Abstract
An explanation of the decline of the English class system is implicit in the preceding explanation of its formation, for if it is true that classes have been created by political events and decisions, and have depended on the collaboration between the state and civil society, then it follows that political decisions that significantly altered that collaboration and exposed the corporate institutions that have maintained classes to market forces must necessarily have threatened the class system. The reforms introduced by the three Thatcher governments over 11 years between 1979–1991 did both of these things. A review of them is therefore also an explanation of the decline of the class system. It also provides a last chance to test the argument by comparing it with explanations of class as the product of material inequalities, since as we noted at the very beginning these reforms were accompanied by the abrupt reversal of the century-long trend towards equality in the distribution of property and income. If material inequalities had ever been prime determinants of classes, then we might expect class consciousness to have increased during and after these reforms.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
The most notable pieces of legislation were the Employment Acts 1980 and 1982, the Trade Union Act 1984, and the Wages Act 1986. They are described in Charles Hanson, Taming the Trade Unions: A Guide to the Thatcher Governments Employment Reforms, Macmillan, London, 1991.
See the labour relations pages of www.ons.gov.uk Four government-funded national (WIRS) surveys, each with samples of more than 2,000 enterprises and more than one million employees, provide longitudinal comparisons of union activities before, during and after the Thatcher years. W.W. Daniel and N. Milward, Workplace Industrial Relations in Britain: The DE/PSI/ESRC Survey, Gower, Aldershot, 1983;
N. Milward and M. Stevens, British Workplace Industrial Relations 1980–1984: The DE/ESRC/PSI/ACAS Surveys, Gower, Aldershot, 1986;
N. Milward et al., Workplace Industrial Relations in Transition: The DE/ESRC/PSI/ACAS Surveys, Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1992;
Mark Cully et al., Britain at Work; as depicted by the 1988 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, Routledge, London, 1999.
In 1962, some 39% of all trade unionists were covered by closed shop agreements. W.E.J. MacCarthy, The Closed Shop in Britain, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1964. In 1980, five million employees were covered by such arrangements. In 1990, only a half a million were covered, and by 1998, about 2% of workplaces reported that employees had to be union members in order to get or keep their jobs. See WIRS, 1999, op. cit.
Simon Burgess, Carol Propper and Deborah Wilson, ‘Explaining the Growth in the Number of Applications to Industrial Tribunals 1972–1997’, Employment Relations Research Series No. 10, Department of Trade and Industry, London, 1998.
Though the gross figure hides considerable fluctuations by cause. pp.23–5, Department of Trade and Industry, Moving Forward: Report of the Employment Tribunal System Taskforce, HMSO, London, 2002, www.dti.gov.uk In recent times, new procedural rules have reduced the numbers of claims they have heard. ‘Industrial tribunal cases down by 28%’, Jonathan Moules, Financial Times, 29th April 2006.
Mrs Thatcher herself did little to disguise her contempt for civil servants. ‘She doesn’t think that clever chaps like us should be here at all,’ said one of Hennessy’s informants. ‘We should be outside, making profits.’ Another complained of being ‘told by politicians that they don’t want whingeing, analysis or integrity…’ that we must simply ‘do as we are told.’ Civil service methods were ‘repeatedly compared unfavourably with the superior methods of private business.’ Ministers constantly reminded them that ‘they have several friends in the private sector who could do the job in the morning with one hand tied behind their back…’ pp.169–73, Patrick Cosgrave, Thatcher: The First Term, Bodley Head, London, 1985; p.633,
Peter Hennessy, Whitehall, Pimlico, London, 2001. For similar views in her own words, pp.45–9, Thatcher, op. cit.
pp.138–9, Stephen Harrison and Waqar i.U. Ahmad, ‘Medical Autonomy and the U.K. State 1975 to 2025’, Sociology, pp.129–46, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2000.
In a few cases, however, employers put up strong resistance, and those boards survived. The best general survey of the reform of vocational training is by Catherine Bush, From Voluntarism to Regulation: Awarding Bodies in English Education and Training: A Case Study of City and Guilds, Occasional Paper No. 10, Institute of Education, University of London, 1993.
