I’ve interspersed this with News headlines, because some people deny that WOKE now has a negative connotation. Yes, they’re often from iThe Daily Mail, The Sun, The Star, GB News … but also from The Daily Mirror, The Guardian and the BBC. I didn’t have to look far.
NEWS NOW (linked) lists stories chronologically. I mainly selected UK ones. There are even more US ones. You could find hundreds if you keep scrolling.
Technically, going by the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition, woke means “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)”, but today we are more likely to see it being used as a stick with which to beat people who aspire to such values, often wielded by those who don’t recognise how un-woke they are, or are proud of the fact.
The Guardian
Language is what it’s used for. It changes. Overwhelmingly, the UK press are using woke in a negative sense in late 2021. We can trace back, and indeed Donald Trump was using both woke and snowflake in an abusive way before it gained more common currency. That’s not good, but when I say ‘This kitchen needs a good blitz (clean)’ I am not deferring to Hitler’s use of the word.
You may find that offensive, you may say it is because newspapers have a right wing / corporate / capitalist agenda, but that’s what they’re doing and it is language change. I use it in that way too, and for me it is a description of people who want to change history, pretend history didn’t happen and who are devoted to virtue signalling. Yes, pulling down statues makes me really fucking angry. I don’t approve of the National Trust wallowing in guilt over the properties they control.
On the other hand, I fully approve of footballers taking the knee. I really enjoyed seeing the cheerful Gay Pride marches. That’s the positive side of ‘woke.’
Slavery is central
Slavery keeps coming back into the debate on BLM, then on statues and on country houses. That’s one I really get steamed up about. Slavery was my third year option in American History. When I was doing my MA in American Studies, I needed a research course credit in American History. I earned it going through microfiches from the British and American Anti-Slavery societies. Part of the task was to trace and list where slaves originated in Africa.
After dusty hours ruining my eyesight, I know. So fast forward a few decades and I was speaking in London. Afterwards, a Nigerian guy started a conversation. He got into the then popular idea of the UK and USA paying compensation for slavery to African states. I asked him about his ancestry and he proudly told me his forbears were chiefs in Africa. So I told him he was the one who should be paying compensation, not me. The vast majority of African slaves were captured by fellow Africans. They were sold on to Arab slave traders who transported them to the European forts on the coast, where they were sold and transported to the Americas. If his forebears were chiefs, they certainly had the blood of the slave trade on their hands. My ancestors, as rural poor in Dorset, had nothing to do with the slave trade nor its profits. On the contrary, they were liable to be transported as indentured servants (i.e. slaves for a fixed term of seven years) for poaching a rabbit from the local landowner’s estate.
Yes, I know that Greek, Roman, African and Arab slavery lacked the “chattel” aspect of British and American slavery. In many aspects, it was worse than Latin American slavery because in most Spanish and Portuguese territories, conversion to Catholicism bestowed some rights on a slave. The Protestants were the worst slave masters.
Interestingly, there’s a reason why so many statues of ex-slaveholders exist. When Britain finally abolished slavery (thirty years before the USA), massive compensation was paid to Caribbean slaveholders. Some of it went into those country houses the National Trust is so guilty about. A lot was invested … which fuelled the railway boom in Britain, and accelerated industrialisation. Also, because of guilt, and perhaps the hope of buying a place in heaven, a lot of that money went into schools, hospitals and civic works. That’s why they got the statue in the first place.
Let’s leave that one. It was abolished in the British Empire (ouch! Empire! Rude word) 190 years ago.
SEE ALSO: CIVIL WARS AND STATUES on this blog.
Boomers
In the other generational direction (and GENERATION is a strong collocation) boomer is also now used as a term of abuse. The first person I heard using it that way was a senior politician in a Radio Four interview. He was bemoaning the fact that the boomer generation had locked up such a large share of the economy (though often only on paper in house prices) and saying the business of government was to move the money from the boomers to his generation. What he was saying, between the lines, is ‘my parents gave me a good education, bought my first car, helped me avoid a student loan, lent me money to get my mortgage … and now the old bastards refuse to lie down and die and give me the rest! I’d expected it by now!’ Was he a rabid left-winger? No, that was Michael Gove. His party soon shut him up on that one.
