Postwar class

Question 1

Basis of class being unmade

Answer 1

Centred around the theory of ‘embourgeoisement’, in which the economic inferiority of the working classes was obliterated by rising wages

Accompanied by social and cultural change, leading workers to join the middle class

Impact of welfare state also significant

Question 2

Unemployment post WW2

Answer 2

Less than 2% of the working population unemployed 1948-early 1970s

Question 3

Real wages of industrial workers

Answer 3

Increased 20% 1951-59 alone

Question 4

Disposable income items

Answer 4

Over 85% of the more prosperous half of the working class owned TVs by 1959

44% lawnmowers

Question 5

Lawrence - periodisation question

Answer 5

Not just a post-war phenomenon, suggesting many British workers achieved the requisite level of affluence in the 1930s

Question 6

Working class home ownership 1930s

Answer 6

More than doubled 1930-38 from 8% to 18%

Showed significant economic prosperity

However post-war change more rapid

Question 7

Welfare state outline

Answer 7

From 1948 there was a robust system of social security, free healthcare and free secondary education

Question 8

Evidence of enduring poverty

Answer 8

1948 - 495,000 pensioners subsided only on National Assistance supplement, which was by no means substantial

Question 9

Todd - complication of families

Answer 9

Families as a response to hardship contradict the polarisation of ‘affluent’ and ‘poor’ working class

Unemployed men and pensioners were the parents of well-off workers who would pool their resources through the familial structure

‘affluent workers’ cannot be considered an isolated group within the class

Question 10

Zweig - initial observations of change

Answer 10

Suggested ‘acquisitive instincts’ of the working class, as they moved towards an ‘increasingly ‘middle class’ standard of living’ emphasising consumption rather than production

Question 11

Zweig - judgement

Answer 11

1961 - there were ‘deep changes’ in the mode and living of the working class, but also their code and ethos as a whole

Question 12

Goldthorpe rebuke

Answer 12

Emphasised that a break from working-class traditionalism did not necessarily mean a shift to ‘middle-classness’

Suggested middle-class social norms were ‘not yet widely followed’ nor were middle-class lifestyles ‘consciously emulated’

No evidence economic improvement led to social realignment

Question 13

Lawrence criticism of Goldthorpe study

Answer 13

‘theoretical and personal influences intertwined in the classifying practices’ of his team

Findings must be interpreted carefully rather than ignored

Question 14

Waters - emphasis on writing

Answer 14

Encouraged by local history, workers in late 60s, 70s and 80s told radically different stories from C19 workers

Abandoned sense of personal advance for nostalgia

Lamented loss of ‘traditional working class community’

Question 15

Housing change

Answer 15

Built environment had changed radically

1.3 million houses razed 1945-75

Question 16

Waters - writing defying class erosion

Answer 16

‘mythologizing the past’

Members of the working class sought to retain and even codify their unique practices

Question 17

Jones - more radical purpose of narratives

Answer 17

Coincided with Conservative hegemony in which welfare state elements were ‘systematically denigrated’

Dominant representation of council estates negative

As such, accounts were a critique of ‘contemporary stigmatising representations’ of working class people suggesting they were ‘deficient’

Question 18

Todd caution against autobiographical sources

Answer 18

They suggest WC solidarity into the 1970s and 80s

Todd emphasises the primacy of ‘experience’ as a dimension of lives, ‘probably a more important one than the interior self’

As such, it should not be assumed people believed their innermost thoughts were the most authentic portrayal of whom they were

Question 19

Decline of the Labour party

Answer 19

1950s was defeated three times in a row (1951, 1955 and 1959)

Considered to be a WC shift towards MC values

Question 20

Crosland advice for Labour

Answer 20

It would be unwise to ‘continue making a largely proletarian appeal’ when the majority of the population was showing symptoms of ‘a middle-class psychology’

Question 21

Decline in WC votes for Labour in WC jobs

Answer 21

Down from 62% to 38% 1959-1983

Question 22

Wider political dealignment

Answer 22

Labour and Conservatives both lost support from their natural class bases and class itself became a less potent source of political division

Especially after the rise of individualism in the 1970s

Question 23

Thatcher assessment of class

Answer 23

‘outmoded and meaningless’ and implied a level of classlessness

Question 24

Braithwaite - assessment of Thatcher statement

Answer 24

‘blunt denial of the importance of class’

Political rhetoric should not be given too much credence

The same can be said of Major’s claims

Question 25

Brooke - gender and class

Answer 25

Emphasised the interconnected nature of gender and class postwar

Considers the ‘ideal of the skilled, independent worker’ to be a ‘valorisation of a particular gender ideology’ consisting of a male breadwinner

Women in the workforce could destabilise WC identity

Question 26

Women in the workforce stats

Answer 26

49% of married women worked outside the home by the early 1970s

Question 27

Lack of female work progress

Answer 27

Not significant structural realignment

Wilson considers women entered a lesser labour market with substantially lower wages

Question 28

Contraception importance

Answer 28

Employment of contraception far more frequent

Helped elevate WC families from poverty, acting as a ‘deference against economic insecurity’

Question 29

1988 MORI poll

Answer 29

Indicated that ‘class conscious’ was the most commonly selected ‘national characteristic’

Identified by 52% of respondents