For a discussion of the reports of the Prices and Incomes Board in 1967, 1969, and 1971 of the Monopolies Commission, 1970, 1974, and 1976 see Michael Zander, Legal Services for the Community, Temple Smith, London, 1978;
Director General of Fair Trading, Restrictions on the Kind of Organization Through Which Members of Professions May Offer Their Services, Office of Fair Trading, London, 1986.
quoted p.245, Jonathan Wood, Wheels of Misfortune: The Rise and Fall of the British Motor Industry, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1988.
For a case study see Philip Garrahan and Paul Stewart, The Nissan Enigma: Flexibility at Work in a Local Economy, Mansell, London, 1992; a general survey,
Nick Oliver and Barry Wilkinson, The Japanization of British Industry: New Developments in the 90s, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992.
This is the conclusion of the WIRS study, op. cit. though Disney et al. detected an increase in unfavourable attitudes to trade unions. p.17, Richard Disney, Amanda Gosling and Stephen Machin, What has happened to union recognition in Britain?, Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper, No. 130, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1993.
pp.253–7, Simon Jenkins, Accountable to None: The Tory Nationalization of Britain, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1995. For contemporaneous French efforts to decentralize see pp.134–5, Levy, op. cit.
Some of the new managerial and consultancy functions of professional bodies are described in Jeff Watkins, The Future of U.K. Professional Associations, Cheltenham Strategic Publications, Cheltenham, 1996.
pp.60–1, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whitely, New Labour’s Grassroots: The Transformation of the Labour Party Membership, Palgrave, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2002.
though recent evidence on the latter is ambiguous. In a survey carried out in 1990 Marshall found that mobility had increased in recent years. G. Marshall, A. Swift and S. Roberts, Against the Odds? Social Class and Social Justice in Industrial Societies, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997. Heath reported that men born after 1940 were more likely to be upwardly mobile than those born before 1900.
Anthony Heath, ‘Social Mobility’, in A.H. Halsey, ed., Social Trends in British Society, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2000. However, in a comparison of a cohort born in 1958 with a cohort born in 1970 Blanden et al. found inter-generational mobility had fallen markedly, and was the lowest of the six industrial societies they studied.
Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Stephen Machin, Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, 2005. In their comparison of nine societies, Müller et al. observed that societies which have ‘a lower degree of credentialism’, England being their foremost example, ‘also show signs of a lower degree of class inequalities of educational opportunities.’ p.88, Müller et al., op. cit. There is a real possibility, therefore, that as England moves away from practice-based training and qualifications and ‘widens’ educational opportunities, class inequalities in education will increase.
Hakim argued that this was not simply a response to unemployment, since surveys almost always reported ‘positive aspirations … for the independence and autonomy of freelance work or running their own business.’ But then they would, wouldn’t they? pp.200–3, Catherine Hakim, Social Change and Innovation in the Labour Market, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.
pp.17–18, Graham Zellick, Universities and the Law: The Erosion of Institutional Autonomy, University of London Press, London, 2001; p.4, Martin Trow, ‘American Perspectives on British Higher Education under Thatcher and Major, Working Paper, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics, 1995. The decline of academic self-government as a whole over the Thatcher and Major years is described in pp.135–55, Jenkins, op. cit., and updated pp.120–4, 177–9,
Simon Jenkins, Thatcher’s Sons: A Revolution in Three Acts, Allen Lane, London, 2006.
pp.134–5, A.I. Tillyard, A History of University Reform: From 1800 A.D. to the Present Time, Heffer, Cambridge, 1913.
Michael Edwardes, appointed chief executive of British Leyland in 1978, decided to end what he described as the ‘mutuality’ between employer and workers, drastically curtailed the rights of shop stewards, fired their convenor, and installed, without negotiation, an incentive payment system. Michael Edwardes, Back From the Brink: An Apocalyptic Experience, Collins, London, 1983.
see Judith A. Merkle, Management and Ideology: The Legacy of the International Scientific Management Movement, California, 1980;
William M. Tsutsui, Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in the Twentieth Century Japan, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1992.
