The classism I experienced at Cambridge was wearing – but I managed to break through

I once overheard someone say of me, 'Bloody hell, I guess they’re just letting in anybody these days'

It feels like there’s an unstated correct way of speaking/correct manner/correct vocabulary, whatever it is, that you simply don’t have access to if you’re not middle class, and especially if you’re northern

Despite having wanted to say something for a long time, the very nature of the problem I want to address sadly underlines my, and what I know to be many others’, hesitation. Ever since coming to Cambridge, I’ve had people subtly mocking my flat, north-eastern tones. I’m from Billingham, a small industrial town nestled next to Middlesbrough, famous — and I use the term ever so loosely — less for its, erm, famous people, and more for its status as inspiration for Huxley’s Brave New World.

A landscape lined with metallic structures and billowing, grey cooling towers, it may not be glamorous, but it’s people are friendly, full of character, and we’re lucky to be surrounded by some of the most beautiful natural landscapes in the world.

Disclaimer: I don’t think all northern towns or cities are, as an editor I recently approached termed “destitute mill towns that are all ethnic powder kegs”, nor do I think Cambridge is typical of the south. These are simply my experiences. And I love my powder keg.

Another disclaimer: He was actually super lovely and as much as anything I just wanted to use the word powder keg.

Naturally, before I travelled south I was hardly aware of my accent at all; to me, I didn’t have one (none of us, to ourselves, do). I never realised how inextricably bound up it was with my upbringing in an economically underprivileged area, and how its utterance would lead many to make rash judgements of me and my intelligence before I’d even finished what I had to say.

Since arriving in Cambridge, my gloriously dull, elongated ohs and ahs (hello-h, no-h apparently favourites) have been chirpily parroted back at me, predominantly by white, middle class boys, for whom it is apparently the height of hilarity. I’ve never felt more like an outsider, explicitly registering my difference as soon as I opened my mouth.

My awkward, fumbling fresher self (now, thankfully, fully matured into an awkward, fumbling third year self) laughed it off. Indeed, when I call home now, having endured this (frankly) bullshit for two plus years, I get the same intended endearment from my northern relatives: “They’re only kidding”, “Stop being so emotional”, “Lighten up!” But they’ve never left the north, and don’t appreciate how it can grind you down, leave you not wanting to speak.

Another thing stopping me from speaking out, apart from what is apparently my hideous inability to “take a joke, man,” is the horrible feeling that perhaps I’m just super self-conscious; maybe this whole article is me embarrassingly exposing my inner-most insecurities. At a counselling session recently (oh God, I hear you internally gasp, she’s really doing this) I told the doctor that these accumulating instances were getting me down.

“But everyone in Cambridge has an accent,” she opined, patronisingly, as though I didn’t know this – subtext: you’re not special, you know.

She leaned back, in friendly but displaced disbelief: “Well, if you say it’s true.”

I know I’m not special; I know everyone experiences their own oppressions all of the time, be they BME, LGBTQ+, female, but classism intersects so frequently with these, yet is the quiet, diffident whisper that accompanies them.

I felt deflated and silly; constantly gaslighting myself into thinking I’m just being stupid (a feeling bound up with the imposter syndrome we all feel from time to time, though especially so, I think, when coming from a state school), I convince myself I’m merely over-sensitive. I am the queen of humourlessness, grumpily stomping out the melodious joy of my middle class pals.

That the northern accent is so frequently used in plays as easy humour (apparently self-aware, but still perpetuating the problem, and not something I buy into as excuse) is another problem here in Cambridge (worthy of a whole article in itself), given the majority in the audience. One student, Alex, came to me regarding an experience of this and said:

“I also remember in one of my first weeks of first year a comedy debate at the union which had one of the speakers acting ‘dumb’ and ‘ditsy’ in character trying to impersonate a Yorkshire accent — I didn’t realise how much it would get to me but it did.”

(I’ll let the “also” here speak for itself.)

