ABSTRACT
It is easy, and misleading, to give the impression that the sense of neighbourliness exists almost entirely within the working class. Live in a middle-class district for a while and you will realise that that sense is traditionally very strong there also. The strong sense of neighbourliness in pre-war working-class life was not so much a willing voluntary option as it might be elsewhere, something your kind were used to doing freely and were glad to do. One might say that, after family, neighbours, and friends, there were 'acquaintances', but one heard that word only rarely in working-class districts. Inveterate working-class gossips could 'talk the hind-leg off a donkey', 'can't live without poking their noses into other people's business', 'gab fifteen to the dozen', 'harp on about anything under the sun', wash other people's alleged dirty linen in public. Gossip is the best seed-bed, or touch-paper, for full-scale quarrels, which can be noisy and nasty.
