The Politics of ‘Affluent’ and ‘Traditional’ Workers in Britain: an Aggregate Data Analysis

1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Crewe
Keyword(s):  
White Collar ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
National Average ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Class Level ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
Post War

In their study of the ‘affluent worker’ in Luton,1 Goldthorpe and his colleagues reached a number of important conclusions about the political behaviour of the ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ working class in post-war Britain. They rejected the belief, commonly held by the late 1950s, that a growing proportion of manual workers was beginning to support the Conservative Party as a result of attaining a middle class level of income and material possessions (the ‘embourgeoisement’ theory). In their sample, which was elaborately designed to ensure the most favourable conditions for confirmation of the embourgeoisement theory, they found (i) that the level of stable Labour support was higher than the national average for manual workers; (ii) that there was no evidence of any gradual, long-term shift of support towards the Conservatives or away from Labour; and (iii) that the small minority of Conservatives was distinguished not by a higher than average standard of living, but by a relatively large number of white collar workers among their kin. The notion that there was a necessary connection, among manual workers, between growing material prosperity and increased support for the Conservative Party was therefore decisively rejected.

‘A Party for Owners or a Party for Earners?’ How far did the British Conservative Party Really Change After 1945?

1987 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 49-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Ramsden
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Characteristic Mode ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Post War ◽  
Looking Back

THE period spent in opposition between 1945 and 1951 has generally been thought of as a key to the understanding of the activities of the post-war British Conservative Party. Autobiographies of the Party leaders of the time began to appear at the end of the Fifties, already looking back to a period in which the Conservatives had decisively changed their approach. So for example, Lord Woolton's Memoirs reviewed not only a term as Party Chairman which had been a highlight of his own crowded career, but also his sharing in a major act of transformation, a transformation that had led on to Conservative success since 1951: ‘the change was revolutionary’. Other key figures in the organisation reached similar conclusions as their own accounts appeared: David Maxwell-Fyfe argued that the new Party rules which he had drawn up had not only decisively widened the political base of British Conservatism, but that events since had confirmed the importance of the change. R. A. Butler's account of The Art of the Possible argued in 1971 that ‘the overwhelming electoral defeat of 1945 shook the Conservative Party out of its lethargy and impelled it to re-think its philosophy and re-form its ranks with a thoroughness unmatched for a century’. The effect was to bring both the policies of the Party and ‘their characteristic mode of expression’, as he puts it, ‘up to date’. As recently as 1978, Reginald Maudling—a key figure behind the scenes in 1945–51 as a speechwriter from Eden and Churchill and as the organising secretary of the committee which produced the Industrial Charter of 1947—reached much the same view: ‘We were at that time developing a new economic policy for the Conservative Party … It marked a substantially different approach for post-war Conservative philosophy.

The British General Election of 1970 - Impressions of an Academic Candidate

1971 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-57
Author(s):  
William Wallace
Keyword(s):  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Levels Of Reality ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Political Battle

THE STUDENT OF POLITICS AND THE PRACTITIONER OF POLITICS approach the same problem from different ends. The student is concerned with searching for the underlying realities which can explain the surface shifts of political ephemera; or perhaps with disentangling the different levels of reality which he discerns from his dispassionate observation of the political scene. The practitioner is concerned above all with the intricacies of day-to-day politics. He is interested in long-term patterns of political behaviour only insofar as they affect his political chances, or insofar as foreknowledge will enable him to change and shape the developing pattern. At the opposite ends of this division of interest in the phenomena of politics one may imagine, as ideal types, the ‘pure’ political scientist, the neutral observer of the political battle whose attitude to the contestants and their fluctuating fortunes is one of scholarly detachment, and the dedicated politician, glorying in the clash and chaos of the battlefield, with little more than contempt for those who stand aside and watch. For those who stand towards either end of this division, there are now two separate worlds of politics.

Is Age the New Class? Economic Crisis and Demographics in European Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Erk
Keyword(s):  
Age Groups ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
New Class ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Younger Age ◽  
Material Interests ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Welfare State

As the crisis turns into long-term economic downturn, younger age-groups in Europe seem to be hit with higher levels of unemployment while the welfare state is steadily shrinking. The young have suddenly become a social group united by collective material interests, but does this translate into a sense of a collective political interest? The paper examines to what extent the dominant class-based social science of the post-war years can help us understand the politics of age-groups. The analysis highlights four changes since post-war years: the workplace has changed, impacting socialization; modern media has changed, impacting mobilization; the political landscape is fairly institutionalized, tempering the possibilities for new political concerns to find voice; and those who would define and articulate the political priorities of the young are leaving the Old Continent.

Must Labour lose? Lessons from post-war history

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Jefferys
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Question ◽  
Standing Question

Kevin Jefferys addresses the long-standing question of whether ‘Must Labour Lose?’ This has been an intriguing political question ever since it was first posed in 1960 by Mark Abrams and Richard Rose. Examining the post-war record of the Labour Party, alongside that of the Conservative Party, Kevin Jefferys questions the inevitability of Labour’s decline through a detailed examination of the political results since 1945. Instead of Labour’s inevitable decline he suggests that there is a pattern of the Labour Party success and defeats that are conditioned by the economic circumstances, the performance of the Conservative party, and the leadership of the Labour Party. In the end, he argues that Labour may not always lose but that, given the gap between the opinion about the leadership in the party and the electorate in the country, it may be some time before Labour regains power.

