Waterloo 2.0

River Itchen at St. Denys, Southampton

I've always been interested in the nuances of voices and accents. That is, British voices and accents, of which there are many. Very many, in fact: at every intersection of region with age, gender, class, race, education, aspiration, affiliation, sexuality, and general world-view, there is a distinctive mode of speech. Given that a region can be as small as the next village or the other side of the river, that makes for a bewildering array of distinctions and gradations. Some of these differences are quite striking, although most, I assume, are inaudible to the foreign ear, even when instantly recognisable to the native. I imagine this is pretty much the case everywhere. To my ear, an accountant from Frankfurt sounds much the same as a Bavarian smallholder, but I am sure they are immediately, mutually identifiable.

But, Britain being such a class-conscious society, even today, there are special nuances to the spoken language which make us particularly sensitive to the intersections of accent. On walking into a strange pub or bar, the first thing any streetwise person does, after a quick appraising glance, is to take the temperature of the local linguistic micro-climate and quickly decide whether to stay, leave, or perhaps just keep a low profile.

George Bernard Shaw (an Irishman) famously declared in his preface to Pygmalion:

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past.

Shaw's unfavourable comparison of English English with German or Spanish is quite odd, really. Certainly, consistency of orthography is a great help in learning a language, but in itself is hardly capable of preventing any major regional or class differences in pronunciation. The idea that phonetic spelling reform (based on some single version of "correct" pronunciation, presumably) would somehow helpfully homogenise English English is hilarious, as if anyone had ever learned to speak their mother tongue from a textbook. The passage is most famous, of course, for that third sentence ("It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him"), an observation which is much quoted out of context, probably because, as a sound-bite, it seems as true in 2019 as it was in 1913.

Why? Well, the persistent diversity of British voices is not an innocent fact of geography. It is profoundly tribal; jealously preserved and beset with booby-traps for intruders. Although I'm a pretty good mimic, I wouldn't attempt to copy another person's regional accent to their face. That's a mistake I've made in the past, and seen others make, and it rarely ends well. People don't enjoy being the object of what amounts to a personal parody, however well-intentioned. Not least when it amounts to an implicit assertion of superiority: "Hear how well I can mimic your delightfully quaint accent!"[1].  This needn't be as incendiary as an Old Etonian attempting Glaswegian in a Glasgow pub (yikes, someone call an ambulance): the current presumption of the privileged that by knocking the sharp edges off their speech – usually by adopting a flattened "mockney" mode, randomly spattered with glottal stops – they have rendered themselves invisible as they move among the common people is as laughable as it is insulting. See: any number of public-school educated pop stars, actors, artists, and that Harry bloke, Meghan Markle's husband.

This works both ways, of course. Despite any amount of education, intelligence, and talent, it is next to impossible for a person from the accented classes to pass as posh, should they so wish. The "posh" voice (a.k.a. "received pronunciation", or "RP") having, in its various versions, long enjoyed its self-declared status as the norm from which "accents" and dialects deviate, and – by a neat sleight of hand – as the vocal embodiment of the aforesaid education, intelligence, and talent. Back in the early post-1945 years, when state-funded higher education first offered its escape route for bright kids from stifling working-class lives, one of the first things abandoned at the local railway station was their local accent, a rite of passage that amounted to an act of self-harm, one that marked them for life. To get on in the world, it was assumed, you had to mimic the speech patterns of your social superiors. Inevitably, this stranded them in the sad "scholarship boy" no man's land described in Richard "Death Cab" Hoggart's book The Uses of Literacy. But, through the 1960s, new role-models of worldly success were evolving, and people like David Bailey or John Lennon or Michael Parkinson seem never to have got the memo about losing that dreadful accent. By the time I went to university in the 1970s, the idea of changing your manner of speech over the course of Freshers' Week had become as ludicrous as wearing a tie [2]. To be honest, I think my parents were quite disappointed.

Nonetheless, despite decades of social mobility, the confident, articulate, public-school-and-Oxbridge RP voice has retained its stamp of authority. Yes, diverse voices are now heard at all levels of society (although I have yet to hear an RP bin-man or corner-shop owner), but to this day nothing commands instant, reflex obedience, deference, and respect quite like That Voice. It's somehow more reassuring when your doctor or lawyer seems to have descended from some higher realm, isn't it? There has always been the sense that we plebs and nobodies could merrily get on with our lives – just having fun, earning a living, raising a family, or arguing about bullshit things like Bake Off or the Premier League – while the grave, power-dressed, well-spoken grown-ups kept the national act together, doing the boring, necessary things. That is, until now. Because why? Because Brexit.

Put simply, I think the Brexit debacle has revealed to everyone – anyone, that is, who has bothered to follow the news over the past gruelling two years but who, naively, still believed otherwise – that very posh people can be very stupid, too. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Dense, dull, and dim. Fatuous fuckwits. If it wasn't self-evident before, it is now abundantly clear that being the product of privilege does not automatically make you the effortless embodiment of education, intelligence, and talent it has for so long, and so conveniently, been pretended. Far from it. Despite possession of That Voice, senior career politicians with the sort of in-depth poshness only money can buy have revealed themselves as quite stupid enough to declare a referendum with potentially catastrophic national consequences – a referendum winnable by a simple majority, FFS! – like some drunken idiot betting his house on the toss of a coin. Daily, we hear transparent nonsense uttered in That Voice by puffed-up fools incapable of thinking beyond tired sound-bite rhetoric; unwilling to seek necessary compromises; unable to predict the consequences of their own actions; and prepared to inflict as-yet unknown damage on the nation in the pursuit of self-enrichment and nineteenth-hole prejudices, mis-sold on a prospectus of "exciting new opportunities" and "taking back control". Above all, these people are deluded about Britain's place in the world:

BRITAIN: Put that EU trade deal on hold, China – UK PLC is coming!
CHINA: What's that funny little squeaking noise?

All led by a Prime Minister (admittedly only fake-posh) who, in a fit of hubris, voluntarily trashed her inherited majority, failed to see the strategic implications of leading a minority government – choosing to placate the extremists in her own party at every turn rather than seeking parliamentary consensus – and who has now succumbed to that proverbial definition of insanity: repeatedly trying the same course of action, and expecting a different outcome. Faced by a Leader of the Opposition (admittedly only fake-pleb) who has a Cunning Plan so secret that everyone in his party feels able to come out publicly with their own different version of it. Broadly speaking, however, the Plan seems to involve winning the next General Election, which is just another kind of delusion.

Madness in high places! I suppose we have been here before. But where is Napoleon when you need him, to distract and unite the people? Behave, child, or Boney'll getcha! Wait, what's that you say? You think the EU is Napoleon by other means? Heh! But, no, you're serious, aren't you? Finally, it all makes sense... Send for the straitjackets!

Southampton Water from Mayflower Park

1. I once knew a fellow student who was from the North-East of England, and had a strong NE accent. His favourite record was "Noah Woman Noah Cray", by Bob Marley. I am embarrassed to admit that those of us from the south of the country found this hilarious. He, needless to say, didn't. Sorry, Murph!
2. Indeed, the pendulum had swung so far the other way that certain public-school types with political ambitions had, it was said, taken de-elocution lessons to help them feel less conspicuous. Reverse Pygmalion? Heineken once made an amusing advert on this premise.