The Best Indicator of Twentieth Century Voting Patterns in Britain - Essay Example

Introduction to British Politics: To what extent is social the best indicator of twentieth-century voting patterns in Britain? Social continues to play a significant role in the electoral outcomes of all modern democracies. This is particularly true in Britain, as the nation still grapples with a historical legacy that is rooted in class divisions. Having embraced democracy toward the later half of the nineteenth century, political institutions have evolved to function around existing class demarcations. While class consciousness still plays a major role in British polity, it may no longer be the primary force of policy making that it once was. This essay will attempt to assess the relationship between social class and election outcomes in twentieth century Britain by way of citing evidence from scholarly literature. Seen from a historical perspective, the British, and especially the English, “have traditionally considered themselves above nationalism”. In other words, the self-identity of British citizens is influenced more by their socio-economic background than notions of being uniquely English. This is acknowledged by politicians from both ends of the political spectrum. As Roger Scruton points out, "In the United Kingdom nationalism is confined to the Celtic fringes, where it has been associated with movements for home rule in Ireland, Scotland and - to some extent - Wales. English nationalism is virtually unknown, at least under that description." (Harris, 1998) “None of which, of course, is to suggest that the British in general, or the English in particular, have altogether lacked self-awareness. The apparent absence of introspection has often been a pose. But it began as a reflection of the reality that the British in their heyday did not need to assert their national identity because it was already so pervasive. And not just good manners but common prudence required that such power be cloaked in a degree of self-effacement.” (Harris, 1998) Class divisions in Britain were at their peak during the first half of the twentieth century. The working class Britain had for long been oppressed by monarchy, aristocracy and the industrial elite. The moment of recognition for its blood, sweat and toil for the nation, and its contribution to the success of the Industrial Revolution did not arrive until 1914, when it was asked to participate in the Great War. It was then that Lloyd George “proposed ‘homes fit for heroes’ and built the first huge council estates, thereby cementing class segregation into the landscape. For a brief period during and after the Second World War, the desires and needs of working-class people were taken into account--that is, until they became inconvenient. Voters asked for houses with gardens to be built, but millions got flats nonetheless” (Gurney, 1994). “Along similar lines, it has now become commonplace to point out that working-class voters did not "ask" for immigration from the old British empire. Nor did they ask for the empire in the first place, but few marched against it in the same way as dockers, meat porters and factory workers did in support of Enoch Powell following his calculatedly vile "rivers of blood" speech”. (Clarke, et. al, 2004) Further evidence for the relevance of class in elections in Britain is forwarded by John Goldthorpe. His topological model “constrains the statistical analysis to admit only traditional class alliances into the calculation of the effect of class on voting outcome. His model also introduces a distinction between positive and negative class voting” (Clarke, et. al, 2004). For instance, in Britain, citizens from the working class exercise positive class voting by choosing to vote Labour and exhibit a negative class voting pattern by voting against the Tories. In a comprehensive investigation of elections between 1964 and 1992, Goldthorpe found that “negative class voting fluctuates more than positive class voting. In particular, Conservative successes are frequently tied to their "national party" appeals that lower the propensity of workers (including routine white collar and elite blue collar workers) to vote against them” (Clarke, et. al, 2004). But, with the sudden dismantling of the British Empire after the Second World War, Britain underwent an inevitable process of Balkanization. The twentieth century British democracy can be said to be defined by this process of Balkanization of the nation. Although foreign political commentators have not understood this phenomenon well, there is no doubt that we are witnessing a changing national awareness as a result. In the previous two centuries, when the British Empire bestrode the world and the school maps were printed with British flags, it was no surprise that London was regarded the centre of the world as opposed to the more realistic post Second World war notion of a refuge for a threatened society in retreat (Hanley, 2008). It was at this juncture that a new middle class emerged in the political scene. As Ben Page of the MORI Social Research Institute points out, “the label Middle England is used as a convenient