An A5 12pp self cover pamphlet with contributions by Stefan Szczelkun and Tracy Davidson. This was given to teachers at our awareness raising workshops in North London. It was intended to promote these workshops.Includes two graphic posters by Stefan Szczelkun. Free download.
Postscript from the author 2019
Thoughts on the Class Awareness workshops 1993

Thinking back this booklet does signal
the time when the limit on the
radical intentions of Equal
Opportunities was reached - at least
within institutional settings. Class
awareness would be a real challenge to
capitalism as class inequality is
intrinsic to its operation. I don’t
think there can be a capitalism
without class separation.

From here on, a reformist version of
Equal Opps was gradually accepted as
the norm. The producers of the ‘pink
pound’ could assert their right to be
treated fairly, the long march of
women could be accommodated within
capitalism (as long as it was mainly
middle class women who were the
beneficiaries) and race awareness had
so many marketable benefits to all
(even with the recent backdrop of a
global fragmentation of Imperial
colonialisms) it could be grudgingly
supported as long as it had
aspirational goals. Even the struggle
of disabled people for access and
inclusive schooling would be given a
hesitant green (or was it amber?!)
light.

EO in Britain was a sort of progress
and was a turn away from right-wing
forms of capitalism, and it did put a
dent into the invisability of
oppression. It also gave some insight
into the mechanisms of oppression in
general; like the way negative
self-images promoted by oppression
could be internalised and thoroughly
believed by the victims. And to a
lesser extent, a knowledge of how the
oppressor roles diminished us as
humans. But class liberation was
unthinkable by the powers that BE and
those who campaigned for it were
successfully isolated.

Doing the few workshops we did I could
feel the fear rise in the audience of
teachers as we asked them to benignly
consider their own experience of
class. They might have accepted a
workshop based in facts and figures
(Only recently brilliantly summarised
by Diane Reay in her powerful book
‘Miseducation’. see my review on
Goodreads) but to be challenged to be
open to learning about class
oppression, to learn about the way the
prejudice might be embedded in
their-self, felt potentially
explosive. This was not about a
literary knowledge but about
challenging embodied understanding. It
is tempting for me to think it was
mainly the older middle class teachers
who looked utterly distraught at the
simple questions we asked, but this
may have been my bias, and more recent
adopters of middle class manners might
have felt their emotional comfort or
stability equally under threat.
Anyway, for whatever reason, we were
not asked to do more workshops after
the first set!

I had started ‘Working Press: books by
and about working class artists’ with
Graham Harwood in 1986. Our books did
seep into the school system though a
red mole I knew in the ILEA, along
with earlier stuff from the
‘Federation of Worker Writers’ and
books by the few luminaries who had
insight into class oppression like Ken
Worpole. In 1987 the brilliant young
historian Hilda Kean had assembled and
written a major ‘discussion’ document
for the ILEA called ‘English
Teaching and Class’ (see the Open
Library for a contents list). It was
these widespread efforts that led to
us being asked to do the workshops for
teachers in North London

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