Out, Damned Lout

Policy Review, Feb/Mar 2005 by Beck, Stefan

Out, Damned Lout

DIGBY ANDERSON. All Oiks Now: The Unnoticed Surrender of Middle England. SOCIAL AFFAIRS UNIT. 92 PAGES. $22.50.

ALL OIKS Now: The Unnoticed Surrender of Middle England, by Digby Anderson of the Social Affairs Unit, a London think tank, is little bigger than a pamphlet - 92, pages, including a number of full-page cartoons. It is a pamphlet, too, in its function and style. The thing begs to be handed out on street corners. It is no accident that a British critic tarred Anderson as a "Jeremiah." All Oiks is a tirade, goodnatured but also deadly serious, against unwitting facilitators of social and cultural decline.

Discussing the everyday behavior of Englishmen in pubs, supermarkets, shopping malls, health clubs, and so on, Anderson marks and warns against a trend away from what he views as peculiarly English virtues and toward brutishness. He fears that England is capitulating to the "oiks." Yet Digby's Grand Remonstrance is not just for the Brits. All that he describes of manners and attitudes in his country is applicable to our own. For Americans the book may be a warning shot: What is happening Over There could happen here, too.

What is an oik? Anderson provides a glossary, presumably for his stateside audience. An oik is "a cad, an ignorant, inferior person (colloquial), a chap, bloke (slightly derogatory)" (Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary}. Only slightly derogatory? The word may come from "hoik, to spit" (Dictionary of Slang); it may refer to "one who pronounces 'i' as 'oi'" (Online Dictionary of Playground Slang}. It is certainly nothing good: Oink springs to mind.

Anderson clearly wishes to be thought a little batty, if only because it makes his writing more amusing. His pronouncements seem to be made ex cathedra from the old curmudgeon's rocking chair - we can picture him brandishing a cane at this horrible spectacle, oik "culture." British reviewers skeptical of Anderson's thesis have attacked his disapproving tone and stylistic quirks. They have also avoided engagement with the argument they underscore. That critical response, though understandable, is every bit as distressing as the argument itself.

THE BOOK OPENS With a paean to (now white-hand kerchief-waving) Middle England: "It was a minority but a sizeable one and it could be relied on to behave and vote consistently in favour of independence, self-reliance, traditional values especially with regard to the family, and against high taxes, trade unions, foreigners and perverts." Further, Middle Englanders "exerted strong discipline over their children. They valued orderliness, punctuality, decency, modesty, reticence, amateurishness, deferment of gratification, moderate religion, saving, small shops and speaking properly."

Anderson makes no attempt to softpedal the fact that Middle England was, in a word, "square" - and he agrees that it was the expected thing for any intellectual, radical, or yob to set himself in opposition to it. Yet he is convinced that "some of those who used to ridicule Middle England, secretly rather liked it, or, at least, liked its continued obstinate existence. They . . . were emboldened to call for its annihilation safe in the knowledge that it would always be there. Well, it's now gone." The cloistering gates of traditional culture have opened, leaving the oik free to roam and graze as he pleases. Middle Englanders "have now gone in the sense that they are no longer socially significant." They still exist, in diminished numbers, but they lack the confidence to assert their culture. Paralyzed by a malignant cowardice, they now either keep out of the public eye or ape the ways of the oik.

This surrender, says Anderson, can be seen in any number of the public spaces that once were the domain of Middle England. A tragic example is the church: "The C of E was the Established Church and the church of the established values. . . . There, until the 19705 you could hear the voice of moderate middle-class values in Received Pronunciation perhaps a retired major and a local solicitor as sidesmen and the GP's wife reading the lesson." Now, he says, the Anglican church is just another liberal mouthpiece; the ad-libbed intercessions are "careless, second-rate tosh"; and sentimentality - anathema to old Middle England - is the "central characteristic of the entire service." Nobody protests this. For that matter, nobody even turns off his cell phone.

The pub is another of Anderson's indicators. He recalls when establishments like The Red Lion or The Coach and Horses were havens for middleclass sociability ("largely male and to an extent adult"). That time is gone, for "when opposing cultural forces introduce musack, vulgarity, lefty opinions, bad language and aftershave, the [middle-class regulars] feel still weaker and retreat again. The retreat ends at home, in front of the television, with a gin and tonic whose measures are monitored by the wife." Thus is (male) Middle England exiled from what once was its primary social and leisure channel. Pubs are now infested with noisome, bibulous youth.