You’ve probably read the interview in Total Politics with Sir Nicholas Winterton by now. Sir Nicholas was elected a Tory MP in 1971, the year I was born, which makes him a veteran of the party. However, those at Conservative HQ are no doubt shaking their heads over his somewhat ill considered remarks about MP’s and expense paid rail travel.
“And now they want to stop members of Parliament travelling first class. That puts us below local councillors and officers of local government. They all travel first class. Majors in the army travel first class. So we are supposed to stand when there are no seats. And why are we going to waste our time when we can work on the train as we do. I’m sorry. It infuriates me.”
Well, I can totally see what he is getting at. I travel a lot for work and if I am lucky enough to get to travel first class it does indeed allow me to get a lot more work done that if I am pressed tightly against someone in standard class, with loads of noise around me. Fair enough, you’d think. But then he digs himself into another kind of hole.
“They [standard-class passengers] are a totally different type of people - they have a different outlook on life. They may be reading a book but I doubt whether they’re undertaking serious work or study, reading reports or amending reports that MPs do when they travel.”
This, obviously, is a lot of rubbish. Most people would choose to travel in First Class if given the choice. Its quiet, it’s more spacious and they serve you tea and coffee. Why wouldn’t someone want that? There is nothing different about the people that travel in standard class other than they have paid less for their seat. What is present in Sir Nicholas’ view is privilege and the mistaken idea that the reason you have something that others don’t is because they are different and somehow don’t deserve it.
Sir Nicholas’ view seems to typify the view of privilege held by many people in the UK. Not that I grudge anyone decent stuff in life and a chair in First Class if you can afford it. Lets just have a dose of reality alongside it. He has the First Class seat because he can pay for it. People have the privilege they have because they can afford it, be that through family money or their own hard work. Lets not make the mistake that that simple fact makes them ‘better’ people than those travelling in standard class. It only makes them better at having money and spending it.
What is problematic about privilege is the justification that arises in the minds of the people who posses it and their blindness to the reality of others. The fact that Sir Nicholas really feels this way about the people who travel in standard class is frightening. There is no ‘they’ that travel in standard class. There is only the diversity of humanity in all its guises, each living a personal experience that Sir Nicholas cannot conceive of. Surely we need to be able to embrace this truth in order to be a good public servant. Otherwise the constituency you are serving is the constituency of yourself, from your own perspective, true only to your own needs.
(Photo by ThePatrick, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pftqg/, used under Creative Commons license, artist not connected with any opinions here given)
Is it a sign of Sir N’s total incomprehension of the people he’s supposed to represent that he doesn’t know about the quiet coach?
Good post. But I think it’s not so much a question of “He has the First Class seat because he can pay for it” – as “he can CLAIM for it”!
Of course the poor dears should travel first class or use a taxi for hundreds of miles if they want.
As long as they pay for it from their own pocket
Good to see you highlighting what is a very pernicious trend. When wealthy people start to claim that the less well-off are people of a different sort whose needs are less refined (or lacking altogether) we are moving into frightening territory indeed. I believe it is vital to expose this sort of thinking for the small-minded nastiness that it is.