The decline of working-class politics /
Barry Hindess.
- 191 pages ; 20 cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
"The cloth cap no longer fits: the Labour Party now appears to be less of a working-class party than at any time in its history. Its policies show a marked decline in class involvement, its personnel a growing detachment from former class activity. The Attlee Government drew some 50 percent of its members from the working class; the Labour Cabinet of 1969 contained none. Working-class politics, Barry Hindess maintains, have today been excluded not by changing social conditions but by the political system itself. For evidence Mr Hindess looks to the grass roots, the rank and file of the party, and finds that power there, as in central government, has moved from the hands of the working class into those of a middle-class oligarchy wedded to middle-of-the-road consensus politics. The result while class differences persist, is a leadership increasingly isolated from and unsympathetic to the needs of the truly working class wards who have been Labour's traditional support in the past and who now show their disenchantment by abstention and political apathy"--BOOK JACKET.