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Zoe Gannon
©Zoe Gannon 2008
In 1937, George Orwell predicted that the middle class was
doomed to ‘sink without further struggles into the working class’.
However, 70 years on this prediction has not come to pass; in fact this
group has grown. Reaching out from the traditional notions of the bourgeois
it now encompasses great swathes of the population. This boom in the ranks
of the middle classes can be traced most obviously to the great council
house sale of the 1980s when Thatcherite neo-liberalism turned many of those
who traditionally identified as working class into the aspirational middle
class – indeed ‘the economy is the means, the goal is to change
the soul’. This continued under Blair who in 1999 declared ‘we
are all middle class now’. Contrary to Orwell’s statement, this
group appears to have gained in influence and coherence – partly through
the media, with the Daily Mail construction, but also in the political sphere.
Interestingly though, the term middle class has been dropped and a sub-group
now popularly referred to as middle England dominates; and its projected
interests commonly dictate political decisions.
Middle England, as much a mythical place as middle earth, is populated by
Gordon Brown’s ‘hard working families’, and ‘Thatcher’s
children’ – otherwise known as the amorphous ranks of the middle
classes. As Daily Mail reading individualists, they are assumed to be insular,
resentful and generally phobic – homo, zeno, agro, etc. These voters
can be bought and sold on the promise of being ‘tough on crime’
– they live in fear of change and are ultimately conservative with
a lower case c. But is this Daily Mail construction really accurate? –
are the suburbs of London and the Home Counties really populated by this
group? Is this now the middle class? Do they represent the mainstream? And
if not, why are they given this coherence and significance? Is it now the
job of the progressive left to challenge the assumptions that surround this
group, and ask who are the middle class if not middle England? – what
do they really care about and how can they be represented? And perhaps most
importantly, how would a new understanding help us build a cross class coalition.
Whether it was the 1832 Reform act or the1946 legislation, it is commonly
recognised that at some point during the middle of the Victorian period,
financial and economic success was converted into political power. This
period of time is associated not just with urbanisation and industrialisation
of the UK, but also with the birth of the concept of the middle class. Since
this point, we have seen a burgeoning of a social economic grouping defined
more by who they are not – namely working or upper class – than
who they are. Below the aristocracy and above the workers, this group, which
started off small, made up of only a tiny percentage of individuals, gained
a coherence – epitomised by sobriety, thrift, prudence and morality.
The cultural and economic shifts since this point have changed this distinctive
and influential group into a large, vague, shifting entity, constructed
from individuals as different and as similar as everyone else – from
lawyers to teachers to small business owners - all can technically be middle-class
now. Yet in political terms their differences are barely recognised. Instead,
they are all placed in a neat box known as middle England. After neatly
putting them in this box, all parties strive to win over the middle England
voters in the swing seats, and this group, while growing exponentially,
appears, at least in the eyes of politicians, to have maintained its coherence.
No longer under the guise of class – because we of course are now
a classless society – these are middle England voters. It is with
this group that elections are seen to be won and lost. The projected ideas
and interests of this social and economic grouping are increasingly hegemonic.
Yet in reality, financial status, attitudes, and class history interrelate
with each other in confusing and often contradictory ways. Self definition
and economic position offer very different conclusions on who exactly can
be - and can be defined as - middle class. Any conclusion on whether we
should go on self definition, amount of savings, income, home town, education,
or profession, appears non-existent. No official definition exists for who
the middle class really are, and no consensus exists on what they care about.
How can we therefore meet the interests of a group which is undefined? Like
fighting a ‘war on terror’, meeting the interests of a group
which is indefinable appears to be a losing battle.
Yet a few things are clear. As the top race away – the top ten per
cent has seen real wage increases – and the bottom falls behind –
seeing real value wage losses – the inhabitants of middle England
have seen their financial position stagnate. The single bread winner family
has declined and an exponential growth of two earner families is obvious.
Yet these families are no wealthier, in real terms, than their parents,
and if anything their financial position is at greater risk. It is a time
of crisis for all those within the pile and the middle classes certainly
cannot escape it. The Dot com bubble was replaced with a housing market
bubble – which was bound to burst – but, as Alan Greenspan stated:
‘if it wasn’t sub-prime, it would have been something else,
this was an accident waiting to happen’.1 Growing prices in the housing
market, outsourcing of white collar jobs, tuition fees, fears about the
environment, decreasing support for social care, increasing costs of childcare
and the credit crunch have hit them hard. But aren’t these the exact
same concerns of the working class? Like the working class, all of those
within the pile have suffered under a neo-liberal agenda that supports the
racing away rich. The working class and the middle class in reality should
be united, through their commonalities.
The Daily Mail construction of Middle England, echoed Thatcherite notions
of the middle classes and remains unchallenged. We must now challenge the
construction of Middle England – the fearful and phobic – and
ask what these people really care about and whether their interests are
being met by a neo-liberal agenda. In 1997 New Labour achieved a landmark
victory through uniting and appealing to both working class and middle class
voters. It is, and will always be, the challenge of the centre left to construct
a cross class coalition – based on the hopes and fears of all; and
understanding who the middle classes are and what they really care about
is essential. How we do this is a challenge which will always be at the
heart of the progressive left.
Zoe Gannon is Research Fellow at Compass
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