User:Andysoh

I live in London and am interested in working class politics and history. Here I define working class not much differently to that 68% of the British population who agreed in 2002 that "At the end of the day, I'm working class and proud of it" (Changing Social Values, Mori poll 2002) This percentage has increased despite the fact that, as Mori's researchers put it, "objective changes in class - at least the way that market researchers measure it, as dependent on occupation - has been entirely in the opposite direction. Manual jobs have shrunk as Britain's heavy industry has died out: in 1970, two-thirds of the public were in C2DE households (that is, where the head of household was in a manual, "blue collar" occupation); now less than half are."

Perhaps that 68% of the population, up from 58% in 2000, which defined itself at that moment of polling in 2002 as working class, realised that (or, because of the special way the polling question was asked, revealed hidden or unspoken thoughts that) the way market researchers measure class has not been sufficiently thought through - does not sufficiently define their position in society. Could it be that those in the growth industries that are no longer blue collar feel that at least in one sense they are not much less exploited than those who broke their backs in the heavy industries until they were closed down? Suppose they are right? Perhaps there is a new working class emerging, conscious or partly conscious of its title. And if so, what does this mean?

Since writing the above it has been pointed out that John Cruddas, "a former Blairite fixer and liaison between the cabinet office and the trade union leaders" with "the stamp of New Labour still all over him":

"has nevertheless been compelled to come out with some surprising admissions... He wrote in The Guardian: "We were wrong about class. That is why we have lost votes". He admits "a significant movement away from us [New Labour] among workers in the public services; amongst black and minority ethnic voters; and amongst those described by marketing experts as ‘urban intellectuals’; and a huge shift away from us among working-class voters especially manual workers".

He correctly identifies "that manual workers still account for close to 40% of total employment". If you add in clerical and secretarial work, the traditional labour force stands at 15 million, approaching two in three jobs. The number of computer managers, software engineers and programmers has risen slightly, "but the real growth has been in the service sector, with the huge expansion in cleaning and support work and caring occupations. In short, in the past 15 years there has been no revolution in employment. In terms of the demand for labour, the key growth areas have been in traditional, often low-paid jobs, mostly carried out by women". This is a welcome, if belated, admission of the correctness of Marxist criticism of the ‘post-Fordist’ nonsense – ‘we are all middle class now’ – peddled by New Labour and their shadows in the past.

Cruddas also points out that it is "here, amongst groups that we thought were of declining importance, that the shift from Labour has been greatest"."

- Peter Taaffe, The coronation of Gordon Brown, Socialism Today, June 2007

Two in three jobs must be 66%, not much short of the 68% who said, according to the Mori poll quoted above, that they were "working class and pround of it". We needn't quibble about the other 2%.

It might be added that, of course, there is no implication from either Cruddas or Taaffe that of the remaining 32%, the middle class (comprising the vast bulk of the 32%) are "anti-" working class, (or should be considered as such) as may have been the case in the distant past. On the contrary, it could be argued that more than a few of those who consider themselves middle class share to some degree the same daily experiences and hence something of the same outlook as the mass of those who identified as working class people, or sympathise in various ways, albeit often finding themselves in slightly more comfortable circumstances.