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As has been repeatedly observed, Britain is internationally perceived as a class
ridden and obsessed society. Yet in terms of national politics, this is a love that
dare not speak its name. Margaret Thatcher described class as a communist
concept and promoted the virtues of self-reliance and individualism consistent
with her experience as a grocer’s daughter, while John Major liked to speak of a
classless society.
Nor has class fared better under Tony Blair. In an interview with Robert
Harris in the short-lived American magazine Talk, he said his goal was ‘to take
class out of British politics’. That’s not very difficult when you believe that ‘we
are all middle class now’.
Setting aside the startlingly ill-informed nature of the statement, the
reason for Blair and New Labour’s aversion to class is simple enough. The term
is a social and political signifier of an Old Labour world that it wants to be seen
to have left behind. Class in general and working class in particular evokes
production, collectivism and council housing rather than consumption,
individualism and aspiration. Blairite goals are social mobility and meritocracy
– raising standards for all rather than closing the gap.
Do these attitudes to class really matter – after all, they are only words
and New Labour can and has done some redistribution by stealth. Words do
matter. As Carradine (1999, 22) observes, ‘Politicians play a large part in the
creation and articulation of social identities and in the process whereby one
version becomes, for a time, more resonant than the alternatives.’ To remove
class from the vocabulary of British politics is to make it harder to talk about
poverty and inequality (unless it’s global), and to close off ways that sections of
society feel about their experiences. Labour MPs in ‘heartland’ seats such as
Dagenham (see Jon Cruddas in this issue) increasingly report widespread
resentment and disillusion among working class voters, some of whom are
seeking solace in the far right.
As McKibbin (1999, 1) observes, ‘In its thinking New Labour is
dependent primarily on one sociological premise: that the manual working
class is no longer a reliable base for the Labour Party, simply because the
working class has so declined in numbers and therefore in political potential.’
However, parties are not passive reflectors of society – party positions can
create class allegiances by stressing ‘class-relevant policy positions’ (Evans,
1999, 6). As Cruddas notes, New Labour’s ideological escape hatch from
traditional class politics has been the knowledge economy. This idea generated
an optimistic, albeit hopelessly inaccurate, view of an ever-expanding number
of professional, managerial jobs and a new world of creative work: ‘At a stroke
the old negatives are dealt with as they belonged to a previous epoch of
industrial work organisation and to a Labour Party that belonged there. As
such, New Labour is free from a working class which is literally withering away.’
Meanwhile, a politics of choice fits more comfortably with the target of the
party’s affections – middle Britain swing voters.
Other voices, different perspectives
Of course this marginalising of class politics cannot be laid solely at the door of
New Labour or politicians in general. Class has long ceased to be a fashionable
subject of interest among social scientists and cultural commentators. We have
moved from an understandable distancing from the ‘master narrative’ of class,
to a situation where class is a subordinate competitor in the (post) modern
politics of identity. Observe the bookshop sociology shelves and they are
bulging with texts on gender, sexuality and to a lesser extent race. In addition,
like New Labour, most social scientists are far more interested in consumption
than production.
These trends help to explain why contemporary voices on class tend to
come from outside the mainstream. For a while, it was left to Ferdinand Mount
(2004), former head of Thatcher’s policy unit, to talk about the ‘classless
delusion’ and point to the dangers of the wealth gap. From a different place on
the political spectrum, Michael Collins’ (2004) The Likes of Us rails against the
caricatured picture of a redundant, reactionary white working class. While
useful correctives, the danger of such contributions is that they are based to an
extent on nostalgia – for a world before either the welfare state or consumer
capitalism had eroded the authentic values of working class community.
We have to deal with class as it exists and where it is going. While it
might be an exaggeration to say that, ‘The government has done exceptionally
well in redistributing money towards low-paid families’ (Toynbee, 2004), it is
simply untrue that working class voters have been abandoned in favour of
‘shiraz quaffers’ (Elliot, 2005). New Labour has done some good practical
things in the fields of tax credits, early years programmes and the minimum
wage since 1997 to attack aspects of social deprivation. Though disliked by
some, not least many shiraz quaffers, they have also addressed some key
concerns about crime and social disintegration in working class communities
through measures such as ASBOs.
