An alternative history of class identities in post-war Britain

1. An alternative history of class identities in post-war Britain Mike Savage Sociology and CRESC, University of Manchester (and thanks to Leverhulme for a Major Research Fellowship)

2. The fall and rise of class? There are three periods in the British social science interest in class 1. mid 1950s to mid 1970s: class is key to the expansion of the social sciences: in sociology key figures include John Rex, A.H. Halsey, John Goldthorpe, David Lockwood, Michael Young; in cultural studies Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Paul Willis, in anthropology, Eliz Bott, Bill Williams in social history E.P.Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm 2. mid 1970s to mid 1990s, decline, and sequestration of class: key figures proclaiming the ‘end of class’ include Zygmunt Bauman, Scott Lash, John Urry, later Anthony Giddens. Defenders become entrenched, e.g John Goldthorpe and Gordon Marshall. A few exceptions, e.g. Rosemary Crompton. 3. mid 1990s +: the revival of class analysis: key figures include Floya Anthias, Stephen Ball, Tim Butler, Fiona Devine, Diane Reay, Bev Skeggs, Valerie Walkerdine, Alan Warde. Especially marked in sociology but also evident in geography, cultural studies, to some extent anthropology. What are the prospects for the continued revival? How do we build on this revival to understand better historical shifts in class identification and action?

3. Is there a new class paradigm? There appear to be major shifts of emphasis between the first and second ‘waves’ • From occupation to culture, lifestyle and consumption • From primacy of the working class to that of the middle class • From class formation to neo-liberal markets • From the visibilities to the invisibilities of class • From class centrism to intersectionality There are a few continuities:- • Politicised nature of interventions around class • Interests in education • The voice of the upwardly mobile • Place and locality (though this gets forgotten…) Shift from an ‘structure-consciousness-action’ model, to a ‘culture as resource/ cultural framing’ model…. Or, from ‘class’ to ‘classification’. Has the world changed, or has the paradigm changed? How do the two paradigms speak to each other? What is the danger of assuming that the world used to be like the way it was described in the old paradigm.

4. Social science methodologies are complicit in the classification process • To understand the stakes about class, we need to see the social sciences as ‘agents’ in the process of classification itself. By unpicking how claims about class were implicated in the formation of the social sciences after WW2, we can see the 1st wave as generating powerful and pervasive ideas about class. Marilyn Strathern (1990), After Nature Timothy Mitchell, (2002) The Rule of Experts Nicholas Dirks (2001), Castes of Mind • We need to end the stand off between history and social science by reading social science data as historical data. The recent debate about ‘re-using’ qualitative data - which now escapes the positivist paradigm - is highly pertinent here…..

5. Interest in identities were central to the 1st wave • 1957: making class ‘explicit’: Bott, Young and Willmott, Richard Hoggart, Before these interventions, class was pervasive, but not talked about as such, e.g. Geoffrey Gorer, English National Character, 1954. Making class ‘explicit’ relied on three interventions (i) the import of American models, (ii) the development of new social science institutions (Tavistock, Institute of Community Studies), and (iii) the rise of new aspirant social sciences. • 1965: this interest in class identities is lost through the formalisation of ‘images of class’. Lockwood, drawing on Bott, defines three ways in which people could imagine class, (proletarian, deferential, pecuinary). But people don’t actually think in these consistent terms. The retreat from ‘culture’ amongst the 1st wave, follows at the very same time that the ‘cultural turn’ was biting elsewhere This deductive moment loses the impetus and imagination of the 1st wave

6. 1st wave is fascinated by class identities Informed by the technology of the ‘in-depth interview’, the idea of class becomes a ‘hook’ for the research relationship to be organised … • Wife ‘heavily made up (very unusual in my experience), white cardigan and skirt with crystal beads over a concertina fabric blue blouse. Treated the interview as an occasion. Special cleaning the day before, veto on neighbour’s children in the house during the day. Had wondered if I had been on TV with Bamber Gascoigne. Ham for sandwiches • The husband served me tea when I arrived, delivered on a tray. When the wife came in at 11.30 cheese sandwiches and tea were produced again. The wife was quite attractive and quite intelligent: indeed, both were and they seemed to get on well, though the material strivings were obviously wife centred. I stayed the night and they put me up on the bed settee. I had bacon and egg for breakfast with the two boys. They behaved quite well and were both bright cheerful kids, though not without a sibling skirmish now and again. The mother tended to redirect their energies rather than punish them physically, at least when I was there. (both from the Affluent Worker project)

