Postwar class Flashcards
(29 cards)
Basis of class being unmade
Centred around the theory of ‘embourgeoisement’, in which the economic inferiority of the working classes was obliterated by rising wages
Accompanied by social and cultural change, leading workers to join the middle class
Impact of welfare state also significant
Unemployment post WW2
Less than 2% of the working population unemployed 1948-early 1970s
Real wages of industrial workers
Increased 20% 1951-59 alone
Disposable income items
Over 85% of the more prosperous half of the working class owned TVs by 1959
44% lawnmowers
Lawrence - periodisation question
Not just a post-war phenomenon, suggesting many British workers achieved the requisite level of affluence in the 1930s
Working class home ownership 1930s
More than doubled 1930-38 from 8% to 18%
Showed significant economic prosperity
However post-war change more rapid
Welfare state outline
From 1948 there was a robust system of social security, free healthcare and free secondary education
Evidence of enduring poverty
1948 - 495,000 pensioners subsided only on National Assistance supplement, which was by no means substantial
Todd - complication of families
Families as a response to hardship contradict the polarisation of ‘affluent’ and ‘poor’ working class
Unemployed men and pensioners were the parents of well-off workers who would pool their resources through the familial structure
‘affluent workers’ cannot be considered an isolated group within the class
Zweig - initial observations of change
Suggested ‘acquisitive instincts’ of the working class, as they moved towards an ‘increasingly ‘middle class’ standard of living’ emphasising consumption rather than production
Zweig - judgement
1961 - there were ‘deep changes’ in the mode and living of the working class, but also their code and ethos as a whole
Goldthorpe rebuke
Emphasised that a break from working-class traditionalism did not necessarily mean a shift to ‘middle-classness’
Suggested middle-class social norms were ‘not yet widely followed’ nor were middle-class lifestyles ‘consciously emulated’
No evidence economic improvement led to social realignment
Lawrence criticism of Goldthorpe study
‘theoretical and personal influences intertwined in the classifying practices’ of his team
Findings must be interpreted carefully rather than ignored
Waters - emphasis on writing
Encouraged by local history, workers in late 60s, 70s and 80s told radically different stories from C19 workers
Abandoned sense of personal advance for nostalgia
Lamented loss of ‘traditional working class community’
Housing change
Built environment had changed radically
1.3 million houses razed 1945-75
Waters - writing defying class erosion
‘mythologizing the past’
Members of the working class sought to retain and even codify their unique practices
Jones - more radical purpose of narratives
Coincided with Conservative hegemony in which welfare state elements were ‘systematically denigrated’
Dominant representation of council estates negative
As such, accounts were a critique of ‘contemporary stigmatising representations’ of working class people suggesting they were ‘deficient’
Todd caution against autobiographical sources
They suggest WC solidarity into the 1970s and 80s
Todd emphasises the primacy of ‘experience’ as a dimension of lives, ‘probably a more important one than the interior self’
As such, it should not be assumed people believed their innermost thoughts were the most authentic portrayal of whom they were
Decline of the Labour party
1950s was defeated three times in a row (1951, 1955 and 1959)
Considered to be a WC shift towards MC values
Crosland advice for Labour
It would be unwise to ‘continue making a largely proletarian appeal’ when the majority of the population was showing symptoms of ‘a middle-class psychology’
Decline in WC votes for Labour in WC jobs
Down from 62% to 38% 1959-1983
Wider political dealignment
Labour and Conservatives both lost support from their natural class bases and class itself became a less potent source of political division
Especially after the rise of individualism in the 1970s
Thatcher assessment of class
‘outmoded and meaningless’ and implied a level of classlessness
Braithwaite - assessment of Thatcher statement
‘blunt denial of the importance of class’
Political rhetoric should not be given too much credence
The same can be said of Major’s claims
