Middle-class cult
Sir: As the correspondent mentioned in Mr Graham Jones's article (Spectifor, May 18) perhaps you would allow me to make a few comments.
Firstly, the Editor of the Glasgow Herald, like all editor, asks that letters to the paper should be kept as short as possible. Accordingly. I did not want to elaborate my point about 'middle class standards and values' when I thought they would be obvious to most Herald readers for, as Mr Jones admits, they are clearly identifiable. But if he wants a list of those middle class qualities, which I had primarily in mind, I would suggest — thrift, sobriety and diligence (which are, of course, the essential features of the moral code Mr Jones writes about).
Secondly, I did not mean to suggest that such 'standards and values' are "exclusive to the (present day) middle class.' But, as my labour history tutor (a fair-minded, non-Marxist and nonrevolutionary lecturer, if that's believable for a labour historian) has perceptively pointed out to me, they did originate exclusively from the Victorian middle class. Since then these 'standards and values' have been adopted by or inculcated into the working class through a historical process described by my tutor as the embourgeoisement of the proletariat. In other words, the abandonment of the spontaneity of working class life and the subsequent acquisition of middle class values which have given labour respectability and dignity.
Lastly, Mr Jones is quite right to point out that it is the reality of working class life behind this academic cult (adhered to by the 'best' of the bourgeois historians and sociologists) which makes it so perverse. However, I must add that while Annie Walker is, at times, a figure of ridicule in Coronation Street, is it not the case that the Ogdens, who are the epitomy of working class spontaneity, are derided as well for their wasteful ways? Robert G. Kiddie la Morgan Street, Dundee, Angus
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