However, the uses on NEWS NOW headlines seem to be simply descriptive rather than abusive.
Boomer seems to collocate with Straight White Western Male … in speech, though obviously 50% of baby boomers must have been female, and given the female longevity advantage that will now be more than 50%. Why is straight offensive? We had a vigorous discussion with a gay friend who kept referring to ‘You breeders …’ I pointed out that it would be considered incredibly offensive if I used a term for gay people based on their sexual practices. (We remained friends).
Britain in the 1940s had far fewer non-white people, as Commonwealth immigration starts about then, so yes, usually white. Maybe not in my area. Several kids two years older than me were mixed race. I found out why years later in an airport limo in Washington DC heading to the airport. The driver was African-American and asked where I came from. I said ‘Bournemouth.’ He said, ‘Do you know Win-ton.’ I said I had lived there. He told me he was there with the US Army in 1944, and added, ‘Very, very friendly women in Win-ton.’ I said that might explain the number of mixed-race kids two years older than me, and he had to pull the car over, because he was laughing so much, which started me laughing too. We both ended up in tears of laughter. Those kids are Boomers. But not white. Liverpool and Bristol have black populations established 500 years. Some are Boomers.
BOOMER is another word that has changed. My 39 year old son says ‘Boomer’ now means someone who is inept with technology, or perhaps has an iPhone10 rather than an iPhone 12. He has been called a ‘Boomer’ though born in 1982. He says it’s standard and semi-jocular. If you screw up something on a computer, people will laugh and say, ‘Boomer!’
We are classic REAL baby boomers. I was born in the biggest boom year of all, 1947. As my dad used to say, they didn’t send you home on VE Day in 1945. For most of the army, the war ended in mid 1946. So 1947 was the BIG year. In my state secondary school, there were an unprecedented six forms of thirty boys in my year. The years above us had four forms. We were born weeks before the NHS started. We had free school milk. We also had free sweet sticky orange “juice” at school, with no toothbrushing facilities. We baby boomers were marked by tooth decay and fillings.
There was a class dimension, for both of us. Our parents were ‘first generation middle class.’ They left school young, but took night school classes assiduously. My dad was a sales rep in the motor industry, but also taught motor vehicle maintenance. Karen’s dad was head of an aircraft drawing office, and later investigated air crashes and also had taught maths at evening classes. We both grew up in three bedroom detached houses. We both went to selective state grammar schools. We were the first generation to have tertiary education.
Both my grandfathers were ‘skilled working class’ or C2 in the advertising index. One graduated from coal mining to operating a crane carrying molten steel in a steel mill in Wales. The other graduated from station porter to engine cleaner to fireman to engine driver. Karen’s grandad operated and maintained a weir and locks.
Our great-grandparents were rural poor. Tracing the family trees, they improved their lot by joining the army and becoming sergeants.
The 1950s and 1960s
We grew up with rationing. (Ah, poor me!). Sweet rationing ran well into the 1950s as did clothes rationing, and meat, cheese, butter. As has been said, 50s England was much like 60s East Germany.
Our teachers were mainly a pre-war generation. They wore dusty academic gowns. They were judgemental. I remember when the first lot who were only half a dozen years older arrived. They were different, thank goodness.
The world was judgemental. Banks were run by pompous Captain Mainwarings who set the rules. I remember in my Mod days racing to leave the cinema before the National Anthem. I was grabbed by the scruff of the neck by a large bloke who cuffed me hard round the ear and said, ‘I was up to my neck in muck and bullets for the likes of you!’ and he got general adult approval. No, we never considered suing him for assault and post-traumatic stress. We just stood, quaked a bit, and listened to the anthem. I remember walking across the Square in Bournemouth and being stopped by a policeman, who said ‘I heard that!’ and took my name and address and threatened prosecution for obscenity or at least a report to the headmaster of my school. He’d heard me say ‘fuck.’ When I went to the dentist during the school day, I’d be stopped at least once by a policeman on a bike and asked where I was going and why.
