For years they have been dismissed as chavs and sneered at for their crude racism and homophobia. But now a new survey finds that Britain’s working class are more tolerant of gay people and mixed-race relationships than their detractors.
When asked whether gay couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples, 76% of the working class felt they should, compared with 70% of the middle class. The working class were also marginally more likely to have had a relationship with someone of another race.
Middle-class households may complain that their incomes are being eroded by taxation, low-interest rates and rising prices but it is the working class who say they are the ones who are really being “squeezed” — caught between the aspirations of the upwardly mobile and the lower-income expectations of economic migrants from eastern Europe.
Their numbers are falling fast. Fewer than one in four now see themselves as working class. In the late 1980s it was 67%. The new study identifies a sense of alienation and pessimism among this dwindling section of the population.
When John Lennon sang Working Class Hero, the label was worn with a sense of pride. But the working class now feel trapped, bitter and abandoned by political parties.
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Deborah Mattinson, a former pollster to Gordon Brown and the founder of Britain Thinks, the social research group that conducted the study, said: “The people who are now calling themselves working class do so because they have nowhere else to go; they feel vulnerable and less socially mobile than in the previous generation.”
Her team carried out an in-depth analysis of 2,000 people to investigate their views on class. It follows a survey earlier this year that found 71% of people now see themselves as middle class, while only 24% see themselves as working class.
Mattinson believes the benefits once associated with being working class — strong communities and pride in doing an honest day’s work — have gone while the financial downsides have grown.
The average household income of those who see themselves as working class was £24,200, almost £13,000 below the average income in a middle-class household. More than a third said they had no savings, compared with 11% of the middle class, while 60% did not expect a comfortable retirement, compared with 39% of the middle class. The majority agreed that their main concern was “making ends meet”, and less than half felt their children would have the opportunity to go to university.
Frank Field, Labour MP for Birkenhead and the government’s “poverty czar”, said: “The working class feel trapped between people below them who don’t share their values and those above, who have bought into the new world of opportunities and are now kicking away the ladder.”
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The research showed that the working class feel overlooked by politicians. Four out of five agreed with the statement: “The government doesn’t do anything for people like me.”
Dennis Skinner, Labour MP for Bolsover, the former mining town in Derbyshire, said many of his constituents shared this sentiment. “Old Etonians are running this country and they don’t understand how working people live,” he said. “They are helping people like themselves.”
In focus groups, participants described the Labour party as “champagne socialists” and the Conservatives as “just the same but in a different colour suit”.
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, was labelled “another middle-class boy playing working-class hero”.
The researchers also identified resentment at the number of immigrant workers coming into the country and a fury towards “the workshy underclass”.
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Tony, a participant at one focus group, said: “Immigration meant my wages went down from £250 a day to £110 a day and now £70 a day ... I just can’t live off being a carpenter any more.”
Owen Jones, author of Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, believes the hostility is natural. “If you’re scraping by and someone down the road is living comfortably at your expense, it makes you angrier,” he said.
He added: “Being working class used to mean working down the mine. Now it’s more likely to mean working in a supermarket or call centre. Those jobs don’t carry the same associations.”
He argues that politicians have airbrushed out the working class. “For the last decade we have been told to aspire to be middle class,” he said. “The working class was something to escape from.”
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