Working Class - And Proud Of It!

The Labour government has shied away from the traditional working class issues that the party used to espouse, and is now quarrelling with the trade unions. The theory, of course, is that a modern Labour government needs some middle-class support to survive, and that is obviously true if one thinks in term of the rise of the ABC1s to comprise half the population. But it does rather assume that these new middle classes think and act as middle classes. To some extent, certainly, they do, which is why social grade is still a useful classification for market researchers. The breaking down of the predictive relationship of "working class and proud of it" among the ABs shows how this might be benefiting Labour - the party is now almost as appealing to professionals who don't think of themselves as fundamentally working class as to those who do.

But what they gain on the swings (so to speak) they may be more than losing on the roundabouts. The working class identity seems no longer to be binding the loyalties of DEs to the Labour Party, so that those who admit they are working class and proud of it are no more likely to vote Labour than those who do not - instead, they are more likely to say they will not vote or to be undecided. If this pattern persists, it may have as profound an impact on the future class/party structure of politics in this country as the rise of the ABC1s; and it has happened a great deal quicker.

* MORI interviewed a representative sample of 1,875 adults aged 15+, face-to-face in-home across Great Britain on 18-24 July 2002. Data are weighted to reflect the national profile