Classed complaints Whose voice gets heard?

There have been many community campaigns in Hiraeth, the most notable being the campaign to save the old library which Alex documented in the previous section. Although the old library campaign has seen some success as the community charity now manage the building, there had been several instances where residents were ignored by their local council representatives. I wanted to highlight the classed element to these local complaints, as many residents constructed narratives of disappointment and frustration as their voices were not listened to by powerholders. Roger, a middle-class incomer, explained to me that people in Hiraeth just do not know how to complain correctly, implying that implicit, middle-class capital is required to be taken seriously (Bourdieu 1984). Being disregarded and ignored by powerholders had implications for residents’ sense of self and value, as their community was not seen as ‘worthy’ of investment.

When I spoke to Lisa, a mum of three in her thirties, she mentioned her attempt to ask local councillors about the money the council had made on plots of land, and why some of this profit was not going towards renovating the local parks. I undertook two interviews with Lisa, the first with just her and her youngest son, and the second with her, her husband, her mother, and all three of her children. She mentioned her attempt to interact with the local councillors in both of our meetings:

Lisa: …and yeah the other street parks have gone and never, never been replaced [LF: yeah], and I wrote a letter to one of the councillors years back, um, well I wrote it to all the local councillors because they had sold two plots of land off, and one was for, I think it was 12 million, the other one was for 11 million, and after they took the park away at the top of Ladyhill Road, they had, I think it was 13 thousand pound shortfall why they couldn’t replace it, and I thought, well you just made 23 million [LF: yeah], why isn’t any of that money ever getting put back into the area? [LF: yeah], it never, it never does.

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Lisa: …you just never, they’re just not interested in this, and out of the six councillors I emailed, only one got back to me [LF: Yeah] and he just, he said [LF: ridiculous] that this, um, this area of Pencaer is not the council’s priority, it’s all [LF: oh nice!], that’s all they care for, it’s like, the Waterside.

There was frustration in Lisa’s narrative. Being told by a councillor that the area “is not the council’s priority” further constructs Hiraeth as a community that lacks worth and is a minimal asset to the city. When Lisa claimed that all they care for is Waterside, a gentrified area of the city which has been reconstructed as a centre for middle-class consumption, Hiraeth is positioned as an area not cared for by the council and not worthy of investment, perhaps due to its working- class nature. This kind of story is not new, as many working-class communities across the country experience an avoidable decline due to councils selling off assets to private developers and aims of gentrification in and around the area (Minton 2009; Paton 2013; Jeffery 2018). Nothing appears to make Hiraeth more of a forgotten suburb than the area’s own councillor recognising that the community’s demands are not the priority of the city council. Again, this shows that the relationship between classed and place-based identities is dynamic and inter-relational (Watt 2009; Taylor 2010; Benson and Jackson 2012).

The reason for suggesting that there is a classed element to whose complaints get acted upon or ignored comes from this narrative from Roger, a middle-class newcomer:

Roger: And individuals have done, individuals have done um, see that’s the other thing that people tend not to understand that even as an individual you’ve got some influence, you don’t necessarily have to gang together [LF: mm] um, you don’t uh, I mean I’ve written to the council a few times, uh with a suggestion, and never once had it really turned down, ever [LF: really?] yeah, I mean I’m lucky cos I know councils, and I know how councils behave [LF: yeah] uh and I know who, who to collar and who not to, but this road here for example, um, I, I wrote originally about the state of this road four years ago, um, and argued, well argued, I said in the letter, that it was now a danger [LF: yeah] to, to children crossing the road because there were pot holes [LF: yeah] right at the end of the road, and um, all

they’d been doing in years gone by is just, putting a bit of tarmac over concrete [LF: mm]… and in fairness, within a few months they, they started off at the bottom there and did, and did that [LF: mm] um, the fact that they came right up to our house which was, which was what was interesting *laughs* [LF: *laughs*] I said to Maureen oh dear, oh dear, I’m not gunna tell anyone that I’ve written to them *laughs*

Roger boasted that out of all his suggestions to the council, he had “never once had it really turned down, ever”, suggesting his understanding of the implicit social and cultural capital required to be able to communicate successfully with powerholders - “I know councils, and I know how councils behave”. Due to his employment history as a manager in social services, he has the implicit knowledge and the correct habitus to feel at ease in communicating with the council and initiating action in an individualised manner (Bourdieu 1984). If you have the social capital to know “who to collar and who not to” then you see results, perhaps something that Lisa above does not possess. Roger later went on to explain that the local councillor believed that residents “don’t know how to complain properly”:

Roger: …there’s a tendency to feel that, the council, a) don’t know what they’re doing and b) um, are not interested in us, uh, uh and, and, and, are just useless [LF: mm] and actually that’s not, that’s not fair, um, and when the uh, the councillor here, Councillor Jones, is very, very good actually, he’s very, very good and he, he came round here one day, he was canvassing, and I was talking to him about different things, and he said to me, he said, the problem is that people down here don’t know how to complain properly [LF: mm] uh, he said, because they get almost to the point of protest and there’s that sort of instinctive thing where, you protest too much, we’re gunna, not, you know, but if you ask reasonable, you make a rational uh, argument, we’ll look at it [LF: mm] and in fairness I think, I think they do, and obviously there’s a whole question about priorities and all the rest of it, but uh, yeah This narrative has constructed two ways of complaining to the council: the irrational, to the “point of protest” way of complaining, typically associated with working-class residents; and “reasonable” and “rational” methods of complaining, associated with the middle-classes. To get to the “point of protest” is to be seen as irrational, whereas if a rational and reasonable argument is made, this is respectable and worth listening to (Skeggs 1997). This is framed as the reason why some residents’ complaints are not dealt with by the council, wholly ignoring Roger’s class advantages of knowing “who to collar and who not to” and his implicit middle-class social and cultural capital.

Highlighting the struggles of working-class residents to get their voices heard when wanting to improve their community is important as it suggests a lack of value attributed to the community and its members by local representatives. Arguably, this demonstrates how class and place play out in the everyday, and how place-attachment, even with the community’s flaws, is misrecognised by those in positions of power (MacDonald et al 2005; Watt 2006; McKenzie 2015).