The Meat Porter: Metropolitan Labour, ‘Rivers of Blood’, and the White Working Class

Abstract At the turn of the twentieth century the Smithfield meat porter entered the public imagination as a distinct ‘London Type’, a frequently caricatured embodiment of working-class masculinity. In the 1960s, following a highly publicized march in support of Enoch Powell, the meat porter became a contested symbol of working-class racism. This article connects these moments to explore how the iconographies and aesthetics of the ‘white working class’ grew out of empire and its decline. I argue that the established discourse of the ‘cockney’ provided both a platform for speaking whiteness and a blueprint for its representation.