Present an analysis of voting bahaviour and social class in Britain

One of the earliest explanations of working-class Conservative voting was given in the late nineteenth century by Walter Bagehot. He argued that the British are typically deferential to authority and prone to defer decision making to those ‘born to rule’ whom they believe ‘know better”.

Hence the attraction of the Conservative Party which, particularly in the nineteenth century, was largely staffed from the ranks of the landed gentry, the wealthy and the privileged.

The Conservative represented traditional authority and Bagehot argued that party image, rather than specific policies, is the major factor affective voting behaviour.

In the early 1960s, Robert McKenzie and Alan Silver investigated the relationship between deferential attitudes and working-class support for the Conservative Party.

They claim that deference accounts for the voting behaviour of about half the working-class Tories in their sample. He was the son of a Member of Parliament who was a banker by profession. The second candidate was a lorry driver’s son.

He went to a grammar school, graduated from a provincial university and became an officer in the regular army. Around half the King-class Tones chose the first candidate explaining their choice with statements like, ‘Breeding counts every time.

I like to be set an example and have someone I can look up to’. By comparison only one fifth of the working-class Labour voters selected this candidate. Deferential Conservative voters tended to be older and to have lower incomes than the overall sample, and were more likely to be female.

Those working-class Tones whose support for the Conservative Party could not be accounted for by deferential attitudes were termed ‘secular voters’ by McKenzie and Silver.

Seculars’ attachment to the Conservative Party is based on pragmatic, practical considerations. They evaluate party policy and base their support on the tangible benefits, such as higher living standards, that they hope to gain.

They vote Conservative because of a belief in that party’s superior executive and administrative ability. McKenzie and Silver suggest that working-class support for the Conservatives has an increasingly secular rather than a deferential basis.

They argue that this change helps to explain the increasing volatility of British voting patterns. Seculars are unlikely to vote simply on the basis of party loyalty.

Almost all the differentials but only half the seculars stated that they would definitely vote Conservative in the next election. The seculars were waiting to judge specific policies rather than basing their vote on traditional party loyalties.

The argument that working-class affluence leads to Conservative voting was further discredited by Goldthorpe and Lockwood’s study of affluent workers in Luton. They found that affluence does not lead to middle-class identification or to support for the Conservative Party.

Of the affluent workers in Luton who voted in the 1955 and 1959 elections, nearly 80% voted Labour which is a significantly higher percentage than for the working class as a whole. Goldthorpe and Lockwood found that the most common reason given for Labour support was ‘a general “working-class” identification with Labour” and a feeling that the party more closely represented the interests of the ‘working man’.

However, there appeared to be little of the deep-seated party loyalty which is supposed to be characteristic of the traditional working class. Like his attitude to work, the Luton worker’s support for Labour is largely instrumental. He is primarily conferred with the pay-off for him in terms of higher living standards.

Compared to the amount of research on working-class voting behaviour, little attention has been given to the middle class.

Around one fifth of middle-class voters regularly support the Labour Party, a smaller proportion of cross-class voting than is found in the working class. In a study of’ middle-class radicals’, Frank Parkin found they were likely to have occupations ‘in which there is a primary emphasis upon either the notion of service to the community, human betterment or welfare and the like or upon self-expression and creativity.’

Such occupations include teaching and social work. Since Labouris seen as the party mainly concerned with social welfare, voting Labour is a means of furthering the ideals which led people to select these occupations.

Middle-class Labour voters tend to be outside the mainstream of capitalism. Parkin states that their ‘life chances rest primarily upon intellectual attainment and personal qualifications, not upon ownership of property or inherited wealth.

‘ As such they have no vested interest in private industry which the Conservative Party is seen to represent.