The New Politics of Class

The New Politics of Class

The New Politics of Class The New Politics of Class The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class Geoffrey Evans and James Tilley 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Geoffrey Evans and James Tilley 2017 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2016949255 ISBN 978–0–19–875575–3 Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Acknowledgements Over the course of this project, we have received many valuable suggestions from colleagues that have helped us improve the analysis and the arguments presented in the different chapters of this book. We would like to extend a special thanks to Rob Ford and Oliver Heath who gave us very helpful com- ments on several chapters, as well as John Goldthorpe for his warm support and encouragement. The key to a project of this sort is being able to examine an unusually wide range of themes in British politics and society using high-quality data. For this purpose many people have shared data with us and we would like to thank them for their generosity. In Chapter 2 we examine social inequalities in detail and are very grateful to: Mark Williams for sharing with us the New Earning Survey data on inequalities in pay; Felix Busch for supplying us with data from the Labour Force Survey on unemployment; and Erzsebet Bukodi for the social mobility data from the cohort studies. For Chapter 5, extracts from The Guardian have been reproduced courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd, extracts from The Times courtesy of News Corp UK & Ireland Ltd, and extracts from the Daily Mirror courtesy of Trinity Mirror PLC. In Chapter 6 we use a variety of data that other very helpfully gave to us. Alan Finlayson and Judi Atkins kindly sent us Churchill’s conference speeches, which are not publically available. Mads Thau supplied us with data on class appeals coded directly from party manifestos. Ian Budge and Judith Bara very swiftly supplied us with the latest 2015 manifesto data to include in our overtime analysis. And Jennifer van Heerde-Hudson and Rosie Campbell generously gave us their data on MPs’ biographical information (these data were collected with the support of the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2013-175)). We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Jesus College Major Research Grants Fund and the Danish Research Council (grant number 1327- 00113) for helping to fund the 2015 British Social Attitudes module on social class used in Chapter 3. We would also like to thank Rune Stubager for his excellent collaboration in designing and helping to find funding for this module. And Geoff would like to thank his colleagues in the 2015 BES team for their patience while this book was completed, as well as support for the Acknowledgements inclusion of relevant questions in the face-to-face survey that are used in Chapters 3 and 6. We were also fortunate to have a wide range of research assistance from many colleagues and students. Chris Prosser undertook word score coding of both the party manifestos and party leaders’ speeches in Chapter 6. Sarah Coombes coded the media data used in Chapter 5, and gave us many useful suggestions for the qualitative analysis. William van Taack coded MPs’ biographical information in Chapter 6, the occupational class codes for the 2015 BES face-to-face survey and undertook some of the analysis for Chapters 2 and 3. Zack Grant and Stuart Perrett coded the open-ended class responses used in Chapter 3. Jon Mellon provided us with figures from the BES surveys in Chapter 6 and some tables in Chapter 3. Noah Carl proofread and indexed the book as well as providing more general assistance. Many thanks to all of them for their invaluable help. Finally, we would like to thank Allen and Irene Evans for providing part of the motivation for wanting to tell this story, and Claire Vickers, Elizabeth Tilley, and Roger Tilley for proofreading the whole manuscript and listening to James’ grumbling. vi Contents List of Figures ix List of Tables xiii 1. Introduction 1 Part I. Social Continuity 2. Inequality 21 3. Identity 40 4. Ideology 59 Part II. Political Change 5. The ‘Papers’ 91 6. The Parties 116 Part III. Consequences 7. Class Politics Is Dead 145 8. Long Live Class Politics 170 9. Conclusion 191 10. Postscript 201 References 209 Index 233 List of Figures 1.1. Proportion of different occupational class groups 7 1.2. Proportion of different educational groups 8 2.1. Mean percentile income by occupational class 23 2.2. Proportion in top 40 per cent of the income distribution by occupational class 24 2.3. Unemployment rate by occupational class 25 2.4. Income and unemployment by education 28 2.5. The experience of various risks by occupational class and education 30 2.6. Explanations for ‘getting ahead’ by occupational class 35 3.1. Unprompted and prompted class identities 43 3.2. Unprompted class identity by occupational class 45 3.3. Prompted class identity by occupational class 46 3.4. Working class identity by father’s occupational class 47 3.5. Class identity by education 48 3.6. Perceptions of class conflict 54 4.1. Views on ownership by occupational class 62 4.2. Views on equality by occupational class 64 4.3. Views on labour relations by occupational class 66 4.4. Union membership over time by occupational class 67 4.5. Strongly against more immigration by occupational class and education 71 4.6. Against EU membership by occupational class and education 72 4.7. Support death penalty by occupational class and education 74 4.8. Strongly support stiffer sentences by occupational class and education 75 4.9. Agree homosexuality is wrong by occupational class and education 77 4.10. Views on censorship and young people by education 78 4.11. How different groups have moved positions on the economic left–right and social conservative–liberal dimensions 81 4.12. How different groups have moved positions on the immigration/EU dimension 83 List of Figures 5.1. Proportion of readership supporting the Conservatives 93 5.2. Proportion of people in different groups reading different types of newspapers 95 5.3. Proportion of people reading different types of newspapers 96 5.4. Proportion of editorials mentioning class in any form 98 5.5. Proportion of editorials mentioning class in specific ways 99 5.6. Proportion of editorials mentioning class conflict and social equality 100 6.1. The left–right position of parties 118 6.2. References to ‘the working class’ in manifestos 120 6.3. References to unions, the unemployed, and the poor in manifestos 121 6.4. References to families in manifestos 122 6.5. References to ‘the working class’ in speeches by party leaders 124 6.6. References to unions, the unemployed, and the poor in speeches by party leaders 125 6.7. References to families in speeches by party leaders 126 6.8. MPs who previously had working class jobs 128 6.9. MPs who went to university 129 6.10. MPs who attended Oxbridge or a private school 129 6.11. Perceived differences between the parties 131 6.12. Perceptions of the extent to which parties look after the interests of classes 132 6.13. The proportion of people in Labour constituencies who agree that Labour is somewhat/very working class given the social characteristics of their MP 135 A6.1. The comparative manifesto project estimate of left–right party positions (RiLe) 141 7.1. Labour support by occupational class 149 7.2. Conservative support by occupational class 150 7.3. Differences in Labour support between working class and middle class groups 151 7.4. Liberal support by occupational class 154 7.5. Labour support by occupational class controlling for left–right values 158 7.6. Labour support by economic left–right position 159 7.7. Liberal support by social liberal–conservative position 160 7.8. Labour support by occupational class controlling for left–right values and class perceptions of Labour 162 8.1. Turnout over time 171 8.2. Non-voting rates by occupational class and education 173 x List of Figures 8.3. Non-voting rates by combined social group 174 8.4. The proportion of people who voted Labour in 1997 and think that Labour ‘looks after working class people’ well in 2001 by occupational class and 2001 vote choice 177 8.5.

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