Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class is a bestselling book published in 2011 by columnist and political commentator Owen Jones which discusses the stereotyping of sections of the British working class and use of the pejorative term "chav". In this book, released prior to the civil disturbance, Jones aims to explain how the working class has lost its traditional identity as ‘salt of the earth’ to one of a criminalized, drug-taking, work-shy, benefit-grabbing band of people. How many have been disenfranchised, how the gap between the working and middle classes seems to have widened, how claims of Britain as a meritocracy is a myth and how it has come to this.