So we rebelled against all that.
Philip Larkin:
Sexual intercourse began
Philip Larkin
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
That’s why we loved The Goon Show, Monty Python, Not The Nine O’Clock News, Fawlty Towers … no subject was taboo. We loved Frank Zappa. We loved Randy Newman. We loved Mel Brooks.You were allowed to make a joke about everything and anything. Note this March 2021 headline:
We did not shake our heads in horror when the colonel in Fawlty Towers explained the difference between two racial stereotypes. The joke was on the colonel, not the ethnic groups.
WOKE also means with no sense of humour, no sense of irony. I’m sure that the widespread negative use of woke was reinforced during the Fawlty Towers debate.
SEE “FAWLTY TOWERS & TALL POPPIES” for more on this, and other contentious sitcoms and TV programmes … attacked by “The Woke Brigade.” A quote from the article:
BBC NEWS online: An episode of sitcom Fawlty Towers removed from a streaming site for containing “racial slurs” is to be reinstated. John Cleese had attacked the decision to remove the episode as “stupid,” as well as taking a swipe at those who take a revisionist view of history in the context of the Black Lives Matter debate.
Money
House prices are the key. Then particularly in public sectors, index linked pensions existed, something no country will be able to afford in future.
We never had them … but we were self-employed by 1980 and yes, we got beneficial tax treatment on pension contributions.
We boomers are told we had it easy. Maybe. A friend who worked in a bank bought his first house new in 1970 for £3,500. It would be worth more than ten times that today … I say that knowing where it is.
We didn’t get on the ladder until 1976. Our first tiny flat over a shop was £6000. We were both working at a private language school. Our salaries were tied to Further Education scales, but we could add at least 50% by overtime. And we both did. We had been living in a rented flat with damp running down the walls while paying 60% tax on that overtime to raise a deposit. We did it by banking all of Karen’s salary and living on mine.
We lived through interest rates of FOURTEEN PER CENT. So while house prices were much lower compared to salary, mortgage rates meant a greater proportion of our income went on payments. After considerably higher tax. Have you ever paid sixty percent? It pisses you off.
Education
We had history lessons. I think that’s an issue. My kids had History lumped in with ‘humanities.’ Maybe that’s why a whole generation doesn’t understand its importance. Not only that, they had colourful picture books on The Aztecs, Babylon, Egypt, ancient Persia. But they skipped The Armada and most British history. A laudable effort to cover world history rather than European. However, it left gaping holes in knowledge of their own culture. Then we had the Dahomey carvings and the towers of Great Zimbabwe. I’m sure accusations may fly, but the Dahomey carvings aren’t Michelangelo’s David, and the great towers of Zimbabwe are hardly the cathedral at Chartres. Isn’t it patronising to stress equality over quality? Let’s add that Dahomey was a slave trading hub, instrumental in much of the enslaving of fellow Africans.
They’re also getting a distorted view of history nowadays. Black nurse Mary Seacole is deemed equally worthy of study as Boudica, Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria.
I shook my head at my kids and grandkids geography homework. It’s all environmental, pollution and trees. Political geography seems to have gone out of the window, possibly a reaction to the high speed changing of borders and names after 1989.
At university, we protested the chronological approach in American Literature and English Literature. Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight for Eng Lit, then The Puritan Poets and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin for Am Lit. It’s BORING! It’s HARD TO READ. We won too. Now there are options. The rigor has gone.
Hands up and admit it. My generation vastly changed education. My co-author Bernie Hartley would tell me tartly than when he started at Manchester University in 1959, 2% of the population were in tertiary education. When I started at Hull in 1966 it was past 4% and rising rapidly. And it kept on rising creating more universities and more jobs teaching in them. There has to be an end point, but the cleverest of my generation established a good living … more and more heads of department were continually needed.