shorthand for the 25 per cent of the population who are not surgically wedded to one of the main parties--and who happen to live in marginal constituencies. For this group, party commitment is weak and the impression made by an individual leader is strong. Policies are generally weakly linked with voting intention--unless they push the right buttons” (Reeves, 2007). While traditionally the British electorate was categorized into the working class and the ruling class, the twentieth century had seen the rise of Middle England, which is at times caricatured to be “insular, selfish, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-welfare, anti-Europe and generally resentful” (Benson, 1989). The rise to prominence of Middle England is attributed to the fact that “its inhabitants are in fact more numerous, more diverse and considerably more liberal than the stereotype”, making it a real electoral force (Benson, 1989). The notion of Middle England being a twentieth century phenomenon is well documented in English scholarship, as the following passage shows. “Ian Hislop, researching his BBC radio series Looking for Middle England, found Lord Salisbury using the term in 1882, but it did not seem to have caught on. The historian David Cannadine records in his Class in Britain that it was Mrs T herself who introduced the term into the modern political lexicon--apparently copying Richard Nixons conjuring of "Middle America". Politically, Middle England denotes a set of voters, presumed to have mainstream attitudes, who are also disproportionately likely to be swing voters in marginal constituencies. Martin Jacques has complained that Middle England is a metaphor for respectability, the nuclear family, conservatism, whiteness, middle age and the status quo.” (Reeves, 2007) A strong indicator of social class’ relevance to twentieth century British politics is the amount of research and analysis dedicated to this area. For example, using scientific methods, researchers have coined a term called ‘absolute class voting’, which is defined as "middle-class Conservative plus working class Labour votes as a proportion of the total votes cast”. The assumption behind ‘absolute class voting’ is that the electorate is naturally affiliated to the political party representing their class. In other words, Leftist parties are identified with working class Britain and Rightist parties with white collar workers. If the percentage of electorate voting for their default party affiliation falls, the levels of class voting can be said to have declined. This method of ascertaining class voting patterns in Britain has proved consistent with empirical evidence. It is another matter that recent election results suggest a decline in class based party affiliations (Manza, 1995). For example, “Class analysts do recognize the importance of collective mobility, in particular the decline of the manual working class and other changes in class structures of post-industrial societies. For example, a significant portion of the poor electoral results of the Labour Party in Britain is a reflection of substantial decline in the size of the manual working class in recent decades. While acknowledging the force of non-class cleavages on political attitudes (and to a lesser extent, political partisanship), analysts who continue to emphasize the importance of class argue that non-class cleavages have always existed in capitalist societies and that there is little evidence yet that new cleavages are emerging that are actually bringing about class de-alignment, especially with respect to partisanship.” (Manza, 1995) The Sociological approach assumes that voting preferences change as per the socio-economic background of the individual voter, and generally people vote for the party that best represents their interests. While such background factors can include religion, gender, race, financial status etc., for the most part they represent social class identification. The first major study of voting behaviour in Britain was carried out by the team of Butler and Stokes, whose results were published in the book Political Change in Britain (1964). They concluded that British democracy functioned as a “stable two-party system with the principal cleavage between non-manual workers and manual workers, the former voting Conservative and the latter, Labour” (Shaw, 1998). While this assessment is true for much of the century, there have been periods of exception. For instance, the consecutive successes of the Tories under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher in the years between 1979 and 1991 were based on the strong support from Conservative Party supporters who comprised 43 percent of the total electorate. Added to this, the sharp downturn in the Labour Party’s electoral prospects and the steady support for new alternatives have induced this anomaly in British voting behaviour. In fact, commentators such as Crewe, Dunleavy, Rose and McAllister argue that “Class-Party linkages has declined, resulting in a process they call class de-alignment. To illustrate their conclusions most stress the fragmentation of the class structure that has taken place over the past three decades as a result firstly of industrial changes - the decline of the traditional working class industries: mining, shipbuilding, steel and secondly of greater social mobility - the growth of skilled manual labour, and home-ownership resulting in a new affluent working class concentrated in the South and Southeast. Such fragmentation results in all social classes and in particular the working class losing its social cohesion and ideological distinctiveness with the overall consequence that Britain has become less two-party and less two-class”.