Having a scouse (or any regional) accent is seen as being linked to having a working-class background. That’s not the case for me. I speak with a scouse accent and was lucky enough to have a privileged upbringing in an affluent area of Liverpool. I have very middle-class background. But I have still experienced classist comments based on my accent. I’m so proud of being from Liverpool (even if I’m not a ‘proper’ scouser, being from a village further out!). The assumptions and snobbery around accents make me rage.
It wasn’t until I left home to go to uni in the mid-00s that I started to experience people treating me differently because of my accent. This was a uni up north, but RP-speaking students from down south didn’t seem to mind being on ‘our’ turf. My most memorable story of accentism is from when I dated someone from the south east. I went to visit him during the summer holidays and had to meet his group of friends, who were insufferable. One of them didn’t even introduce himself before asking ‘What’s it like living in Liverpool then? I can’t even imagine being in a council house, it must be disgusting?’. I think my jaw hit the floor. Speechless… The guy I was seeing then told his friends that I was ‘actually posher’ than them, which left me in a weird state, wanting to prove to them that accent doesn’t = money/class and what kind of idiot judges people on that anyway? But also wanting play down being ‘posh’ because I didn’t want his group of friends to think I was one of them, a snob who seemed to have a problem with anyone who was different from them. But if I went on a rant about classism then was I a fraud because I wasn’t really working class, just spoke like it in their eyes? I think I made some lame comment about him needing to leave home and get into the real world. I look back now and kick myself for not starting a full-on fight with the whole group of them. One of them is now a Tory MP, just to top it off!