7. The fraught ‘production’ of occupational class Interests in occupational class involves retreating from the complexity of people’s perceptions of class relations. (also from the affluent worker study…) What sorts of people do you think are in the upper class? I suppose directors – people who’ve had a good education, and get a good job which they know nothing about Lower class? Well we’ll say a manager, well union officials (I think a rather surprised look mush have crossed my face at this point) (What determines someone’s class position?) It’s the way he acts socially – not so much the money – you can find a rich man (he stopped abruptly, apparently fatigued by his Heculean efforts) Focusing on class a means of distancing the researcher from the researched: contrast Jackson and Marsden (early 1960s) with Richard Brown (late 60s)

8. The uncertain ‘etiquette’ of research relationships…. Ray Pahl’s ‘surrealist’ phase in Hertfordshire: he knocks on the doors of suburban housewives……. What things do you really look forward to? I don’t honestly know? I tend to live from day to day. I’m not looking forward to the baby getting older… but I do look forward to the complete family. (four) is a reasonable number. Not too many. And they’d be reasonable companions for each other. It’s as many as we could possibly afford Do you prefer the company of males? Yes, perhaps I identify myself more with males than females (confusion) what sort of Freudian thing are you going to make of that. I don’t know what I mean…. ‘I suppose (husband) uses the home mainly as a resting place and an eating place. He enjoys his home life but….. what am I trying to say? I think I’ll go and make a cup of tea, I’m thinking. I’ve done more talking than I’ve done for ages. What difference does this talking to me make to you? ‘Don’t like to talk about these things. Best not thought about. I just shut my mind. I’ve got an ability to put things out of my mind. Too much thinking about yourself doesn’t do any good

9. Do you talk about class to those you research? Elizabeth Bott shows the offprint about class images to one of her ‘middle class’ families….. Her notes record….. When I arrived the first thing I saw was my reprint, well thumbed over, lying on the table. Mrs C pointed to it and said she’s had quite a time going through it, something to the effect that it was interesting but not easy reading, and that it was rather embarrassing reading about oneself like that. I said, I think that I knew it was difficult reading and I felt rather embarrassed about that; I’d been writing for a technical audience of sociologists ‘Mrs C said she’d been very upset by reading about herself like that – she sounded so, so he couldn’t find the right word but settled on vindictive’…. ‘She realised that the upsetting thing, really, is realising that there are things about oneself that one isn’t aware of. While she agreed that they were there, it made her a little uncomfortable to realize it. I said it had made me uncomfortable for the same reason, i.e. I didn’t like suggesting to people that there was more in their ideas of class than met the eye, until I reconciled myself to the fact that everyone, including myself, did that sort of thing’

10. Re-reading Mass-Observation 1939-1990 • Class identities are (amongst other things) a by product of the rise of the post war social sciences. • How do we unpick the changing significance of class identities. What can we learn from Mass-Observation….. • Not as widely used as diaries, and no-one has used their data longitudinally (Kushner a partial exception) • Directives ask correspondents to write about given topics from 1939-1955, and also from 1981. • Some topics span these periods, allowing us to compare narrative repertoires over time. Thus observers views about class are asked about in 1939, 1948 and 1990. • We need to look at both form and content. • We need to systematically sample • We need to note the biases of the sample, but see these as themselves interesting and part of our investigation.

11. Mass-Observation Directives on class identity • 1) The first ever directive, in 1939, asks about class identity • 2) Directive in September 1948 included the questions: • Do you think of yourself as belonging to any particular social class? • If so, which? • Why would you say you belong to this class? • Give a list of ten jobs you consider typical middle class and ten jobs you consider typical working class • 3) Directive in Spring 1990 asked • Are there some major divisions in your own environment – class, race, gender, religion, ‘culture’ etc – that invite comment and are typical of contemporary society? • What does it mean to be ‘middle class’? • What does it mean to be ‘working class’? • Do terms ‘upper middle class’ and ‘lower middle class’ correspond to anything in your experience? Please give examples. • Can you give local instances of snobbishness?

