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The Urban Basis of Political Alignment: Social Class, Domestic Property Ownership, and State Intervention in Consumption Processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Patrick Dunleavy
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The declining association between occupational class and political alignment in Britain has now been documented by a number of studies. For the political analyst the decline of a previously important cleavage must raise complex questions of causation. One of the most important possible explanations for such a change is that a new cleavage has arisen or grown in political significance so that its influence on political alignment cross-cuts that of the previous cleavage, blurring its impact and exposing sections of the population to contradictory or cross-pressuring influences. But political commentators in present-day Britain have apparently ruled this out as an explanation of the declining electoral influence of occupational class. Crewe, for example, remarks:

It is difficult to think of any social cleavages or fundamental changes in the social structure in the last twenty years that could have affected national partisan alignments in any way comparable to the substitution of the religious cleavage by the class cleavage in the first three decades of this century. Glacially slow changes in the British social structure have undoubtedly taken place. The emergence of coloured immigrant communities, the growth of white collar employment (and of white collar ‘trade unionism’), the movement of agricultural workers to the towns and their displacement by commuters and the retired rich, a further secularization and a growing disparity of income between the organized and unorganized working class are all cases in point. But in all these cases, shifts in party support have been small, often only temporary, and always localized; no shift in the social structure has produced an enduring, nationwide realignment of party support since 1945.

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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 1979 , pp. 409 - 443
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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54 Both housing and transport are key items in consumer expenditures, although since existing figures take no account of extensive subsidization, their importance is grossly understated at 13·4 and 13·7 per cent of expenditure respectively: see Social Trends, No. 6 (1975), p. 124.Google Scholar

55 This is a very early and tentative formulation. The basic reason for articulating it is the fundamental impossibility of attempting to discuss political alignment within a radical theoretical framework while remaining dependent on social psychological models of voting and political mobilization. See Dunleavy, ‘Some Political Implications of Sectoral Cleavages’, for a slightly more extended discussion.

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83 The analysis in this paragraph is drawn from Hindess, B., The Decline of Working Class Politics (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1971)Google Scholar; Moorhouse, H. F., ‘The Political Incorporation of the British Working Class’, Sociology, VII (1973), 341–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dickens, P., ‘Social Change, Housing and the State: Some Aspects of Class Fragmentation and Incorporation, 1915–46’ (paper to the Centre of Environmental Studies Conference, ‘Urban Change and Conflict’, University of York, 01 1977).Google Scholar

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86 Block, G., The Plight of the Motorist (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1968), p. 1.Google Scholar

87 Hart, D., Strategic Planning in London: the Rise and Fall of the Primary Road Network (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Jenkins, S., ‘The Politics of London Motorways’, Political Quarterly, XLIV (1973), 257–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, characterizes the ringways as ‘a last attempt by those who had already fled the city for the suburbs to recapture it and bend it to their personal convenience’.

88 Hart, , Strategic Planning in London, p. 172.Google Scholar

89 Grant, , Politics of Urban Transportation, passim.Google Scholar

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91 Cable, J. V., ‘Glasgow's Motorways: a Technocratic Blight’, New Society, 2 09 1974, pp. 605–7Google Scholar; Richardson, H., ‘Glasgow's Hollow Crown’, New Statesman, 19 09 1975, pp. 344–6.Google Scholar

92 Department of Transport, Survey of Concessionary Bus FaresGoogle Scholar, Figures 1 and 2, show this clearly; Conservative authorities in urban areas have been forced into accepting concessionary fares in order to retain their large pensioner vote.

93 For an extreme view of elections as rituals see Lukes, S., ‘Political Ritual and Social Integration’, Sociology, IX (1975), 289–308, pp. 304–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Castells, in contrast argues that elections ‘lie at the heart of the liberal democratic state’, City, Class and Power, p. 7.Google Scholar

94 See Rose, , ‘Britain: Simple Abstractions and Complex Realities’Google Scholar for the use of Gallup data, and Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in BritainGoogle Scholar for the ‘social grades’ used in political science surveys. Weberian class boundaries are used by Thorburn, P., ‘Political Generations: the Case of Class and Party’, European Journal of Political Research, V (1977), 135–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The best Marxist empirical work on social class boundaries is Wright, E. O. and Perrone, L., ‘Marxist Class Categories and Income Inequality’, American Sociological Review, XLII (1977), 32–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95 This should not be taken to imply a single dimension along which consumption locations can be ranked; to this extent the necessary omission of respondents in two-car, private rental and local authority households from the table may produce a false impression of the effect under analysis.

96 Social Trends, No. 5 (1974), p. 130.Google Scholar

97 A classification of this type is widely used by the Department of Environment in analysing housing data; for example, see The Estate Outside the Dwelling (London: HMSO, 1972).Google Scholar We would argue that the variations in transport location reflect material differences in their situations; for example, average weekly running costs for a car exceed the old age pension, while the high levels of car ownership amongst family households reflects their greater transport needs and the costs and difficulty of taking children on public transport. Thus a household control is more appropriate than an age control.

98 See Goodman, L. A., ‘A Modified Multiple Regression Approach to the Analysis of Dichotomous Variables’, American Sociological Review, XXXVII (1972), 28–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Payne, C., ‘The Log-Linear Model for Contingency Tables’, Chap. 4 in O'Muircheartaigh, C. A. and Payne, C., eds., The Analysis of Survey Data, Volume II: Model Fitting (London: Wiley, 1977).Google Scholar See also Francis, and Payne, , ‘Use of Logistic Models in Political Science’.Google Scholar I would like to thank Clive Payne for his help in using this technique.

98 Because social grade E is a residual category we have excluded it in the results presented here: its inclusion does not alter the results much for any variable apart from social grade, and even here has little impact. We fitted models to the two party vote for ease of interpretation.

100 Goodman, , ‘A Modified Multiple Regression Approach to the Analysis of Dichotomous Variables’.Google Scholar

101 See Payne, , ‘Log-Linear Model for Contingency Tables’, pp. 138–9Google Scholar, for an account of the derivation of odds ratios; and Francis and Payne, , ‘Use of Logistic Linear Models in Political Science’.Google Scholar

102 See Franklin, and Mughan, , ‘Class Voting in Britain’Google Scholar, passim. A residual doubt of considerable significance remains, however. This concerns the role which a mediating income variable might play in linking occupational class and consumption locations. The problems of operationalizing adequate income measures in survey research prevent us from tackling this question from existing data. In a new paper, ‘The Social Bases of Contemporary British Polities’, given to the Nuffield College Politics Seminar, May 1978, I analyse individualized and collective consumption locations together with income. One would expect an adequate income control, on the basis of the preliminary analysis, to leave the relationships analysed here substantially unchanged. Indeed if income is controlled and levels of consumption amenity are also controlled, the ‘pure’ impact of housing tenures and transport locations may be greater than that estimated here.

103 See Saunders, , ‘Domestic Property and Social Class’, pp. 239–42Google Scholar; Lambert, et al. , Housing Policy and the StateGoogle Scholar, Chap. 7; Ball, , ‘Owner Occupation’.Google Scholar