Decency used to come up quite often in the language of the labour
movement. Campaigns for a decent wage, for decent working conditions.
And "indecent" doesn't seem an inappropriate word for what they were
campaigning against. I don't know whether the point was to appeal to
middle class notions of decency, or what the currency of the word was
in other circles. There is also the middle class attribution of a kind
of "basic decency" to working class men, from Tommy in the trenches
onwards, which like a ping pong ball gets knocked back and forth
between being a bit of middle class condescension and being a focus of
working class identity and pride (the basic decency of the workers
versus the sophisticated indecency of the rich, for whom now read
"liberal elite" as that particular argument has fallen into rightwing
hands).
Dominic
|