Class Hate

William Hickey writes a colum in "The Daily Express". He sneers at white working-class folk, calling us "neds". Hickey actully jeered at poverty stricken white working-class folk who were so poor that they could'nt buy shoes for their children, who walked about in their bare feet in Summertime.
It sounds hard to believe; but Hickey actully hates and despises working-class folk so much that he chortled over us getting T.B. which attacked our joints & limbs & twisted them all out of shape, leaving us crippled & unable to get employment thus we lived in poverty for most of our lives.
I remembered Matt who lived in a Gorballs slum off Cumberland street in the 1940's. Matt wore a hip-cast & went about painfully on crutches. T.B. eats away the delicate surface of our joints, causing great pain.
Jerry was another T.B. victim. His leg was 7 inches short, and he was just a young teenage lad from North Glasgow. Then there was Peter who had twisted legs. I saw him recently leaning on a sort of a zimmer chair with wheels & brakes on it. All his life, since he was at school, Peter has hippled about painfully. Now in his mid-70's he's getting near the end of his life, all that long time he's endured poverty.
Alan was another lad I knew, he had a big lump on his spine. T.B. ate away his bones, until the vertabrae collapsed into a twisted hump.
These are the folk Hickey jeered at mockingly in his column. Its a revival of the 18th century mindset of Thomas Malthus & David Picardo. They thought badly of white working-class folk & wanted them to die so that the middle-class types would not be taxed to help them survive. Then they wonder why working-class folk despise, even hate such callous middle-class types.
It was the could-not-care-less attitude of the middle-class that forced us workingh folk into vermin infested tenement slums in Glasgow, etc. It was only when it was pointed out that the awful diseases we suffered could break out into middle-class areas, that they began to express concern, and cried for social change besides working-folk now had the vote, and in their attempts to get the power, they had to sweet talk us with decent housing with baths, inside toilets and electric.
Prior to then we had gas-lighting, outside toilets shared with 3-4 families, no hot water. William hickey expresses the callous mindset of upper and middle-class types in those days. They're not really humans, such people, they're sort of devils in human form, full of hatred & contempt for us white working class men.
H. Mullin, Apr. '09