Inevitably, it is no longer true (if it ever was) that an Upper Second Honours degree is a consistent standard in all universities or rated the same afterwards. Yes, we created ‘soft subjects.’ OK, that makes people really angry. I don’t mean the conventional sense either. Drama and Film Studies students are probably the hardest working of the lot. In my Drama subsidiary I spent every Saturday in the theatre workshop. Sundays were often rehearsals, as were evenings. I often see students from Bournemouth’s film department (a very good one it is too) working on the streets in the rain at all times of day and all days of the week. My older son majored in Film in the USA, and had to get course credits in Math and Spanish at the same time. You don’t get that in the UK.
But compare subjects. One relative did Physics, a classically “tough subject.” He had 25 to 30 contact hours (including lab) in a week. Another relative did Psychology, and had just the two contacts a week … one on Monday morning, and one on Friday morning. So no, it’s not even. They’re not equal. A career advisor at one child’s school told me that employers did not regard either Theology or any of the Social Sciences as “real” degrees. That’s harsh, and in many cases, extremely unfair. So disagree with him. But it was his job and he was reflecting what he was being told.
I was incensed a few years ago to see an ex-tech college in Yorkshire (now a university) offering a degree course in ‘Film Directing’ with thirty places. I’ve taught Film Studies. It’s as useful and as serious as English or History … but there are not thirty jobs in a year. The course might be brilliant … what is unfair is persuading kids that it’s vocational and will lead to a job. Call it Film Studies. Fair enough But Film DIRECTING? It’s a con.
To me, history should be respected and cannot be altered.
Environment again
Our biggest challenge is climate change. I will not disagree with that, and it is of the extremest urgency and political priority.
However, Boomers like me tend to reflect on half-arsed, unthought ways of getting there.
I heard a Green Party representative saying they would eliminate gas heating by 2025 (a year ago). You don’t think, ‘Great idea!’ you think ‘Totally head in the cloud. Ludicrously impossible.’
Then the “left” like to present themselves as Woke saviours against the UnWoke right. That’s not entirely true. Boris Johnson introduced Boris bikes and many (too many) bike lanes as Mayor of London. That’s because he likes cycling. We used to stay in an apartment hotel in Tower Bridge Road, and would travel back by taxi from Islington or the Barbican theatres at 10.30 or 11 pm. Then Boris had the four lane road through the City reduced to two, with a wide cycle lane in either direction. It introduced a 20 minute evening traffic jam (with taxis pouring out exhaust fumes). As one taxi driver said at the start, ‘Show me one fucking cyclist at this time of night and I’ll knock a quid off your fare.’ He was right. Not one.
When I look at the local paper, bike lanes, and the millions being spent on them, incense a majority of people.
From my article THE DECLINE OF BOURNEMOUTH:
The council planners are would-be social engineers and cyclists. Many years ago, Keith Waterhouse wrote that the purpose of a town council was to keep the street lights lit, the municipal baths disinfected, the sewage flowing, the libraries stocked with books and that was it. No social engineering.
Bike lanes and building bike lanes have disrupted traffic. In that long, long haul in from Wimborne recently (where I had to be at 8 a.m.) I travelled the length of Alder Road between 8.30 and 9.05 am. So it took 35 minutes. Installing the bike lane there caused massive disruption. In THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES in the rush hour I saw only one bike. Anyone could tell them, if you’re a normal cyclist rather than a major competitive sports cyclist, you will avoid Alder Hills. They are too steep.
Similarly, the bike lane with its kerbstone at the side on Richmond Hill benefits only the most vigorous sports cyclist and coincidentally (NOT) leads mainly to and from the Town Hall where I’m told we ratepayers provide hot showers for the cyclists after their sweaty commute. Hang on, the carbon footprint of a car is replaced by the carbon footprint of a hot shower …
I’ve lived and worked in different places. London, Oxford, Cambridge and Hull have hundreds of cyclists. They’re flat. Bournemouth never had many cyclists even in the poorer 60s. It’s too hilly particularly around the town centre. If you want to cycle fast for sport, go to a Velodrome. Public money should not be subsidising your hobby. It’s also a hobby for a narrow age group. Kids can’t cycle far on today’s roads. Older people can’t manage the hills.
