A common culture? Lecture notes
Class
- class is not simply about economics or a relationship to the means of
production. It involves workplace cultures, dress, speech, recreation, sociability,
lifestyles, inherited beliefs, political affiliations and a hundred other signifiers of
shared meaning and identity. It involves, and is often complicated, by the
different experiences of youth and maturity, masculinity, femininity and race.
- What follows: general outline of nature of working and middle-class lives,
1900-39, around themes of employment, income, home, leisure, education etc
- NB Ross McKibbin’s conclusion that Britain had no common culture, rather a
set of overlapping cultures. Patriotism was loosely unifying (especially during
periods of threat/war). But people were divided by their experience of class,
gender & region, & the media did not provide a unified interpretation of society
Structure of the working class
- Working class not united by common aims and culture: highly stratified
- An elite of skilled tradesman, publicans, shopkeepers & their families; next
came semi-skilled workers, followed by the various grades of unskilled labour. At
the bottom were Irish immigrant families, idlers, beggars, thieves, prostitutes
- Nor was this social system simply constructed through work: streets (& parts
of streets) in working-class neighbourhoods had their own social rating
- Hierarchies marked in public houses and taverns – with certain rooms
effectively reserved for skilled men
- People jealously guarded & defended their status
- Emphasis was placed on the cleanliness of a family’s clothes/external
appearance of the house/scrubbed front step/clean curtains etc
- Parents forbade children from playing with others they considered inferior
- Accolade valued by the upper echelons of the working class was to be known
as respectable (implied values of orderliness, hard work, thrift and self help)
- Those who did not make this grade were typically branded as ‘rough’
- Working-class people tended to estimate their social position through their
status within the working-class community
- Defined themselves less against middle class - physically & conceptually
remote from their daily lives
- Inequalities viewed with a degree of fatalism: the law of nature rather than an
oppressive system. Marxist notions of class struggle thus had limited impact
Working class employment & unemployment
- Working-class wages increased 60%, 1860-1900. However, 1899-1912: wages
in real terms declined, & bankruptcy & near starvation were real threats
- 1899: 12,000 Boer War volunteers from Salford, only 1,200 accepted as fit
- 12-yr-olds at private school 5 inches taller on average than at state school
- 1913-45 incomes rose by 1/3 in real terms, and rose after WW2 as well
- Increased wages and employment of WW1 often seen as a crucial milestone
- Barefoot/ragged children of pre-1914 gone from all but poorest areas by 1939
- Scale of prosperity should not be exaggerated. 1938: majority of families had
less than £250 pa; average industrial weekly wage under £3, 1918-1939
- Interwar period also saw crisis in heavy industries: iron, steel, mining, textiles
- unemployment never below 1 million, 1918-1939; peak of 3 million, 1932-33
- 1936: Jarrow hunger marches; but build-up to WW2 soon cut unemployment
- Depression and deprivation existed alongside rising standards elsewhere
- Some redistribution of the tax burden in favour of working-class families in
this period, but little redistribution of wealth
Unions
- 1911: 3 million trade union members; 1920: 8.3 million; 1933: 4.4 million
- A major power base but union members could be victimised by employers, &
union bargaining power was undermined by economic recession and layoffs
- Unions also undermined by disunited nature of working-class workforce:
fractured along working-class dividing lines of skill, status & hierarchy
Gender & the working class
- Adult male identity based on work and wage earner status
- Male sociability of workplace also translated to another male domain: the pub
which was often more the site of male sociability than home
- Women were largely in control of the family budget; & mothers &
grandmothers also guardians of working-class standards
- Though often employed as well, women used the home as a power base
Working-class home
- 1850: 5% working-class families owned homes; 1939: 20%
- 1920: 1 house in 17 had electricity – 1939: 2 in 3
- Programmes of inner city slum clearance initiated particularly during 1930s
- Legislation: Addison, Wheatley & Greenwood Housing Acts (1919, 1924, 1930)
- As Orwell noted, condition of much older rented housing remained appalling
- Families often had furniture made from packing crates, jam jars for cups etc
- Accommodation was often very overcrowded, with parents sharing rooms with
their children; even in the late 1940s, 2 or 3 children might share a bed
Working-class consumption
- For those in steady work, the 1920s and 1930s saw an unprecedented rise in
consumerism that would further accelerate after WW2
- More spending on non-necessities; new chain stores; wider choice; more
advertising aimed at working-class, eg by Kelloggs, Heinz, Birds, Bisto
- Hire purchase put costly items (eg furniture) within their reach for first time
- Working-class women increasingly used face cream, powder, rouge
- Working-class men increasingly used mass tailoring companies like Burton’s
- Greater spending also possible because they were having fewer children
Working-class recreation