Only some time afterwards my counselling fiasco did I realise that, well, of course the doctor wouldn’t understand; she was a southern doctor.

Worst of all, aside from my supposed humourlessness and lack of self-certainty, I felt that I had no audience to listen; I’ve been perpetually torn between being sure there’s something here worth talking about, and that I’m just being unreasonable, stupid (oh, sweet internalisation).

If I was at a northern uni, perhaps this wouldn’t be a problem, or at least, would be less so. And by virtue of what this problem is, I assumed no one in Cambridge would listen, since it is the positioning as a working class person amongst oceans of middle class students that leads to the sense of alienation; “God, will she just get over being from the north and from a state-school”. “Woe is you” Well, yeah actually, woe is me.

To clarify, I don’t intend this at all to be an attack on my middle class friends, and accept that no one can help where they’re born; how wonderful to have been to a good school, to have the life experiences involved etc. Moreover, I don’t want to homogenise experience, but to flag up a problem that prevails in Cambridge, and shouldn’t.

So often do I awkwardly start questions with “This might be silly, but” or “I don’t know if this is right,” in a way that silences myself before I’ve even spoken. I’m sure this is a gendered problem as well as a working class problem, with a generous dollop of general nervousness thrown in to spice things up, but I’m proud, nevertheless, that I haven’t started this article that way.

There’s nothing worse than feeling pulled in two directions, therefore ending up suspended somewhere in the murky middle. I was sad to hear, recently, of someone saying that it’s impossible to be working class in Cambridge, since the moment you enter, you become middle class.

The logic, I can’t deny, seems quite sound. But this robs me of my life experiences prior to the three tiny years spent here, of the experiences (often negative) endured here as a result, and places me exactly in this uninhabitable middle. We don’t have all the benefits of being middle class automatically conferred upon us.

Going home, my family will think I’m talking “right posh,” and though my love for them is unconditional, it feels awful returning home and feeling and thinking somewhat different from them. We’re abstracted out of our social class and naturally pick up elements of the middle class (I’m talking so nonchalantly, as if I don’t attend f***ing feasts now…), and this is, in many ways, sad.

On the other hand, once here we don’t fully fit in either; entering into a realm almost actively not made for you (as a woman, and as someone working class) is terrifying. I do English, by the way, and you must therefore allow me the indulgence of hyperbolically (though, I think, pertinently) likening the experience to that of Eliza Doolittle. Her book ends:

Well, I am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language and can speak nothing but yours.

I’m proud to say I’ve retained, for the mo-hst part my northern accent, though man, do I know how she feels. Indeed (please forgive me, fellow northern academic writers, for this is how I construct sentences now, apparently), it’s felt from the outset that I’ve had to make conscious decisions based on how to present myself: whether to lose my accent in order to make life easier (which, might I add, isn’t as easy as people would have it, and I wouldn’t wish to inflict my hideously caricatured Mr Darcy impression on anyone, since I’m sure that’s the best I can do), or to go the complete other way, and somehow caricature or parody myself.

Perhaps my garbled attempts at humour in this article alone demonstrate my pitiful attempt to prove I’m not a humourless Quasimodo hunched over my laptop angrily battering at the keys, who knows? Most of the articles addressing northernness or working class-ness border on the parodic. I don’t go around at home proclaiming like the town crier how much I love gravy and chips, and I don’t intend on doing that here, though I’ve felt the urge to exaggerate these quirky aspects.

And I wouldn’t want to say that articles (eg. Things all northerners at southern unis will know) funnily tackling the issues of classism shouldn’t exist (God, why does this girl hate fun so much?!) but they’re not enough. I can’t help but feel, when I see them, that they’re often spectacle and entertainment making out of stereotypes, through which we somehow simultaneously belittle and empower ourselves.

A few experiences to illustrate my point, aside from the every-other-day parroting. In first year I attended a formal at a college other than my own. Sitting across from two white men, I watched one turn to the other after I’d said something to another of their party, and say “Bloody hell, I guess they’re just letting in anybody these days.” I bit my tongue rather than shouting “Yeah, you, idiot.”

