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Eric Shaw
© Eric Shaw 2008
I’d like to start with a stark proposition: that old style class politics
have had their day. By ‘old style class politics’ - when applied
to the Britain and, in particular, the Labour party - I mean the following
propositions:
1. That for the bulk of people class was the most important (at last for
political purposes) form of social identity
2. That class can best be seen in dichotomous terms, that is working class
and middle class.
3. That Labour was the ‘natural party’ for working class voters,
and the Conservatives for the middle class.
4. That most voters defined politics in class terms
5. Hence the natural class basis for Labour was the working class.
I will argue - though here in rather schematic terms - that none of the above
propositions are entirely correct. My key points are the following:
1. That for the majority of people casting their ballots has ceased to be
an expression of deeply-embedded social identities and loyalties.
2. That the two-class model of society is fundamentally flawed and of very
little value in social analysis, though occupationally-derived interests
continue to structure party preference.
3. That social identities remain of prime importance in orienting people
to the world of party politics, but that groupings other than class - notably
race and ethnicity - are of rising importance, especially in the working
class.
The waning of habitual and expressive voting
Class-based political allegiance is fading, notably in the working class.
In the heyday of working class politics, economies of scale promoted the concentration
of employment in large industrial enterprises. The mass production plant brought
together vast numbers of workers in work routines that dominated their lives,
fostering strong class solidarities and high levels of union density. Due
to industrial and technological changes, employment in extractive industries,
heavy engineering and mass assembly line technologies has fallen heavily.
In huge swathes of the private sector collective bargaining has been replaced
by individualised payment systems and trade union membership - a key forger
of loyalty to the Labour party - in the private sector has been in free fall.
Instead of a few, but strong, cleavages, a complex and unstable pattern of
social conflict exists and boundaries between social classes are becoming
increasingly blurred. The working class is steadily shrinking, fragmenting
and losing its social and political cohesion. The outcome is what has become
known as class dealignment, that is to say the diminishing propensity of working
(but also middle) voters to affirm a loyalty to - and therefore habitually
for vote for - their ‘natural’ party.
The two-class model of society is fundamentally flawed
The corollary of all this is that Labour has no realistic prospect of winning
an election simply by mobilising a working class base. To this extent New
Labour strategists are correct in insisting that a revival of the old class
politics model can bring the party no succour. However, if the working class
has lost much of its homogeneity so too - but even more so - has the large
and constantly-expanding middle class. This has been widely recognized amongst
electoral experts, who now commonly distinguish between ‘routine non-manual
workers’ and the ‘salariat’, or professional and managerial
employees. This is, indeed, a very significant horizontal cleavage since the
income, power and life chances between, for example, clerical workers and
senior managers differ so drastically. But what has been overlooked - in British
studies though not on the continent - is the even more significant vertical
divide between the public and private sector middle class. I would suggest
that this divide has profound political and electoral consequences.
To give a couple of examples of what I have in mind. Two of the most middle
class parties (in terms of electoral composition) in Germany and Sweden are,
respectively, the Green party and the Left party. But the middle class voters
who flock to them are quite different from those that back the right: they
are mostly teachers, social workers and other public employees. Unlike in
this country, electoral data in many continental countries distinguishes by
employment sector. What they reveal is that a key determinant of the vote
(within the middle class) is employment location, with public-sector white-collar
workers far more likely to vote for left-of-centre parties (including the
Greens) and private sector ones equally substantially more likely to vote
for the right.
That this should be so is hardly surprising. The public/private divide can
be explained very briefly as result of (a) different economic interests and
(b) divergences in value orientations arising from educational and occupational
experiences.
Interest. Public employees have an interest in higher public spending,
market curtailment and the expansion of welfare: such policies spell more
jobs, more career opportunities and higher rewards. Whilst the private sector
middle class derives its income from the market, public sector salaries are
paid through tax receipts so it seems reasonable to expect that views over
the tax-spend trade-off will vary accordingly.
Values. The ethos and professional norms of health/welfare/educational
occupations incline public sector employees to take a more favourable view
of active public policy. Research has shown that both education and work experience
socialise public sector employees into favouring collectivist rather than
market-based solutions to social problems and enlightened policies (on such
matters as the environment and gender) as a whole.
In short, by virtue of both interest and values the public sector middle class
can be expected to exhibit a far greater degree of enthusiasm for welfare
state expansion than the private sector middle class. As a result, the former
will tend to vote disproportionately for parties of the left of the political
spectrum (social democrats, Greens and left socialists) whilst the latter
will evince an equally strong preference for parties of the right. This expectation
is in fact borne out by recent research into West European countries.1
Ethnicity and social identity
Left-of-centre parties in Western Europe have recently - in France, Italy,
and elsewhere - suffered a number of major setbacks. But the evidence is that
their Achilles heel is not the failure to attract votes from the expanding
middle class - the equivalent of the fabled ‘Middle England’ -
but a damaging draining away of working class support. Authoritarian instincts
were often to be found amongst less well-educated lower-income voters but
their impact (in terms of voting decisions) was to a large extent countervailed
by class-based allegiances. As the latter have eroded, so their restraining
effects have weakened. Indeed, the attenuating of class identity (of the type
that promoted loyalties to parties of the left) is producing a vacuum being
filled, in many parts of Europe, by a stronger sense of allegiance to race
or ethnicity. This, in turn, has found release in growing resentment towards
immigrants, migrant workers, asylum-seekers, ethnic minorities - in short
‘the other’. However much social democratic parties might adapt
their rhetoric and their policies to reassure white working class voters (in
some cases quite legitimately) that they understand their fears and insecurities
(of crime, social disorder, competition in the job market and so forth) they
will never be able to ‘outbid the right’ on such issues.2
Conclusion
What I have sought to do in this brief paper is to pinpoint some of the changes
that are occurring in the relationship between class and politics and the
implications these have for Labour’s future. Within these observations
I believe are lineaments of a new strategy - what I would call a new populism
of the left - in which, on the basis of a strong commitment to the welfare
state, the party would direct its appeals to a loose coalition of the working
class, the public sector middle class and routine white collar workers. But
outlining such a strategy is for another time.
Eric Shaw is a Senior Lecturer in politics at the University
of Stirling
Notes
1. See, for example: H. Kreisi, ‘The Transformation of Cleavage Politics’,
European Journal of Political Research 33 (2) 1998; H. Kitschelt, ‘Diversification
and Reconfiguration of Party Systems in Postindustrial Democracies’,
Europäische Politik, March 2004; O. Knutsen, ‘Social Class,
Sector Employment, and Gender as Party Cleavages in the Scandinavian Countries’,
Scandinavian Political Studies 24 (4) 2001; O. Knutsen, ‘The impact
of sector employment on party choice: A comparative study of eight West European
countries’, European Journal of Political Research 44 (4) 2005.
2. It should be added that whilst some working class voters might be swayed
by the perceived greater ‘toughness’ of right wing parties on
such matters, others, especially the young, are simply dropping out of the
political system. Rates of electoral participation have been falling steeply
(especially in Britain), as for growing numbers of people politics is seen
as a game with no relevance to their lives. The danger then is that the UK
will follow the US model where effectively half the population - predominantly
the poorer - simply drop out of the political system. .
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