Do not call me Ishmael
\nor anything quite as grand
\nbut call me instead a radge
\nor a schemie or a scaff
\na bam, a ned, yob or chav<\/p>\n
extend the vocabulary criminalise my entire class and smugly feel good with yourself and search my face for coming rage 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 \u2013 Some of Jim\u2019s writings are in From the Front Line of Terror, published by the Stop the War Coalition & the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. \u00a33 from SPSC<\/acronym>, Peace & Justice Centre, Princes St., Edinburgh, EH2 4BJ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[554],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-1488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-03","tag-author-jim-aitken"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":5215,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1490,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions\/1490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand label me as other<\/q>
\npoke fun at my accent and clothes
\nblame me for all that goes missing
\nfor how standards are falling<\/p>\n
\nand judge me by my home address
\nraise your eyebrows at my manners
\nand at my failure to impress
\nturn indifference to contempt<\/p>\n
\nsince you seem to have done so well
\nand cringe at how I go around
\nsneering at my lack of taste
\nmy words all wrong and out of place<\/p>\n
\nconfirming your deep prejudice
\nand fail to comprehend how this
\nresponds to your great ignorance
\nof the class divide between us<\/p>\nHe\u2019s such a chav, isn\u2019t he?<\/q> 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\u2019s Britain.<\/p>\n