the making of the english working class review

Where Virdee departs from the usual narratives of the history and construction of the English working class is in his foregrounding of ‘race’ and racism as part of the critical analysis. Satnam Virdee’s new book is another footstep on this oft-trodden ground, and he states clearly that the book is part of ‘a critical analysis of working class efforts to secure economic and social justice’ (p.1). The making of the English working class has been an especially fruitful terrain for social scientists, providing them with grounds on which to explore nationhood (see The Making of the English Working Class by Edward Palmer Thompson), community (see Getting By Lisa McKenzie), and the colonial and imperial histories of the UK (Alex Rhys-Taylor’ chapter ‘Intersemiotic fruit: Mangoes and Multiculture’ in Emotion and Location: Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging). Racism, Class and The Racialized Outsider. This review was originally published on the LSE Review of Books. Sarah Burton finds that the key original contribution of this book lies in identifications of the complicity of some working class movements, people, and labour organisations in using the notion of the ‘racialized other’ as a tool of making – and grounding – the working class in ideas of nationhood and belonging, thereby securing a right of existence and equality for the working class. Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider aims to offer an original perspective on the significance of both racism and anti-racism in the making of the English working class.

The making of the english working class review