None of us is better than anyone else; you can believe this with heart and soul and remain ignorant of your own privilege. Or so I eventually realised.
A clip of Margaret Thatcher speaking 33 years ago at the UN General Assembly turned up the other day, the sight and sound of her a distraction from what she was saying though her words were the point of the extract. This was Thatcher, revered by some of today’s most extreme British Conservatives, recognising global warming and that human activity caused much of it. Unlike many modern conservatives she detailed the damage, instead of denying it. She launched no counter-drive, mind you, but then Nigel Lawson, the Brexiteer who is one of today’s arch-deniers (and lives in rural France), was a force in her cabinet.
It was the stiff, lacquered hair and her voice, both archaic, that were hard to get past. Especially the voice, which in her time also made people cringe. As became swiftly known, it wasn’t her natural voice. First Tory woman leader and from a comparatively modest background, she worked with professional help to lower and soften tones deemed to be harsh. The professionals eradicated her accent. The result was atrocious; domineering, supercilious, a bogus blast from a past that should have been well lost.
Thatcher felt the need to armour herself against sneering about her ‘lower-class’ voice, which of course was already a middle-class voice. But some Conservatives in the upper reaches of the party liked to jeer at anyone who ‘bought their own furniture’. As the disgusting Alan Clark tried to put down Michael Heseltine. Unlike Clark, Heseltine lived in a house he’d bought himself rather than inherited complete with ancient furniture.
Today’s Tory front bench contains tones of considerable diversity, which doesn’t mean that how people speak is irrelevant now. Pause to preen; in the smaller island we don’t do class and therefore power by accent, do we? Ah we do. Our upper-class voices are just that bit less precious and grand. What they are is ...educated?
The would-be posh of ‘Cherryvelley’ long ago became mockable, then taboo. But ‘educated’ as the substitute? Voices who say ‘I seen’ and ‘I done’ sometimes turn out to belong to people with a couple of university degrees. Are they not educated?
Few younger than 50 may have been taught ‘I see, I saw, I have seen’ and ‘I do, I did, I have done’ and ‘I go, I went, I have gone’. So, never ‘I seen’ or ‘I done’. Difficult distinctions to make if nobody teaches you them.
Back to accents; safer subject if equally sensitive. Prevailing voices in today’s Republic would claim that their accents are the least important thing about them. RTE voices sound somewhat careful and polished to this northern ear but then this ear has been fooled by the voice out of the mouth beside it.
Someone long ago phoned a radio programme to correct the contrary impression one of us apparently gave. The late and much-missed presenter Barry Cowan and I, said the caller, had plummy voices. Barry, ok, but me?
Although memories niggled. Home from hospital after a few months, soon after 8th birthday - sisters mocked a new ‘posh’ accent. Boarding school for a year and a bit (too ‘delicate’ for day-school travelling) - same verdict on accent. But surely the small Catholic middle-class of the time consisted of doctors, lawyers, ‘big publicans’, not teachers like our da, born in the Bone. Then it turned out that teachers were not just middle class but part of the triumvirate - parish priest, GP and principal - that dominated the Catholic state within the Protestant state.
Sometimes they clashed, perhaps mostly PPs and principals about the running of primary schools? Letters to the Editor in contradiction or confirmation would be interesting.
Meantime let us be glad that sounding like Thatcher never caught on. ‘Cherryvelley’ was bad enough.
