Introduction

The introduction to The Working Class and Twenty-First-Century British Fiction examines the relationship between class, capital, and culture. It maps the history of class discourse in this and the previous century through a reading of neoliberalism, Thatcherism, New Labour, and Brexit. Two significant developments are identified: (1) class has been declared dead under neoliberalism just as inequality has hardened and the power of capital intensified; (2) paradoxically, with an increase in poverty, the rise of precarious employment, and the reinforcing of social immobility, class has been mobilised to explain and justify inequality and to generate consent for the logic of capital. Such conflicting debates are read alongside an assessment of the return of the term ‘working class’ in its use by all mainstream British political parties (from the rhetoric of former Prime Minister Theresa May as she became Conservative Party leader to the policies of the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn) as well as the renewed significance of class and discussions around deindustrialisation following the Brexit vote. How contemporary British fiction has contributed and intervened within these historical and seemingly contradictory developments is a primary concern. The introduction argues that cultural representations are sites in which both ideology and the struggle against hegemony are powerfully worked through and communicated. It sets up what is a guiding principle of the book: an emphasis on mediation and upon the set of relations which are mobilised around and by a given text; to talk of class is to talk of a social relation.