His contention that the award measures all literature against upper-class English values doesn't match the evidence
Booker-bashing is often described as a "national sport". But that should be called into question by this week's diatribe from Irvine Welsh, in which he called the prize organisers' failure to rebut accusations of anti-Scottishness a sign of "arrogance" and "intellectual enfeeblement". As usual, in our colonial arrogance, we are forgetting our Scottish cousins! Booker-bashing is, of course, an international sport. You don't have to be English to do it at all. Although, if one believes Welsh, you probably have to be English to win the thing.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book festival on Sunday, he said: "The Booker prize's contention to be an inclusive, non-discriminatory award could be demolished by anybody with even a rudimentary grasp of sixth-form sociology." The award, he said, was "based on the conceit that upper-class Englishness is the cultural yardstick against which all literature must be measured".
I wasn't at that talk, so am not certain of the full context in which Welsh was speaking, and therefore I should preface what comes next with a word of caution: it's possible that I've misunderstood. Even so, I've been wracking my brain to think of a way in which "upper-class Englishness" could be taken as a measure of the Booker prize and I just can't find one. In fact, it seems to me that it's actually Irvine Welsh's contention that can be "demolished by anybody". You don't even need a grasp of sociology to do so. All you need is a list of past winners.
Let's start with the first 10 years:
PH Newby: Something To Answer For
Bernice Rubens: The Elected Member
JG Farrell: Troubles
VS Naipaul: In a Free State
John Berger: G
Nadine Gordimer: The Conservationist
Stanley Middleton: Holiday
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Heat And Dust
David Storey: Saville
Paul Scott: Staying On
Iris Murdoch: The Sea, The Sea
I would love to see anyone trying to tell VS Naipaul that he can only be measured in terms of upper-class Englishness. I'd then love that same person to stagger on to John Berger, the fierce Marxist whose novel G details the struggles of the working man in the 19th century across Europe, and who dedicated half of his prize money to the Black Panthers. It would be equally absurd to contend that the South African Nadine Gordimer, writing about her home country, should somehow be set up against any kind of "Englishness measure". Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a Jewish exile from Nazi Germany writing about India. Bernice Rubens was a Welsh woman of Jewish descent writing about Jewish east Londoners. Iris Murdoch was Irish and she wrote, exclusively, about Iris Murdoch.
Meanwhile, the English writers in that list are JG Farrell (who was of Irish descent and whose book is fiercely, hilariously critical of English colonialism), PH Newby (also a critic of colonialism, writing about a non upper-class soldier), Paul Scott (another critic of colonialism, and arguably far more interested in India than the English), David Storey (a working class Yorkshireman, writing about working class Yorkshiremen), Stanley Middleton (a middle class Nottinghamshire man writing about a middle-class Nottinghamshire man) and John Berger whom we've already discussed and who would almost certainly rather beat upper-class English people with a yardstick than measure himself against them.
Carrying on in this manner would quickly become tedious, so I'm going to fast forward. You'll just have to take it on trust that the next decade, featuring books such as Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Keri Hulme's Bone People has nothing to do with upper-class Englishness either. But I have to pause at 1989, because - halleluljah - The Remains Of The Day is even about an upper-class Englishman, in England! The first in the history of the prize. Although that the fact that this book was written from the perspective of a butler by one Kazuo Ishiguro does once again rather undermine Welsh's case.
The next decade, meanwhile, is just as diverse. Admittedly, in the 1990s, the Booker panel did fail to reward Trainspotting and that was quite possibly a mistake. But any charge of anti-Scottishness is quickly trumped by the fact that the prize was given to James Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late– a harder, tougher and more anti-English piece of literature than Welsh has ever written. In that decade it might also be argued that Pat Barker's lamentable Ghost Road has English concerns (namely educated young men being blown apart in the first world war), the ridiculous ciphers in Ian McEwan's Amsterdam do straddle the upper echelons of English society and Graham Swift has a fairly posh English voice, even if he was writing about working class south Londoners. Otherwise, a list that contains The Famished Road, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, and The God of Small Things once again blows Welsh's contention to smithereens.
The story is the same after the turn of the millennium. We have a book by an Australian about 19th-century Australian gangsters, a book by a Canadian writing about an Indian, a book written by an Irish-resident Australian about American high school kids ... Wolf Hall admittedly, in touching upon Henry VIII, probably comes as close as any Booker winner to supporting Welsh's thesis, but even that mainly focuses upon the working class Thomas Cromwell and it is against him that anyone else in the book must be measured.
So where is Welsh getting his information? I don't have any skill in sociology, so certainly don't want to suggest that Welsh's own nationalism is to blame. The idea that a Scottish patriot could have a chip on his shoulder and demonstrate an irrational anti-English bias is patently absurd, after all.
More seriously, I wouldn't want to suggest that the Booker prize is problem-free. Greater efforts should be made to broaden the spectrum of books that win the thing.
But even so, suggesting that "upper-class Englishness" has ever been a concern of the judges is patently absurd ‑ and unfair. Nationalism, after all, is a terrible thing.