Nevertheless, the picture of continuing and debilitating inequalities
revealed in the contributions to this issue is largely gloomy. As Richard
Wilkinson notes, the findings on relative inequalities are not based on
comparisons with a socialist utopia, but on comparisons with other, more
equal, market democracies. The best that can be said is that without such
policies things would have been worse or, as Delorenzi and Reed put it, the
policies have been ‘partly effective in helping to significantly ameliorate the
worst aspects of deprivation’. New Labour’s leaders have sought to justify their
limited interventions through the idea of a general levelling up through
prosperity for all. But as Delorenzi and Reed also point out, excessive income
inequalities matter because the well off can convert their differential into more
durable wealth assets in the form of property, shares and the like. Inequality is
thus entrenched and reproduced over generations.
Class is not just about the misfortunes of the bottom, but the fortunes of
the top. There is now a global business elite or transnational capitalist class
(Sklair, 2001) that, while more cosmopolitan and socially liberal than its
domestic predecessors, is more powerful and more privileged, and determined
to protect the deregulated market order that created those assets. On such
matters, Labour is utterly silent. As indicated in the tortuous evasions of Blair
and Brown on whether the inequality gap is too high, New Labour resolutely
refuses to acknowledge or do anything about the rewards accruing to those at
the top. To an extent this is inevitable, as it is trapped within a narrative that
ascribes inequality only to the outcomes of differential rewards to labour
market skills and talents.
Class, in and for itself
At this point, however, we need to take a step back or at least sideways in our
narrative. Even if we set aside the obvious point that there are significant nonclass
inequalities – gender, ethnicity, age, geography – inequality and class are
not the same. We need to consider two criteria: to what extent is class a
substantial constraint on life chances, and to what extent do people understand
their lives in class terms?
Unless one believes that the degree of social engineering necessary to
produce absolute (or somewhere near) equality of outcome is feasible or
desirable, some degree of inequality is inevitable in democratic market
economies. Put simply, a positional hierarchy can be acceptable if there are
opportunities of movement up and down by merit, and the rewards attached to
positions are not so unequal that they lack legitimacy or efficiency. If class is
durable and significantly constrains life chances, then to fail to speak and act
on it is to abandon the mission of social democracy.
That, unfortunately, appears to sum up where we are today. The key
evidence on this is the rate of inter-generational social mobility and as has been
widely reported this is now in decline. Elsewhere in this issue, Robert Taylor
describes how the recent Leitch report found that the chances of a child from a
low income background having a high income job in adulthood are lower in the
UK now than they were in the 1950s. Ex-cabinet minister and latter-day
radical Stephen Byers put it in more explosive terms in his speech to the Social
Market Foundation: ‘We are now witnessing a silent and secret revolution
where, to a greater extent than ever before, those born into disadvantage and
poverty will be condemned to it for the rest of their lives.’
There is some recognition of this situation by New Labour, but not only
is the will to do anything effective largely absent, the trends that produce
constraints on mobility fly in the face of the dominant narrative of the
knowledge economy and its supply-side policy prescriptions. In the hour glass
economy, jobs are being created at the top end, but most job growth is at the
bottom in low skill, low wage service jobs – the middle is being squeezed. In
this context, the idea that the socially disadvantaged can be skilled, schooled
and socialised to solve the mobility and opportunity problem is not only flawed,
but one-sided.
With a squeeze on other opportunities and avenues for social mobility, it
is increasingly the case that your class is your fate, but we don’t have a language
or policies to deal with it. We can’t attack the rich and powerful; we can’t talk
about tax, but only about individual opportunity and responsibility. Labour’s
current inability to engage adequately with the scale of the problem is
exacerbated by the marketisation and choice agenda, which skates over the fact
that collective conditions enable some individuals to be better placed to make
more effective choices.
The other criteria of class awareness or consciousness is more complex.
As Cannadine reminds us, Marx made a distinction between ‘class for itself ’
and ‘class-in-itself ’. The latter refers to ‘inert, inanimate social aggregations’
(1999, 3), which while providing us with a comprehensive picture of society
based on income, wealth and occupation don’t tell us much about how people
think and act. Many trees have been chopped down to fuel left debates about
the intricacies of class consciousness with little to show for it and we have
neither the space nor the desire to join in.