12. 1: 1939/48: Middle class identities as the product of family, upbringing and conformity to group norms I try to eliminate all class distinctions from my social life… however I suppose I have been brought up with a middle class outlook as…. For the most part of ten years my father has been a regular army officer.(1948)I come from a class whose status is defined by the professions which particularly the sons enter… it depends on having been to schools with the same sort of ideals grouped round an attitude to sport. This makes one feel most at home with people of the same kind…. (1939) Actually, class is not a subject I give much thought to…. However when the subject has come up, mammy always said we were professional class… of course I think of some people as “common” but these always seem to be awful anyway…. It’s difficult to say why I think I belong to this class, but presumably it is because daddy is a mining engineer and all my recent ancestors on both sides of the family were either doctors, or mining engineers, excepting mammy’s father who was a vetinary surgeon and amateur steeplechaser’ (1948). I feel that I am in the upper class. I have had the best education anyone could have; I live in a large London house; I was born into a family that has a family book, traces its origin to the 12th century. I know various people with title (1939)

13. 2: 1939/48: Working class identification works, by contrast, through ‘individuation’. ‘As a worker with hand and brain who has carved his own way from the handicap of being left, an orphan at 10 years of age, served an apprenticeship at the printing craft and climbed the ladder after an absorbing life of “fight”’ (1948) ‘In my own opinion, anyone who works for a weekly wage, irrespective or remuneration belongs to the working class and even although my own wage would qualify me as middle class financially, I am a tradesman and therefore consider myself working class (1948). I work for a living - it seems to me that anyone doing a job of work for his living is working class and anyone who has the means of living without having to work is very lucky (1948) Although I suppose I belong to the great working class, I feel that I am a cut above the average “working man” (manual labourer) and therefore would describe myself as belonging to the lower middle class (1939)

14. 3: 1939/48: Strong relational comparison in class identifications I object intensely to the term “working class” judging by the way productivity in certain industries has fallen it is a misnomer. I consider the professional classes usually do more work than the so-called working classes’ (4-1587) This is where the social revolution is most hitting me. It is the subjective emotional factor which was always forgotten when the left intellectuals (and I was verging on that myself) was arguing pre war about “raising the status of the masses”… It is a most serious upsetting factor in everyday life to find that one has less money to spend than people who educationally, socially, culturally - and even morally – are in some degree or other one’s inferiors…. It is, in some ways, hard to keep up the pretence of the “good life” when one sees people (skilled engineers, etc) who have so enormously benefited by the change in the social structure riding about in cars and buying (the mark of the new rich) television sets…. It is only by holding firmly onto good standards in matters of cultural taste (how priggish this sounds!) that one can still feel that there is a difference between me and the masses (1947) ‘Although definitely not class conscious, I usually refer to any form of manual worker or uneducated person to a class apart from myself, which I generally term the working class’ (1948). Evidence of ‘intellectual’ reaction to the working class defined in terms of the ‘culture of the necessary’ (Bourdieu)

15. 4: 1939/48: Ambivalence: rejecting the ‘vulgarity’ of class I strongly resent the emphasis that is placed on differences of class and all the snobbery and inverted snobbery that is associated with it, but however reluctantly I must admit that I do consider myself as belonging to a particular class, though I don’t stress it and certainly don’t consider my class superior to any other. … I have a university degree and I have certain standards of security which I think the middle class hold out as an ideal, even if they don’t attain them, standards such as owning a house, with an amount of space in it which is more than the working class would consider reasonable, such as having sufficient savings to provide for emergencies, to enable one to change jobs, to remove across the country, to educate one’s children on a higher standard than the working class would consider necessary… work with the brains rather than with the hands (13-368). I hate class distinctions and do not think any definite lines can be drawn between social classes, but if there has to be a division, I consider myself to belong to the upper middle class (2-195) Purely financially I come under working class, but keep company with anybody, mainly upper middle class. My mentality is (pardon me) intellectually above “class”. So I can’t class myself’ (11-1814).

16. 1: 1990: narratives of self-achievement which require class benchmarks but ambivalent self positioning • I am close on 59 now and I feel that no matter what I have achieved I might well have done better had I not been dogged by a complex about my working class background, a very basic education, and a perceptible Midlands accent… • I rose, through education, to being middle class in my profession and my leisure pursuits – that is the way I consider class. • I left school (in the south) at 16 and started an engineering apprenticeship (in the north). In my school days the family/ school environment was characterised by the 8.45 am bus, clean overcoats and trilby hats and office jobs. From the very start, the apprenticeship environment was the 7.15 am bus, dirty overalls and flat caps and thousands of men “bashing the clock”: Daily Mirror instead of Daily Mail. And yet – the basic codes and values by which both groups lived were pretty similar, (e.g. you defined a lower class, you valued marriage and family, you engaged in petty snobbery • ‘there are two contradictions in my nature. I try to be classlessly liberal but at the same time take pride in the fact that I have overcome my working class roots’