- More spending power also meant more opportunities for recreation/leisure
- Many families began to take annual holidays to seaside destinations: Blackpool
- Golden era of cinema: cheap tickets, plush seats, luxurious & exotic décor
- The new, post-WW1 working-class melting pot of the dance hall
- Other leisure items came within working-class means: eg radio
- Period thus saw growth of a more unified working-class mass cult
- To some extent, radios, gramophones etc drew this entertainment indoors,
with home becoming more of a focus of male leisure than before
Working-class education
- 1880: compulsory schooling began. Most children left school at 12, until raised
to 14 by 1918 Education Act. 1912: 4/5 children did not attend secondary school
- 1920s: elementary school remained the whole education for 75% of children
- Secondary education: for fee-paying & scholarship pupils, & often dominated
by the middle class (1944 Butler Education Act abolished these fees, & the school
leaving age was also raised to 15 after WW2)
- Working-class parents often knew little about education system. Sceptical of its
value, prizing practical on-the-job training. Expected children to contribute to
family finances, which often ruled out secondary education altogether
- Those who did stay on at school risked being estranged from family and
friends who might mock them for putting on airs & graces etc
Middle class
- Broad, diverse grouping: clerks to professionals to wealthy business families
- Membership not necessarily a matter of income: clerks & skilled workers could
earn much the same. But identifiable through lifestyle, dress, aspiration etc
- Middle class grew in size over period & changed in occupational structure; also
increasingly culturally homogeneous
- Tended to be salaried employees in white-collar jobs not cash wage workers
- On average earned and spent twice as much as a working-class family
- 1925 - : a long golden age for middle class of low tax & increasing real incomes
- Majority of middle class never experienced unemployment at all
Middle-class housing
- Interwar period: huge increase in middle-class home ownership; homes
defined against & separate from working-class industrial urbanisation
- Though often closely packed, middle class thirsted for privacy and individuality
- Availability of servants declining, but still 500,000 households with 1 or more
servants in residence in 1931
- Through domestic servants, therefore, such people could exercise a
relationship of personal superiority over the working classes
Middle-class spending & consumption
- Middle class spent far more on things like insurance, pensions & savings
- Interwar period also saw a sharp rise in middle-class consumption
- Spent twice as much as working class on clothing: vital for social status
- Could afford an increasing range of electrical and other durable goods
- Cars became much cheaper (but still beyond working-class incomes)
- Prosperity was also heightened by decreasing family size
Middle-class recreation
- Middle-class recreation far more centred on home than for working class:
drinks and dinner parties etc
- Middle-class sociability was thus more the joint realm of men and women
- Outside home, middle-class entertainment excluded and avoided the masses
- Middle-class emphasis on members-only associations; golf/tennis clubs etc
- Unlike working-class sociability & recreation, middle-class events were
unspontaneous & scripted, with complex social formalities and etiquettes
Middle-class self-image
- Interwar period: middle class increasingly defined itself as the constitutional
class, the defender and repository of the public good & national values
- Also, with great unanimity, defined its interests through the Conservative
Party, seen as the defender of the constitution, the nation & the public
- Through these beliefs & assumptions, middle-class people tended to define the
national interest in terms of their own interests (see McKibbin)
- Formed a broad middle-class anti-socialist coalition during the 1920s and 30s
- Nonetheless, middle-class defined itself as tolerant, well mannered, easygoing
Middle class & upper class
- Culturally, the line between the middle & upper classes was blurring
- Exclusively upper-class areas of social/economic life were getting narrower
- Upper class collapsing into upper middle class, no longer the arbiter of fashion
- Norms increasingly defined by middle class at public school, universities etc
Middle-class education
- widening of middle-class opportunity & dominance during this period
- Secondary education dominated by middle class
- Children of less wealthy families went to grammar schools; wealthier educated
privately. The fees were entirely beyond all working-class budgets
- Private education conferred status & opportunities: old boys’ network
- 1939: 70% of army officers had been to one of the top public schools
Hostility to working-class & unions
- Middle class began & ended period as anti-working class
- These feelings heightened by middle-class anxieties after WW1: fears of
bolshevism, and perceived powerlessness over the unions, were joined to a
temporary decline in middle-class incomes and a rise in the cost of living
- Middle-class men acted as strike breakers during 1920s (drove trams &
trains/carried coal/maintained municipal services), increasing middle-class
tendency to identify the working-class as a whole with trades unions
- Myths grew up of working classes living comfortably on dole: selfish,
irresponsible, frivolous and unconcerned with the wider good