Put simply, for the existence of class difference to be translated into
collective agency for change, sufficient numbers of people have to want class to
matter. Class identity may be more than nostalgia and more than mere
rhetoric, but class politics are no longer the dominant narrative of
contemporary societies. This is not merely or even primarily a reflection of the
changing occupational structure. After all, as we noted earlier, the shrinking
manual labour force is being augmented by many low level service jobs that
occupy a similar class and market position. In addition, the trade unions are
still a significant national pressure group and voice for labour. Often
unacknowledged, many unions have reformed their structures and policies and
have made significant inroads into a new, non-traditional section of the
workforce. Within the workplace, labour is still an active, albeit often informal,
presence, capable of resistance and dissent. It is the politics rather than the
sociology that counts and it is becoming more and more difficult to speak of a
labour movement with a vision and power to change society – an argument first
made prominent by Eric Hobsbawm in his seminal 1978 lecture, ‘The forward
march of Labour halted?’ (1981). In the electoral arena, Danny Dorling argues
elsewhere in this issue that class and voting behaviour have not de-aligned. But
it is one thing to show that people vote in class-influenced ways, another to
show that they see it in these terms.
Social democrats may well have to find a new language, different from
the old ways in which class was articulated, but avoiding New Labour’s
euphemisms and evasions. We may not be able to re-instate the class politics of
old, but we can re-make a politics that addresses class issues. At the heart of
that language has to be a re-invigorated politics of equality that talks of
opportunity and the means of making it real. Such an approach needs to be
expressed in symbolically significant policies that make a difference in class
terms at the top and bottom. The most straightforward way of doing this would
be a strengthened ‘living’ minimum wage and increased taxes on wealth. But
we must also address the situations and grievances of many better off
employees and their families who, as the interview with Richard Sennett
reminds us, are also experiencing their own class anxieties with increased levels
of work intensification and job insecurity. Policies that deal with the crisis in
pensions and work–life balance are essential for incorporating a broader range
of people into a revitalised politics of class and in/equality.
New political challenges
It’s an easy leap from more traditional issues of the left and class to the
contemporary political scene. David Cameron, the new pole of British politics
around which everyone is now positioning themselves, is both busily building
his own class alliances to win the next election and as an old Etonian
demonstrates the fluidity of class salience in Britain today.
Cameron has begun impressively, but can this start be sustained? He has
swallowed the New Labour ‘how to win an election’ play book and is
regurgitating chunks of it whole. You triangulate and take on opposition
among your traditional base to prove you have changed and demonstrate that
you have the interests of the nation at heart. So Cameron has already gone for
the police and big business and is aligning himself with Blair’s misguided
education reform. Next you take on your opponent’s natural territory and try to
make it your own, hence speeches on poverty. And you cap it all by a de factoif
not de jurerenaming of the party – this time to Compassionate Conservatives.
So comrade Dave is making all the right moves but will the Tories back
him in the way that Labour backed Blair? Some influential Tories are quietly
complaining that they didn’t join the Conservative Party to end up to the left of
Labour. It’s a fair point. Time will tell whether Cameron can get his bandwagon
rolling in way that locks dissenting voices into lasting silence. What can’t yet be
detected in the Tory Party is the utter desperation Labour had after 1992 to do
anything to win again. The reasons for this are important. Thatcherism saw its
task as the dismantling of the apparatus of social democracy. Trade unions
were attacked along with local government. Nationalised industries were sold
off along with council houses. Life for the left was painful. Where and how has
New Labour made life uncomfortable for the real forces of Conservatism? The
ban on fox hunting is probably as bad as its gets. Of course the Tory Party
believes in its divine right to be in power but the forces behind it, in the
business, financial and media worlds, the landed gentry and the old school tie
network, have not suffered under Blair. Their income and wealth has increased
and the growth of the hour glass economy is exactly what you expect to see. So
why make any real push to get New Labour out? New Labour occupies a world
of political limbo. In power, doing many good things, but never willing nor able
to take on the real vested interests that stop our country being properly
modernised, our economy made more efficient and our politics overhauled.
The echoes of Blair in ‘Cameronism’ can be seen in one further respect.
The Tories could never decide whether Blair was Stalin or Bambi. Now New
Labour cannot decide whether Cameron is the same old ‘wolf in sheep’s
clothing’ or a different challenge from a new type of Tory. But the accusation
that to Cameron words are easy is interesting. Words, as we mentioned above,
now matter in politics. Both the media and political opponents know that in a
less deferential and more cynical world politicians live or die by whether they
stick to what they say. What Cameron says and does now will set not just the
tone of his leadership but the detail too. If you win as a Compassionate
Conservative, convention now dictates that you must govern as a
Compassionate Conservative.
