's class once he talks or moves. And with older people shoes are, as ever, a very reliable guide. But, in gener- al, whether you take clothes, accent, vocab- ulary, leisure goods or food, there is now less of a distinct working-class culture.
Does that matter? For a middle-class conservative commentator to deplore the passing of whistling and pencil-licking will, of course, be seen as patronising and even offensive. The middle classes have an odd relationship with the lower orders. They see them variously as threatening, in need of help, dull, vibrant and quaint. And the observations above do carry a tinge of quaintness. Who are the middle classes to complain that the lower classes don't whis- tle any more? Are the workmen to organ- ise their lives merely to provide amusement for toffs?
But hold on. The complaint is not to be seen off that easily. The lower classes themselves and their left-wing middle-class apologists have a weakness for nostalgia where quaint old customs are concerned. True, both are ambivalent about lower- class culture. The apologists want to abol- ish or reverse what they call the objective features of lower-class life, the poverty, exploitation, powerlessness, alienation and the rest. They are less sure what they want to do with the culture, with the whistling. Even the Marxists among them, and there are still plenty of those whatever they now call themselves, are unsure.
On the one hand, the culture is seen as a natural reaction to the miseries inflicted by the poverty and exploitation. On this anal- ysis, once the objective features are cor- rected, whistling and the rest of the lower-class culture will vanish and good riddance. By the end of the second Blair government, when the lower orders are properly remunerated, seated, as is their due, on works councils and empowered in their local communities, they will be as keen on the ballet as anyone else. There will be no reason for them to have a differ- ent culture. Their tastes, accents, clothes will be as various as any other class or group when class and group count for less.
On the other hand, lefties romanticise working-class culture. They see it not only as sustaining lower-class 'communities' in adversity, whistling to put up with dull work, but as being hammered out by suf- fering and hallowed by solidarity. It has aesthetic worth in its own right. Lefties are suckers for trade union banners and folk songs about mining disasters. Some even affect the culture in their own lives, modu- lating their accents, dressing 'down' and drinking tea from mugs. So I am not the only one who might be in favour of men on ladders whistling. There are plenty of impeccably politically correct chaps who might mourn its demise. For there is an element of conservatism in such lefty thought. What these people value and what some members of the lower classes may also value is tradition. Say 'tradition' and everyone thinks of aristocratic or bourgeois traditions. But there are work- ing-class traditions and the arguments for them, whoever advances them, are as tra- ditionalist as those of the Prayer Book Society or the followers of the hunt.
The Benns, Thompsons, Christopher Hills and Hoggarts take old working-class fashions seriously. To that extent they are as old-fashioned as Disgusted of Tun- bridge Wells. I suspect they might be wor- ried about the refusal to whistle, and not only because it is traditional. When work- men stop whistling they start doing other things, and these may not be improvements either aesthetically or in terms of leftist ideology. For every postman who whistled well there were five who whistled rather badly. But better a flawed canary postman than one with headphones going tsich- tsich, better cloth caps than American baseball caps. The English lower classes never ate well by international standards, but better hotpot, collapsing boiled pota- toes and watery cabbage at a properly laid table, even at the silly time of 6 p.m., than a packet grabbed out of the microwave and eaten at any time, usually while moving about; better light and bitter in the public bar with mates than lager swigged from the can while sitting on a carpark wall.
I suppose in the end the question is whether the lower orders are happier wear- ing their caps the wrong way and saying `absolutely' like everyone else; but even that is in doubt. Stern psychologists have recently carried out research to find out what makes people happy. Money does not score very highly. Some rather traditional things such as families and dancing score highly. So per- haps whistling might be important. Even if it cannot be shown scientifically that 'they' were happier whistling, one thing is certain: they sounded happier.
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