Torpedo the Ark Goes k-punk: On the East Midlands Accent Vs the Oxford Voice

Ay up, me duck! It's three famous East Midlanders: 

Jason Williamson, D. H. Lawrence, and Mark Fisher  

 

 

Thanks to books such as Capitalist Realism (2009) and his influential k-punk blog (2003-16), Mark Fisher remains a prominent voice in cultural criticism and political theory. 

 

However, born in Leicester and raised in Loughborough as he was, that voice comes with a distinctive East Midlands twang; an accent which, by his own admission, lacks "urban glamour, lilting lyricism or rustic romanticism" and is "one of the most unloved in the UK" [1]. 

 

I'm not sure that's entirely fair or accurate - as a Lawrence scholar, I've been to Eastwood on numerous occasions and have always found the local accent (and use of terms drawn from dialect) rather lovely on the ear. 

 

However, Fisher insists that the East Midlands accent is "heard so rarely in popular media that it isn't recognised enough even to be disdained" (361) and I can believe that within snobby academic circles where the Oxford Voice [2] prevails, he was regarded as having some sort of speech impediment and advised to "suppress the lazy Leicestershire consonants and articulate [his] speech in something closer to so-called received pronunciation" (361). 

Which, with a certain degree of shame, he did - unlike vocalist and lyricist with the post-punk duo Sleaford Mods Jason Williamson, who "makes no such accommodation to metropolitan manners, and he's disgusted at those who speak in fake accents" (361). 

  

Interestingly, although the appeal to the local (and authentic) is "usually smug and reactionary" (361), Fisher argues that's not the case when it comes to the question of accent. Because the English ruling class speak "in more or less the same accent wherever they come from" (361) - The Oxford Voice - the determination to retain a regional accent is therefore "a challenge to the machineries of class subordination - a refusal to be marked as inferior" (361).

 

A bit like Lawrence rubbing his readers' noses in hardcore East Midlands dialect and profanity in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) - "'Tha'rt good cunt, though, aren't ter? Best bit o' cunt left on earth. When ter likes! When tha'rt willin'!'" [3] - Williamson obliges listeners to "adjust to his accent, idiolect and references" (362). 

 

Obscenities course through his rhymes as freely they do the speech of Oliver Mellors:

 

"If Williamson's anger often seems intransitive - his fuck off are sheer explosions of exasperation, directed at no one in particular, or at everyone - it's underscored by a class consciousness painfully aware that there is nothing which could transform disaffection into political action." (363) 

 

I'll end this post with the same question that Fisher ends his piece: Who will make contact with the anger and frustration that Williamson (like Mellors before him) articulates - and who can convert such into a new political project? [4] 

 

    

Notes

 

[1] Mark Fisher, k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004 - 2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (Repeater Books, 2018), p. 361. Future page references will be given directly in the post. 

     Fisher's review of the Sleaford Mods' album Divide and Exit (2014) and singles collection Chubbed Up (2014) originally appeared in The Wire, Issue 362 (April 2014), p. 58. It can be read online by clicking here. 

 

[2] The 'Oxford Voice' is a term coined by D. H. Lawrence to satirise the upper-class English accent that is often known as RP. In a poem of that title found in Pansies (1929), Lawrence mocks it as "so seductively superior". It can be found in Vol. 1 of the Cambridge Edition of Lawrence's poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (2013), p. 376.  

      Stephen Fry reads Lawrence's verse - in his best Oxford Voice - on The Show People Podcast with ‪Andrew Keates‬, recorded live at The Two Brewers, Clapham, on 12 June 2025: click here. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 177. This is Oliver Mellors addressing Connie. For a discussion of the use of dialect as erotico-elementary language in D. H. Lawrence, see the post published on 3 December 2020: click here. 

 

[4] This question seems particularly pertinent today of all days when local elections are being held across England, Scotland and Wales and the two traditional parties - Labour and the Conservatives - are both predicted to do badly, whilst Reform UK and the Green Party are set to make significant gains.     

 

  

Readers who are interested in this post might like to check out the East Midlands Voices project at Nottingham Trent University (headed by Professor Natalie Braber, who teaches linguistics in the School of Social Sciences): click here.  

 

Musical bonus: Sleaford Mods, 'Jobseeker': click here. Originally released as a single in 2013, it also features on the compilation album All That Glue (Rough Trade, 2020) and seems to have been a favourite of Fisher's.