So what do we make of a Tory Party that says is will cut inequality,
redistribute wealth, protect civil liberties, take on big business, drop its support
for selection in schools, gets Bob Geldof to help its thinking on third world
poverty and looks serious about the environment? What do we make of an
incredible Oliver Letwin speech called ‘Conducting politics as if beauty
matters’?
Does Cameron prove that we have decisively shifted the centre of
political gravity? Philip Gould suggests in a recent letter to the Guardian that it
signals the victory of New Labour. But if so why not stop here? Why settle to the
right of Cameron? It makes no sense to suggest that Cameron is just trying to
entice us into a trap. Cameron knows what this journal has long believed – that
the centre of British politics is to the left of the government. Of course Cameron
is positioning himself tactically to end the Tories’ image as the nasty party. But
why don’t we make it harder for him, not easier? If Cameron thinks this is
where the votes are then it makes little sense for the prime minister to call a
more radical politics a kamikaze strategy. When can we stop believing that
Britain is a Conservative country? The New Labour needle is stuck in the
groove of 1994. It is time to move on, but there are few signs Blair is willing, in
fact the reverse.
If it’s hard to judge the veracity of the Cameron strategy it’s even tougher
to make sense of what the prime minister is up to. Why go for 90 days as a
prevention of terror measure when you know you don’t have the votes? And
why repeat the process on education? Blair said after the terrorism bill defeat
that sometimes it’s better to lose on an issue of principle. But how could the
difference between 90 days and 60 be such an issue? Does he want
confrontation with his own party? Does he even see it as his party anymore? If
he pushed through an education bill which allows trust status and fails to have
a statutory admissions code – effectively ending comprehensive education –
then thousands will leave the Labour Party – probably more than exited over
the war. This cannot be the legacy he wants.
If words matter to Cameron they also matter to Gordon Brown. The
truism of politics is that means shape ends. The way in which Brown starts his
leadership of the Labour Party will have a decisive influence on the purpose
and direction with which he governs. The word is that the Brownites want a
seamless transition. Brown has indicated that the Blairite public reform
agenda is safe with him. Again, we have argued that what Labour needs is not
just a change of leader but a change of direction. Against Cameron, Brown
must give Labour identifiers a reason to come out and vote and Labour
members a reason to campaign. Otherwise last May’s 36 per cent of the vote
might start looking quite good. Remember, the Republicans in the USA have
acquired power across the political system not by pretending to be like their
opponents, not by being led by focus groups, but by building a base that
delivers both electoral success and the support in civil society to campaign to
change the political culture of their country.
Finally, let’s not forget the Liberal Democrats who are also busy reorienting
themselves around Cameron. It might be too late for them as Cameron
defines himself as both socially and economically liberal, particularly after their
recent self-inflicted wounds. But Ming Campbell the centrist candidate has made
it clear that the party under his leadership will be to the left of Labour. Either he
or the even more socially liberal Simon Hughes is likely to win the current
leadership election. This leaves an unreformed New Labour as unquestionably
the party of the British centre-right. It is not a position from which growing class
divisions of British society can be addressed, let alone healed.
References
Cannadine, D. (1999), The Rise and Fall of Class in British Politics, New York, Columbia
University Press.
Collins, M. (2004), The Likes of Us: a biography of the white working class, London, Granta
Books.
Elliot, L. (2005), ‘Despised and patronised by New Labour’, Guardian, 15 Apr.
Evans, G. (1999), ‘For you, voter, the class war is not over’, Fabian Review, 111.
Hobsbawm, E. (1981), ‘The forward march of Labour halted?’ (originally the 1978 Marx
Memorial Lecture), in M. Jacques and F. Mulhern (eds), The Forward March of Labour
Halted?, London, Verso.
McKibbin, R. (1999), ‘Mondeo man in the driving seat’, London Review of Books, Vol. 21, No. 19.
Mount, F. (2004), Mind the Gap: class in Britain now, London, Short Books.
Sklair, L. (2001), The Transnational Capitalist Class, Oxford, Blackwell.
Toynbee, P. (2004), ‘Our subsidy to low pay’, Guardian, 29 Oct.
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