A Union of Crows

The sudden death of RMT leader Bob Crow has highlighted some of the peculiar attitudes we have in the UK toward money and social class. As during his lifetime life, many commentators couldn't help but draw attention to his six figure salary, with the clear implication that he couldn't possibly have still claimed to be truly working class or a socialist if he received such a sum.  Because, obviously, once you reach a certain level of income, your entire lifestyle and opinion automatically change and you become a grasping middle class capitalist.  It is a sad reflection of the sort of society we currently live in, that many people seem to believe that social class and political convictions are defined entirely by money.  Social class isn't about income: it is a mind set, a world view, that itself is the consequence of the particular social and economic conditions you exist in - in part, of course, it is imposed upon us by the attitudes those existing in different conditions have toward us.  That's how the UK's class structure was traditionally reinforced: through a process of indoctrination whereby those in positions of privilege were told they were inherently superior, deserving of their wealth and born to rule, whilst those who were less privileged were constantly told that they should know their place, that weren't deserving of advancement and that their failure to achieve advancement proved their inferiority.

But I'm digressing from the original point.  The focus on Bob Crow's pay also seemed to imply that there was something wrong with a union leader being rewarded with a big pay packet.  The clear implication being that running a large union, with hundreds of thousands of members in a variety of workplaces, is less demanding than being chairman of a large corporation - most of whom earn considerably more than Crow did, (or any other union leader, for that matter).  Indeed, if, as the right seems to believe, it is legitimate for senior executives and chairmen to receive bonuses bigger than Crow's entire annual salary, on the basis of their performance, then they should have been questioning why a union leader whose members (those employed in the Tube, at least) pay has consistently increased during what the government claims is a recession, hadn't been rewarded with massive bonuses every year of his tenure.  The other factor the media kept homing in on was the fact that Bob Crow still lived in a council house, despite his pay levels.  An attitude which seems to imply that social housing should only be a last resort for the very poor.  It shouldn't and traditionally hasn't been.  It existed to provide affordable housing as an alternative to private renting or buying property.  Again, there is no law which says that once you reach a certain level of pay you have to take out a mortgage.  But there's another assumption here, that by continuing to live in a council house, Crow was living proof that working class people don't know what to do with money when they have it, thereby proving they don't deserve to have it and are clearly inferior to those born to money.