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

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.