Oceans Apart
by Jim Aitken
- Do not call me Ishmael
- or anything quite as grand
- but call me instead a radge
- or a schemie or a scaff
- a bam, a ned, yob or chav
- extend the vocabulary
- and label me as
other
- poke fun at my accent and clothes
- blame me for all that goes missing
- for how standards are falling
- criminalise my entire class
- and judge me by my home address
- raise your eyebrows at my manners
- and at my failure to impress
- turn indifference to contempt
- and smugly feel good with yourself
- since you seem to have done so well
- and cringe at how I go around
- sneering at my lack of taste
- my words all wrong and out of place
- and search my face for coming rage
- confirming your deep prejudice
- and fail to comprehend how this
- responds to your great ignorance
- of the class divide between us
Jim Aitken is a secondary teacher in Edinburgh. This poem was inspired by an incident in his first year class, with one pupil commenting on another – He’s such a chav, isn’t he?
The opening line is adapted from the start of Moby Dick and this, together with the title, illustrates the monstrous, oceanic class divide in today’s Britain.
Some of Jim’s writings are in From the Front Line of Terror, published by the Stop the War Coalition & the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. £3 from
SPSC, Peace & Justice Centre, Princes St., Edinburgh, EH2 4BJ.