(Shaw, 1998) Toward the last decades of the twentieth century, the equations of class have become intertwined with race. With the influx of highly skilled immigrant workers from across the world, alongside free flow of labour across the European Union, the term ‘working class’ is increasingly seen as representing indigenous whites of the British isles. While there is an element of exaggeration to this equation of class with race, the assessment is not devoid of truth. For example, BBC’s dedicated website posed the following question to its viewers: Is white working-class Britain becoming invisible? The implication here being that “British culture is underpinned by working-class tastes, comforts, vocabulary and prejudices: popular television; football; Greggs the baker; multimillion-selling tabloids; talent contests; sportswear labels; big settees; "real-life" magazines; slimming clubs; package holidays; "us" and "them"” (Weakliem, 1997). To this long list of cultural markers, the tag of left-wing politics can also be added. The class realities in Britain were nowhere else better captured than in twentieth century literature. The Booker Prize winning novel Last Orders, written by Graham Swift subtly documents this fact. The novel shows how “working patterns in mill towns such as Bradford went some way towards causing the lives of white and non-white workers to be lived in parallel, rather than together. The racist son of one of the Wibsey club regulars, coiled with spite and resentment, has not "been made" racist by any slow process of estrangement from wider change; it is because his generation of working-class Bradfordians has grown up almost totally segregated by race” (Weakliem, 1997). With the consistent victory of the New Labour Party, under Tony Blair’s leadership, the traditional sociological explanations, such as class-based voting, appear to be less of a predictor of voting behaviour in the current century than they were during the previous hundred years, and most political analysts see a continuation of the process of class de-alignment. Concomitantly, strong party identification also appears to have declined significantly, principally because of social changes within Britain over the past three decades. Nonetheless, until the next election we will not know for certain whether the present popular appeal of the New Labour is a true reflection of a decline in party identification or whether it was simply an exceptional case. References: Benson, J. (1989). The Working Class in Britain, 1850-1939. London: Longman. Brooke, S. (2001). GENDER AND WORKING CLASS IDENTITY IN BRITAIN DURING THE 1950s. Journal of Social History, 34(4), 773. Clarke, H. D., Sanders, D., Stewart, M. C., & Whiteley, P. (2004). Political Choice in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, G. (Ed.). (1999). The End of Class Politics? Class Voting in Comparative Context. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Geary, D. (1999). Working-Class Identities in Europe, 1850s-1930s. The Australian Journal of Politics and History, 45(1), 20. Gurney, P. (1994). The Middle-Class Embrace: Language, Representation, and the Contest Over Co-Operative Forms in Britain, C. 1860-1914. Victorian Studies, 37(2), 253-286. Hanley, L. (2008, March 10). Hideously Middle-Class: The BBCs White Season Equates Working-Class Culture with Racism and the BNP, and Exposes Unsavoury Values at the Heart of the Corporation, Writes Lynsey Hanley. New Statesman, 137, 38+. Harris, R. (1998, Winter). The Rise of English Nationalism and the Balkanization of Britain. The National Interest 40. Manza, J., Hout, M., & Brooks, C. (1995). Class Voting in Capitalist Democracies since World War II: Dealignment, Realignment, or Trendless Fluctuation?. 137+. Marquand, D. (1997, August 15). In Defence of the Class Traitor. New Statesman, 126, 20+. Naughton, J. (2000, July 17). Click Your Mouse and Vote. New Statesman, 129, 29. Reeves, R. (2007, October 29). Middle England: Theyre Nicer Than You Think; Politicians Are Fixated on a Semi-Mythical Land, on a Group of People Who Hold the Secret to Electoral Success. According to the Stereotype, They Are Insular, Selfish and Intolerant. but, Says Richard Reeves, the Stereotype Is Wrong. New Statesman, 136, 30+. Shaw, J. (1998, May). An Extraordinary Electorate: Voting Behaviour and the 1997 British General Election. Contemporary Review, 272, 225+. Stelzer, I. M. (1996, Summer). Christian Socialism in Britain. Public Interest 3+. Weakliem, D. L. (1997). Race Versus Class? Racial Composition and Class Voting, 1936-1992. Social Forces, 75(3), 939-956. Read More