Churchill, women and the politics of gender

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Toye
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
World War ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Post War

This chapter investigates how Churchill related to women at the political level, and how women voters in turn related to him. Churchill had a blurred Conservative-Liberal identity, and this affected his approach to ‘the woman question’. Hostile to female enfranchisement at the start of his career, he became a reluctant convert during his Edwardian Liberal phase, provided that it could be done in such a way as to benefit his own party electorally. As a renegade Tory during the 1930s he drew on the services of a range of female anti-appeasers such as Shiela Grant Duff. During World War II, however, he controversially opposed equal pay for women teachers. It is well-established that, in the post-war years, the Conservative Party benefitted from its gendered approach to rationing and austerity, Churchill himself did little to appeal explicitly to women voters. Although he did accept a role for a limited number of ‘exceptional’ women in the public sphere, he was never an enthusiast for substantive gender equality.

scholarly journals After the Peasants’ War: Barbara (Schweikart) von Fuchstein Fights for Her Property

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 141-160
Author(s):  
Christopher Ocker
Keyword(s):  
Family Business ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Religious Controversy ◽  
Post War

Historians are only beginning to appreciate fully the political and social impact of the aftermath of the German Peasants’ War. The case of Barbara (Schweikart) von Fuchstein, widow of Sebastian von Fuchstein, a Kaufbeuren lawyer suspected of Anabaptism and exiled at the end of the war, sheds light on the role of middle-rank nobility in the process of post-war reordering. Her eventual success in a conflict with her violent cousin, Ulrich Schweikert, a knight in the service of the Abbot of Kempten, draws attention to middle-rank competition in the Upper Allgäu, where historians have emphasized the tenacity of peasants and the long-term winnings of princes. Her case also illustrates the flux of religious identities at ground level in the early Reformation, among lay people whose interest in the religious controversy was secondary to, perhaps inseparable from, family business. Les historiens commencent à peine à mieux comprendre l’impact politique et social des suites de la Guerre des Paysans en Allemagne. Le cas de Barbara (Schweikart) von Fuchstein, veuve de Sebastian von Fuchstein, un avocat de Kaufbeuren suspecté d’être anabaptiste et exilé à la fin de la guerre, met en lumière le rôle de la petite noblesse dans la réorganisation d’après-guerre. En effet, le succès remporté par Barbara (Schweikart) von Fuchstein contre son agressif cousin, Ulrich Schweikart, chevalier au service de l’abbé de Kempten, attire notre attention sur la compétition se déroulant au sein de cette noblesse dans la région de l’Oberallgaü, tandis que les historiens ont par ailleurs souligné la ténacité des paysans et les gains à long terme des princes. Ce cas illustre également le caractère changeant des identités religieuses dans les populations des débuts de la Réforme, tels les laïcs ayant moins d’intérêt pour les controverses religieuses que pour leurs affaires familiales, voire subordonnant les premières aux secondes.

Association Between Long-Term Job Strain and Metabolic Syndrome Factor Across Sex and Occupation

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marja-Liisa Kinnunen ◽  
Taru Feldt ◽  
Ulla Kinnunen ◽  
Jaakko Kaprio ◽  
Lea Pulkkinen
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Metabolic Syndrome ◽  
Job Strain ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Occupational Group ◽  
Job Control ◽  
The Metabolic Syndrome ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
Low Levels

The present study investigated whether long-term job strain increases the prevalence of risk for metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, across sex and occupation. The participants (64 men, 62 women) were drawn from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development, Finland. Job strain was measured by a combination of high job demands and low job control ( Karasek, 1979 ) at ages 36 and 42. Metabolic syndrome was measured at age 42. The results indicated that both sex and occupational group moderated the association between long-term job strain and the metabolic syndrome factor but in an unexpected way. In women, low long-term job strain was associated with higher levels of the metabolic syndrome factor. Among white-collar workers high long-term job strain was related to low levels of the metabolic syndrome factor. Hence, more research is needed to identify additional potential moderators of long-term job strain on metabolic syndrome across sex and occupation.

New York’s White-Collar Unions during Wartime and Reconversion

2020 ◽  
pp. 188-243
Author(s):  
Shannan Clark
Keyword(s):  
White Collar ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
The Political ◽  
Equal Distribution ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
The Social ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
Distribution Of Income

Chapter 5 refocuses the narrative on the experiences of white-collar workers employed within New York’s culture industries between 1941 and 1947. As economic conditions improved rapidly with the mobilization for war, the chronic underemployment and precariousness of work during the Depression gave way to the tightest labor market of the twentieth century. Wartime conditions facilitated union organizing even as they restricted unionists’ range of permissible collective action, leading white-collar unionists to support the social consumerism of the Office of Price Administration. The resurgence of unionism occurred within the context of a seismic shift toward a more equal distribution of income and wealth in the United States, which only intensified the political polarization of white-collar workers. In addition, this chapter also highlights the continued vibrancy of Popular Front labor feminism during the 1940s and women’s profound influence on the surge in white-collar organizing.

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