The busiest bike lanes in the BCP conurbation lead to Sandbanks ad the ferry to the Purbecks. However, just yesterday, cyclists were blocking the traffic by riding three abreast. Coming back, extreme care was needed because of lycra-clad loonies desperately overtaking each other which meant them leaving the bike lane. They were racing. It was clear.
Then another one: electric cars. They strip mine vast areas of the third world (with child labour) to produce the precious metals to make the batteries. Then they charge them with electricity produced (possibly from fossil fuels) a few miles away. Yes, they help your local streets. They do not help the planet as a whole. The answer is hydrogen combustion engines. We need to subsidise research and a national chain of filling stations. I’m told it will be possible to convert petrol and diesel vehicles, which is much environmentally sounder than making new ones.
Boris had a few Woke policies in fact (which many in his party hated). One daft one was siting a third London airport in the Thames Estuary to avoid planes over London. As everyone tried to explain, that meant for 90% of the country outside London, that would mean travelling through or round London. That’s why Heathrow is the most popular. Most of the country can get there without entering London.
Then there’s “Get your kids to walk to school’ (and tell them to stop a bus if attacked by a stranger or a Metropolitan police officer). OK. I’m a boomer. I walked the 400 yards to my school. My grandkids were assigned schools the full three miles away. People who live in villages can’t follow this London-centric useless advice.
The loo
The Woke Generation are effective lobbyists. They have been successful in eliciting massive expenditure on bike lanes, against a majority in local papers who oppose them. They’ve been disproportionately successful over unisex loos.
The time we’re in
The 1820s were more libertarian than the 1830s and 1840s. Yes, most ordinary people continued labouring in poverty and drudgery oblivious of the doings at Brighton Pavilion (though they had the gin shops), but the elite was much more socially liberal than the Victorians were later.
Then the 1920s saw the Jazz Age following the Great War. Again, much more libertarian (for the elite) than the 1930s, 40s or 50s.
Attitudes bounce. The 60s and 70s were Libertarian. We seem to be entering a new phase, which you may call ‘Woke’ but I would call ‘Priggish’ and based on virtue signalling.
Liberal is used as an insult from both the left and the right.
Look at Jeremy Corbyn, educated at private school, barely scraped A -levels couldn’t keep up with a soft subject at a soft university. But he virtue-signalled like mad: teetotal and vegetarian. He probably meant it. But then he was thick. Who would you rather share a train journey opposite? Jeremy Corbyn or Ed Balls? I know my choice. Ed … he is not a prig.
Gordon Brown, then David Cameron both presented themselves to the public as prigs – as we now know Cameron was a hypocrite bent on filling his pockets at the same time. But outwardly he was the decent, modest family man. Gordon Brown is the only ex-PM who has not cashed in on his past position. To be commended (but he is a prig.)
Prince William is a prig. He looks a prig. He sounds a prig. So does Kate.
Harry and Meghan are the definitive Woke hypocrite prigs.
2021 is 1837.
The whole ‘Woke’ era will spread and takeover. The next couple of decades will be like the Victorian era, at least on the surface (it never is below). It will be ruled over by an extremely priggish King William V.
I suspect Boris Johnson rides high in the polls right now precisely because he isn’t a prig, and while we know he’s a liar, a serial cheat and indeed an absolute arsehole, he’s not BORING. Keir Starmer is another prig. And boring. (Labour desperately needs an Ed Balls. Or just balls).
But the generations voting for the ‘character’ will soon be gone.
WOKE AND BOOMER …
You may agree with the MP. In the end, words change. Once they change they won’t go back. Get used to it. Find another term.
Peter Viney's Blog 
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