I Could Be So Good For You A Portrait of the North London Working Class

by Medhurst, John

• ISBN13: 9781914420344
• ISBN10: 1914420349
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-01-10
• Publisher: Repeater

Summary

I Could Be So Good For You is a unique portrait of north London's working class from the 1950s to the 21st century, and how it lived, struggled, survived and sometimes thrived.

I Could Be So Good For You tackles head-on the pernicious and implicitly racist fiction that London, most especially north London, has no "real" working class in comparison to a more "authentic" working class in a place called "the North".

In doing so it offers a history and a portrait of north London's working class from the 1950s to the 21st century, based on a wide and original range of sources including personal memoirs, autobiographies, collected oral histories and new interviews conducted by the author. The result is an important social history and a rich panorama of working-class life — its struggles, work, celebrations, events, triumphs, tragedies and the occasional nice little earner. 

For good or ill, from the start of post-war affluence in the 1950s to the economic crash of 2008, north London's working class had a life experience like almost no other part of the British working class, one not just of poverty, racism and exploitation, but also of bold new housing schemes in the heart of the city, of great opportunity and diversity and enjoyment. Its about time to tell that story.

Author Biography

John Medhurst was born and raised in Camden, London, and studied History and Politics at Queen Mary, University of London. He works for one of the UK's largest trade unions and is an Executive Director of the Labour Research Department. He is the author of That Option No Longer Exists: Britain 1974-76 (Zero, 2014); No Less Than Mystic: A History of the Russian Revolution for a 21st Century Left (Repeater, 2017); and Sub Culture: The Many Lives of the Submarine (Reaktion, 2022).