Unlucky enough to pass our eleven plus
we were claw-crane selections
from our class dropped into a history
the likes of us had never read.

Inducted with pictured corridors
of Spiritus Vicis 
spouting opportunity
from the mothballed grammar
of the cloak-wielding Headmaster
and his fountain of Latin characters.

Amo, amas, a matter of opinion
was to know our place. Our mouths
were swabbed for memories.
We were to become
someone else’s nostalgia.

By the time we left early,
five of a seven-year stretch,
we stooped off to the factories
that laughed at us
for taking the long way round.

(e-mail from the paper’s editor)

For your purposes, the collective noun for the working class is
‘These People’ or ‘Those People’ never ‘The People’ or ‘My People’.
Ideally you are looking for an inbred, saggy clothed, Sports Direct,
Union Jack pale-faced male who claims he can trace his ancestors
back to Neanderthal times. They’ll have a tight-leashed musclebound
dog, with rabid flecked jaw, ravenous for an outsider’s hairy
calf.

The female of the species, will be a barely been to school, heavily
made up heavily pregnant, ciggie hanging from botoxed-lipped
slag with a neck tattoo of an ex-boyfriend, pushing a brown
skinned baby wailing its lungs out. Bonus if she’s got slightly older
multi-coloured offspring biting at her heels.

For interviews, go to a rainy Saturday market where salt-of-theearth
traders shout ‘cum an’ ‘av a look, pand a bowl’& other such
unintelligible tongue-juggling noises, to try and get you to buy
their rotting fruit and veg. Swear about the weather, then ask ‘how’s
business gavna?’ before moving on to ‘do you think there are too
many immigrants living in your back garden?’ or ‘how would you
feel if your daughter came aboard with a Caribbean rapper?’

When describing their estate, use words like concrete, boarded up,
brutal, dank, bleak, unloved – pepper your sentences like a rancid
Berni Inn steak. Get them to heap blame on the metropolitan
elites, who they feel rule over them like hand-me-down warlords
from Henry the VIII; politicians will be the main target, but they’ll
also harp on about big business, the council, estate agents, &
middle-class teachers who make their kids learn German or Jihadi.

Talk of Brexit will give vent to their alleyway of opinions on
independence, from ‘now we can take our country back’ to ‘now
we can send them all back’. (Btw, only ever mention the Royal
Family, when getting them nostalgic). Pretend to take copious
notes to induce a feeling they’re finally being listened to. Don’t
waste time on their cultural interests, you’ll only get them gabbing
on about their second hand cousin removed who got to the
regional semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent with their rendition of
God Save the Queen whistled entirely through their le nostril (the
other one will have a ring through it).

If they start talking about pigeons or their collection of dominoes
trophies, close them down, as you’ll end up in some mouldy old
shed, offered a roll up and a mug of quarried tea. When you leave,
slip them a score (that’s a twenty) tell them it’s been real, then rush
off home to submit copy, neck a whisky, snort a line then shower
yourself furiously, as if you’ve just been raped.

‘The people who make the wheels go round have always been ignored by
novelists. When they do find their way between the corners of a book,
it is nearly always as objects of pity or as comic relief.’
George Orwell

Jo’s mum Helen is a slag,
doesn’t stop her having a go
at Jo getting pregnant by a black man
and staying in a hole

with that pansified little creep though.
Colin’s mum is no better,
she’s just after his dead dad’s
insurance money, but Colin’s

a little toe rag running for his life,
who’ll let the whole fucking lot
of them down. Arthur’s a proper
hard bastard, working his seed

into as many women as he can.
And guess what, Victor’s only gone
and got his missus up the ready rough,
so has to live with the mother-in-law,

and she’s had a leading role
in working men’s jokes for years.
Tommy’s off up the match, an away game
kick-the-shit out of any proper casual

who’ll have it. Ray beats up his missus
when he gets home, stamps on her throat
like some rat he found in the bog. Lol’s Dad
commits the horrors with her sister

and her mate any place he can, then tries
it on with her until Combo ends the cunt.
Young Timmy knows how to enjoy himself,
he cleans double breasted windows,

or checks under the sink for some
scantily clad plumbing, before delivering
a whipped cream double entendre
to bored housewives. Rita likes a bit

of that an’ all, off shagging Bob,
with her mate Sue, but her namesake
tries her hand at books instead of dotting
her luck on the bingo of a Saturday night.

Shirley’s fucked off to Greece, can’t stand
talking to the wall no more, cooking
egg ’n chips for her husband,
who believes that’s a woman’s place.

Billy’s dad knows what a man should be,
and it’s not a fucking dancer.
Rent’s smacked off his boat, so goes swimming
for a pearl in the filth of the bog,

whilst Dushane’s a boy at the top
of his game, on the estates round his way.
Like Frank’s kids, who surround him
like a wreath, this all may be true.

And Big Chris is right when he says,
‘It’s been emotional.’
But is that really all we are?
Do we not go by any other names?

And we are marching, rising up with borderless rhythm, genetically
mixed beats, Far I growling, Upsetters cheering, Head Charge
chanting, stepping

from our skin, uniting the left and right side of our brains. Heeding
a four/four beat, smooth as Night Nurse or the guy who sold us cheap
weed

with fire-cracking seeds that burn our nose. The money’s signed on
for, the van siphoned to the max, we spark a spliff careful not to catch
a fire

with our petrol lips. Late as a dealer we drive to Shakespeare bass upon
Dunbar snares along the M45 out of Coventry. Shooting past Babylon

leaving a cloud of collie on the outside lane, they light up under blue
sirens. We are burned. The coming decade is a road of hot coals and
we can’t dance.

I’ve seen all the poster boys of communism;
Marx & Engels, Lenin & Trotsky, Guevara & Castro.
Read each of them all, an all, an all, like torn out
pages of porn found down the fields. Plastered

them up in a book of scrap kept under the bed. Watched
endless clippets of their icon-you-not speeches,
unfurled egos from the throats of Mao to Chavez.
Agreed with a lot of the wind, caught up in their sails

flapping like a butterfly’s wing. Saw them cult-like,
occupy the minds of disciples stood outside High Street
brands flashing indoctrination with no gloss but full
of emulsion to slip between the arse-cheek IQs of passers-by.

I’m from those masses, full of coke and free of opium,
watching Kentucky fried mind-fattening programmes
where the runt of personality is wrapped up like bikini-clad
mags written by middle class lads you buy on your way

to the tills, along with breath fresh mints and full strength
condoms. I’ve been in the pubs & clubs, shop floors & sites,
school gates & libraries. Been on protests & marches,
took part in witch hunts of rich cunts we never managed

to kick the fuck out of. I’ve been with all of those comrades,
holding kids & sickles, books & shovels, remotes and Molotovs.
But I never could decide whether to stick with the pack or twist
my arms back and let them hang, broken by my side, as God
intended.