17. 2: 1990: awareness of the classification process • What class do I think I belong to. It would be a hard job trying to define my position according to my family background – my relations include such different characters. The one brother, in particular, who is on several boards of directors…. That’s at one end of the scale, - at the other, our own youngest son, unemployed and with a yen for a somewhat bohemian lifestyle…. All a bit of a mixture. Forget my family and judge me by my friends and associates, but it still confusing – several classes represented… what about my education? Now here is a puzzling fact – I was the only one of a family of five to receive private education …. In fact my brothers and sisters have without doubt made more social progress than I have. I think the definition I like best is to link my social status with the area in which I live. This is the area my husband and I have chosen and in which we feel most comfortable and secure… this is the level of society that suits us and I suggest that to some extent one does choose the stratum of society to which you are most suited. • ‘the one thing which annoys me is terms like “social class A B C1”. (A2168) • When I think about stereotpying I want to get out of the way of the last paragraph of your checklist: I am so terrified of stereoptying – and of being considered racist – that I don’t like to think there is any such thing as a national characteristic • I’m not sure how, or even if I could be classified. I have a university degree (albeit via the OU), I work for the local authority in a management capacity, I like classical music and the arts, support the national trust, and similar projects and like dining out and entertaining at home. These things could make me middle class but I live in a council flat and have many working class aspirations such as a need for instant gratification…. Perhaps the dichotomy explains why I’m such a mess’.

18. 3: Markers of class • I was ill at ease…when invited to the home of a girlfriend who lived in a wealthy quarter of Wolverhampton. I was there for lunch, and while I was quietly confident my table manners would stand scrutiny, I was disconcerted to find a linen table napkin rolled in an ivory ring on my side plate. It was my first encounter with a napkin and while I knew it should be laid on the lap and not tucked into the shirt collar I could not think what to do with it when the meal was finished. It worried me greatly and finally I laid it nonchalantly on my plate in a crumpled heap…. • now that consumer goods and fashion is much more widely available, its become more difficult to label people by exteriors only. Class differences depend now on the white sliced bread, on cannon and ball. But accent is still used as an almost universal yardstick for class • One of my daughters once said I was a fascist when she caught me drawing in the sand with the end of my walking stick. This embarrassed me greatly because a man greatly likes to be counted liberal by his children, especially when they’ve been to Essex University’

19. 4: 1990: the power of place and location ‘In London ‘class and race were the divisions and there wasn’t really a great breaking down of either, only minor ones’. Class has always been significant to me: born the child of a white-collar worker in London dockland, a working class Tory of the bluest type, a royalist, a snob. That was my father, though I loved him and he had many attractive qualities. ‘living in Chichester I feel I am certainly on one side of a number of different divisions in society today. Chichester is a cathedral city and an old market town….. we are middle class, above average age, and reasonably prosperous’ ‘Tunbridge Wells, the town in which I live, presents to the rest of Britain an image of a self satisfied place, strongly upper middle class, and largely populated by retired, opinionated, colonels and ex-colonial civil servants’. It is a picture that does not corrspond very closely to reality

20. Mass-Observation 1990: reflexive class identities? • No simple decline of class identities, but their form is radically re-worked • Extensive and elaborate narratives: class talk is no longer ‘vulgar’ • People are mobilised around concerns with classification, in which they know that positioning goes on over which they have no control • Reactions against ‘the working class’ are no longer so overt, and indeed claiming aspects of working classness becomes more important. • Family referents are now used to identify mobility and hybridity between classes, in part as a means of resisting being ‘placed’.

21. Conclusions: reflecting on the two paradigms • There is no simple erosion of class identities, but there is a reworking of the legitimacies of class • In 1948, working class could tell their personal stories around the banner of class, but by the 1990s it was the middle class who could do this. There has been a fundamental re-working of class relationships which affects the mode by which class is articulated, imagined, and thought. • Representations, including those produced during the 1st wave, have become staples by which class identities are now contested and developed: they themselves are historical ‘actors’. • Middle class narratives are concerned with making class ‘transparent’, but have the effect of hiding the true powers of class • We need to recognise and defend the possibilities opened up in the 1st wave. Class remains fundamental.