The unwillingness of British managers to make use of scientific management methods has been documented on numerous occasions. Most of the 68 reports of the Anglo-American Productivity Council, compiled by teams of employers, managers and trade unionists who visited American firms between 1946 and 1952 make this point. Their findings were summarized by Graham Hutton, We Too Can Prosper: The Promise of Productivity, Allen & Unwin, London, 1953. In 1970, a study of 24 West Midlands engineering and metalworking firms found ‘very low levels of … the use of analytical techniques and productivity measurement.’
p.400, N.A. Dudley, ‘Comparative Productivity Analysis Study in the United Kingdom West Midlands Engineering and Metalworking Industries’, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 8, 1970. A 1983 survey of work study in British industry noted ‘the overall low usage of all the techniques of work study, particularly in small to medium-size firms … A high proportion of production operations managers have learned about work study and proceeded to ignore it.’
pp.301–2, Keith G. Lockyer et al., ‘Work Study Techniques in U.K. Manufacturing Industry’, Omega, 11, 1983. A comparative study of the automotive components industry in 1992, pointed out that ‘British engineers were particularly weak in work and method study.’ p.84, Christopher Carr, ‘Productivity and Skills in Vehicle Component Manufacturers in Britain, Germany, the USA and Japan’, National Institute Review, February, 1992. There are many more reports of similar import.
See the figures collated by pp.304–8, Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Vol. 1, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996. In 1971, managers were 3.7% of the British labour force, by 1990 they were 11%.
David Riesman, Constraint and Variety in American Education, Doubleday, New York, 1958.
although they had been applied extensively, but unsuccessfully, in American schools in the 1920s. Raymond E. Callahan, Education and the Cult of’ Efficiency, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962.
For an example see Gennadi Pisarevsky, Soviet Economy: The Strategy of Intensification, Novosti Press, Moscow, 1987. The only economic problem that the author admitted to was that the annual rate of growth had slowed to 3%, but he added quickly that ‘the Soviet people are accustomed to other growth rates.’ p.10, ibid.
pp.132–42, Robert Lewis, Science and Industrialisation in the U.S.S.R.: Industrial Research and Development 1917–1940, Macmillan, London, 1979.
pp.160–4, Bruce W. Ahlstrand, The Quest for Productivity: A Case Study of Fawley after Flanders, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.
‘England and Wales top crime league’, pp.1, 6, The Guardian, Monday, May 26th, 1997, gave preliminary results from the International Crime Victimisation Survey of the experience of crime in 11 countries during 1995, which showed ‘that England and Wales have a worse crime record than the United States or other industrialized countries’, including Northern Ireland. The final results from 19 countries confirmed this report. See http://ruljis.leidenuniv.nl/group/jfcr/www/ icvs/data The report of the Sixth United Nations Survey on Crime and Criminal Justice Systems covered 37 societies, and found that England and Wales were among world leaders in burglary, motor vehicle and petty crimes through the 1990s, though only average in serious violence, and below average in homicides. Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe and North America, HEUNI, Helsinki, 2003. For data on the exceptionally high proportion of young people arrested and sentenced in England and Wales see pp.4–5, Gemma Buckland and Alex Stephens, Review of Effective Practice with Young Offenders in Mainland Europe, European Institute of Social Services, Canterbury, Kent, 2001. For the numbers incarcerated see Roy Walmsley, ‘World Prison Populations List’, Research Findings, No. 88, Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, London, 1999, www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds England and Wales are not, however, above the OECD average in the number of adults imprisoned, OECD Factbook, Paris, 2006.
p.35, Anne Wilkin et al., Behaviour In Scottish Schools, Scottish Executive, Edinburgh, 2006.
Tony Clark, Safer School Partnerships: Police in Schools, NFER, London, 2004.
Copyright information
© 2008 Michael Burrage
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Burrage, M. (2008). The Class System Comes to an End. In: Class Formation, Civil Society and the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593367_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593367_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-52330-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59336-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)