Four Yorkshire Men. Competitive impoverishment. Redistribution vs Recogniton

A comment on my blog got me thinking - someone wrote that her childhood had been more impoverished (than mine, presumably.) I have found this quite common - this competitive 'onedownmanship' ... "Oh you had it bad! But, I had it worse!" I am reminded of the Four Yorkshire Men sketch:

"GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!"

And on it goes - reaching the heights of "lick road clean wit tongue!...and when we got home our Dad would kill us and dance about on our graves singing, "Hallelujah!"... #class matters. It matters so much that people are competitive about it. I am very curious about this, about this fractioning up of poverty. For me, the working class don't need to be divided among themselves - which of course they are. Look at the invention of the 'underclass' by the political class. There is no such thing as an underclass. They mean the unemployed. They mean people who do not work and have never worked. To call a group an underclass is to deny them any kind of status. The underclass are better called the non-working working class.
Years ago, my brother - a very articulate, capable bloke - was talking about his working class background when some guy said to him "You're not working class." His answer sticks in my mind. "I shared a bed with my younger brother for 3 years, and ate weetabix for tea, how working class do you want me to be?" Mind, he was talking to a bloke with the word FUCK tattoed on his forehead. But the point is ... how working class do you want me to be? Funny how we argue the toss about this, dividing and sub-dividing ourselves. For class read power/powerless. It's not one another we should be worrying about in the class wars - it's those who have power, wield it and continue to self-perpetuate their and their family's position. David Cameron. I am not saying any more than that.
This is also an argument about class vs identity (politics) and so far as I am concerned there is no argument. Nancy Fraser argues that the preoccupation with identity is detrimental to the redistribution of wealth (redistribution vs recognition.) Some have even called the preoccupation with identity a top-down tactic to keep the bastards down. The redistribution of wealth and power would bring real change for most - identity is a smoke-screen, recognition is all well and good but how far does that get you? Identity divides and separates, builds barriers where none were.
I make no claims to be working class now. How could I? I am a professional, and part of a professional class. But my heritage is my heritage is my heritage. My father was a printer, but he might just have easily have been a ship's rigger if his father had lived and he had followed in his footsteps. He might also, just as easily have been a grammar school boy if he hadn't failed the 11+. My mother worked in Smith and Nephew filling Nivea tubs with cream (she fell asleep doing it, too - but that is a whole other story.) Later, her working life was a succession of chip shops - wages that paid directly for my university degree, sent to me each week in an envelope. I'm not being melodramatic, that's a fact.
Harvey Gillman, a Gay culturally Jewish Quaker said that we are all "a minority of one.", and no-one is denying individual differences, that's what makes us uniquely human, and ourselves (taking full note of society's current obsession with personal fulfillment and our obsession with 'living our dreams') But I honestly believe that there is more that joins than separates us, and divisions - the poor are the poor, whatever the flavour and uniqueness of their sense of self - leads powerless. Knowing who you are, and being recognised and acknowledged doesn't mean that you are suddenly able to participate at every level of society equally, and it doesn't mean that you will reach parity with those in power (a lack of recognition is often dependent on a lack of economic power.) I'm not belittling difference, or assimilation either, I'm just not willing to give up on social politics. And I believe that true recognition ultimately requires economic equity.