The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class

Once they were portrayed as the salt of the earth. Nowadays, they expose their lives in TV documentaries, they love Gucci and hate the Euro—the broadsheets cast them as xenophobes and exhibitionists and mock their tastes and attitudes. Who are the white working class and what have they done to deserve this portrayal? In this controversial book, South East-London born Michael Collins defends the white working class against such slurs and caricatures. He argues that their culture is intimately linked to a landscape and a concept of home—in his case, Southwark, where his family lived for generations. As Collins delves into his family’s history, he discovers that missionaries from other classes have always descended to study, influence, patronise and politicise them, long before the contemporary intelligentsia began to demonize them. The Likes of Us is a fascinating and wholly original examination of London's white working class.