The word chav is an insult to working class, says Doncaster writer Lisa Fouweather

It’s social racism and it’s how society makes scapegoats out of working-class youth.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a Chav (noun) is:

“An insulting word for someone, usually a young person, whose way of dressing, speaking, and behaving is thought to show their lack of education and low social class.”

It is the latter part of this definition, 'low social class', that has seen the word 'chav' being the source of much controversy over the years.

Formed off the back of skinhead culture, a subculture which has largely dissolved today due to its associations with far right, 'Britain-first' esque/ 'Neo Nazism', a new group emerged in the early 2000s to take its place - 'chavs.'

Wholely considered by some people to be a subculture, unlike other subcultures, 'punks' or 'mods and rockers', for example, labels that people wear with pride, a descriptor of who they are, the word 'chav' has historically been used as an insult, a way, as discussed in author and political commentator Owen Jones' book, to 'demonise' the working class.

So much so in fact, that the £3.76 billion company, Burberry, discontinued the use of their iconic check pattern for a period in the early noughties, upon it becoming the garment of choice for so-called 'chavs.'

A popular brand to counterfeit, working-class youth were often kitted out in fake Burberry gear to impress their peers.

Because, unlike the middle and upper classes, the only way for the working class to 'prove' themselves is through what they wear.

Someone who lives in a mansion doesn't feel the need to adorn themselves with big chunky jewellery, or designer tracksuits, because their wealth is in their home. For someone who lives on a council estate though, the only way they feel they can 'impress' people is by wearing their (non-existent) wealth.

It is precisely because of their (non-existent) wealth though that chavs are associated with counterfeit designer wear.

With no money, but with a desperate desire to impress, they resort to buying counterfeit products, as is what happened with Burberry, thus earning the brand an unwanted reputation.

In an attempt to try to escape the associations it had formed in relation to 'chavs', by 2005, the famous Burberry check appeared on less than 5% of the brand's products, while the company ceased production on its chequered caps altogether.

Clearly, no one wants to be perceived as being a 'chav', but why?

'Chav': It's a derogatory word used to cause offence to people, pure and simple. A word used by the middle class to laugh at the poor.

Just consider 'Vicky Pollard' from Little Britain, for example, to see how we turn the working class into a laughing stock through our depiction of them in the media.

Pollard is actually an incarnation of a 12-year-old schoolboy that Matt Lucas encountered in a shopping mall as part of a college documentary project in 1993.

Lucas asked the boy "How are you?", to which he replied, "Yeah, no, yeah, dunno!".

Supposed to be representative of the working class, as in the 2010 book 'Stab Proof Scarecrows' by Lance Manley, it was surmised that "chav" was an abbreviation for 'council housed and violent.'

While this isn't true, the word actually originates from the Romani word 'Chavi', meaning child, it points to the stereotype that people have when they think of chavs.

It's not just the way someone dresses, it's where they're from, how much money they have, and what social class they're in.

An example of social racism, 'class abuse' by people asserting superiority- it is predominantly British working-class youth who are labelled with the pejorative term.

When I was in school, a state school in the Northern town (now city) of Doncaster, the word chav was thrown about in the playground at least daily.

And who were at the receiving end of the, 'you look like a chav' comments?

Kids who were disruptive. Kids who'd get sent home from school on the grounds of 'misbehaviour.' 'Problem children.' All of which only served to uphold the stereotype of the 'working-class delinquent.'

But again... Why?

A 'chicken and egg' situation, the problem is that what was being dismissed as, 'oh, they're just a chav', the 'problem', was in fact the symptom of the problem. And so whilst ever that underlying problem wasn't being solved, the symptom (the behavioural issues) continued, as they will continue to unless there is systemic change.

Unless we can see through the Tory tactics in which they're just trying to ease their own moral conscience.

'What conscience?'

By suggesting that all working-class people are 'lazy' and 'work-shy', the Tories imply that it is working-class people and working-class culture that is the problem, and not poverty and inequality.

Yet by pinning the blame on the symptom of the problem they created, 'they're at the bottom of society because they choose to be there', the Tories can avoid accountability for what is essentially negligence.

Negligence when the leader of our country, Rishi Sunak, is worth over £650 million, yet more than one in five people (14.4 million) are living in poverty.

No one should be living in poverty in 21st-century Britain.

'But we'll go ahead with the £20 billion cuts in public spending anyway because it's their own fault for being poor.'

A laughing stock, 'the working-class are working-class because of their own lack of ambition', the middle class tell us.

It's sad when this rhetoric is accepted, not just by the middle classes who look down on the working class, who view all working-class people as 'chavs', but even by the working class themselves...

Where an 'us vs them' dynamic is established as the 'respectable' working class tries to distance themselves from the 'chavs.'

Teachers in schools even, having had their minds infiltrated by stereotypes in the media, are quick to label children who show signs of 'problem' behaviour as chavs.

(Perhaps not to their faces, but by sending them out of class they are supporting the narrative that they are the way they are out of personal choice which, overwhelmingly, they're not).

'Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.'

-Emma Goldman.

When the middle and upper classes are handed bread on a golden platter, they have no reason to take it, exercising compliance because they have no reason not to.

The working class however don't have the luxury of generational wealth, hence why crime rates are higher in communities with a high working-class demographic because, when people become disillusioned with the current workings of society, they have two options.

1) Go along with it, 'unquestionable compliance'

or 2) FIGHT BACK.

But if we do the latter, we're punished for it.

'Acting up', we're 'deviants who want to cause chaos in society', 'attention seekers', (for which we cannot argue). We are attention seekers. Seeking attention for the world to take note and see that:

Delinquency and deviance are not born from man, but made from society.

It is people who are at the dregs of society that are vilified for daring to try to escape it because; working class struggles are 'consequences of personal behaviour, not the social structure of the country', as a rhetoric used by Conservative politicians to justify cuts to public spending chimes.

'Social mobility is not a myth, they just can't be bothered to look for the ladder.'

(There was never a ladder to begin with).

Check your privilege.

It is not a choice, and the sooner people awaken to that fact, the sooner the root cause of the issue: social inequality, can be properly addressed.