In a lecture about medieval dialect the lecturer playfully asked “Put your hand up if you’re southern” (cue 90% of the room). Something something something about a medieval word. Then, “And put your hand up if you’re from the north”, which a couple of us did. “Don’t worry, I’ll slow down so you can keep up!” Laughter erupted, of course, but not from us.

One more: this time from an interview candidate. He classically parroted something I’d said back at me. I, angry but measured, politely said ‘can you not do that please, it’s incredibly rude.’ His response: ‘Oh no don’t worry I have relatives in the north. I’m just the upgraded version.’ Yes, ladies and gentlemen, upgraded.

But enough of me. In an up and coming group (I make it sound like we’re about to drop a sick album… I wish), the Cambridge working class society (currently an offshoot of Cambridge social diversity) I mentioned that I’d be writing an article, and wondered if anyone could assuage my crippling uncertainty and concern that I was going mad, worried I was the only one.

I was heartened and profoundly saddened by the overwhelming response I got. Eve wrote:

It feels like there’s an unstated correct way of speaking/correct manner/correct vocabulary, whatever it is, that you simply don’t have access to if you’re not middle class, and especially if you’re northern. I’ve also noticed students using northern accents in stand up/plays as a shorthand for unintelligent. Raising these concerns with other students usually leads to a lot of blank faces, but it really is everywhere.

Another student, also female:

Another angle is that I’m half from Gloucester & half from south Wales which do have slight accents but moving between the two constantly as a child means I didn’t pick much up and anyway neither is what is typically associated with “working class” in Cambridge — I’m also autistic which means I don’t pick up on vocal cues like accents very well and so I have a pretty RP accent.

I know a few other working class students from the south and a frustration we often share is that there’s a Cambridge presumption that northern accents = poor people and southern accents = rich people and even very middle class northerners can quite often get away with pretending to be working class whereas people assume people without regional accents are faking it.

Obviously it generally massively works in my favour that I have an RP accent, don’t wanna invalidate that, but having your class status invalidated while other pretty rich people appropriate it because they do have a regional accent is really frustrating! It’s part of the very basic perception most Cambridge students have of working class people I guess.

Another sadly reported that “there were words and phrases that our teachers told us not to use because ‘educated people would never use them’” and another student told me of their experience as a Londoner:

Being from London, especially an area that’s known for its gangs, and hearing people talk like a road man when even I don’t talk like that (because I’m not in a gang and neither are you Hugo) is so frustrating. So many posh boys put on a road man London accent for one sentence and then take it off the next, because they can, and because they don’t have to think about the consequences of living with it.

Another:

Before Cambridge I always used to speak up in class, do speeches in front of my sixth form etc, and I can honestly say that since arriving here I haven’t spoken once in a lecture/seminar out of fear that the lecturer wouldn’t understand my accent, fear of my accent being laughed at, or seeming common and stupid.

I could go on, and wish I could just quote them all. The terrain is inevitably murky, varied and complex, with people’s experiences endlessly different but invariably united in the emotions they induced: alienation, the sense of being an outsider, of not sounding clever enough, of feeling silenced.

Powerful regional pride is confusedly intermingled with embarrassment, even, and it breaks my heart to say it, shame. Studies have shown that 28 per cent of young people in the UK are ashamed of their regional accents, worrying that it will affect their job prospects, their lives.

Classism and accent are things we desperately need to start openly talking about, so that people’s genuine experiences can be validated, finally unaccompanied by the shadow of self-doubt. It is my hope that The Cambridge working class society will enable those struggling to find a community which is finally beginning, slowly but surely, to speak up.

Lauren Brown describes herself as a "small town, working class lady turned Cambridge university student". This was written when she was a third year student a Cambridge and she is now a postgraduate student. This piece originally appeared on Medium and has been republished here with the author's permission