Professionalism as Enterprise: Service Class Politics and the Redefinition of Professionalism

Abstract

Chapter 1 suggested that there was a shift to the right in the 1970s. This chapter will suggest that such a transition has changed the nature of the class system. It has been well documented that the traditional working class, which was the bulwark of the labour movement both industrially and politically, has declined and been replaced by the service class in most of the advanced economies (see Lash and Urry 1987: 3–10, Fox Piven 1991). Supposedly, this alteration has changed the nature of politics, because the service class is inherently conservative (Goldthorpe 1982). This proposition is given force when one examines the decline of labour politics in the UK. The percentage of the electorate supporting the Labour Party in the UK fell from 36.4 per cent in 1945 to 23.2 per cent in 1987 (Crewe 1991: table 2.1). Such a marked decline led Crewe to comment:

Labour’s electoral decline is internationally unique; it is long term; and it extends deeper than the vote. It may well not be fully reversible in the short term. The three election defeats of the past decade have left Labour so far behind the Conservatives in the popular vote that the electoral turnaround needed to restore Labour to office at the next election would have to be extraordinary by historical standards. (Crewe 1991: 23)