In the new millennium the politics of class is often regarded as old-fashioned. Class distinctions seem to have become less important than other characteristics we recognise, from ethnicity to sexuality, from religion to disability. However, the politics of class has remained an important way of understanding inequality for some social reformers and academics. This recognition of the persistence of class divisions is now returning to mainstream contemporary political discourse, even if the 2025 British Social Attitudes survey suggests this might be running ahead of explicit voting intentions
The rise of identity politics
For much of the nineteenth century, and into the early twentieth century, in its thinkers’ analysis of modern society, class differences were seen as central to understanding society; social relations were primarily patterned by economic class. The major social theorists Karl Marx and Max Weber saw the development of class divisions in modern capitalist societies as entailing the recognition of class identity as a significant aspect of politics. Where you were in the economic system of capitalism, how much you earned or owned, largely determined your place in society.
Class politics sees a division of society into three broad classes: the working, the middle and the ruling (or upper) classes. But, it has also meant that people began to see their identity in class terms. Political economic analysts, such as John Maynard Keynes, and political philosophers like Bertrand Russell, in the first half of the twentieth century used class position as a way of understanding individuals’ and groups’ political attitudes and preferences. Once universal suffrage had been achieved, both men’s and women’s votes were seen to be linked to, if not determined by, their class.
Twentieth century appeared to move away from the class system
However, as new social movements arose around particular political identities, such as the Suffragette movement for women’s votes, different, non-class identities began to be seen as just as important as, or even more important than, class. The idea of class as the determinant of political identity was increasingly displaced, if not entirely dispensed with, as the twentieth century progressed. Identity politics can, of course, include identities based on class, but widens the range of social characteristics that are regarded as informing an individual’s self-perception of who they are. These characteristics, whether they are religious, social, based on ethnicity or sexuality, or disability, are regarded as shaping people’s politics.
Religious identity in Northern Ireland, or racial identity in the cities of London, Manchester and Birmingham, often seemed more important than class as communities fought for their political rights to be recognised. And so in the period since 1960 there have been a range of social movements that have argued for a change in how specific groups are treated: the women’s movement, campaigns around the treatment of ethnic minorities by the police, anti-racism groups and those focussing on Islamophobia. More recently, in the new millennium, for instance, the disability rights movement has grown significantly.
Intersectionality
To encompass the recognition that people might identify themselves as belonging to more than one social grouping, the term ‘intersectionality’ was coined, not least as a rejection of the notion that we have only one identity (essentialism).
If our identities are multifaceted, as the idea of intersectionality suggests, then our perception of our economic class is merely one part of the way we understand our standing in society. This has resulted in the increasingly common claim that we live in a classless society, where our perceptions of our place and standing in society are mostly, if not exclusively, shaped by other non-economic identities: your class has ceased to be crucial to your identity.
Thinking more about class
The persistence, and even worsening, of economic inequality over the three decades since the 1990s has contributed to a recent return to thinking about class as a factor in understanding how our society operates. While social mobility made class seem less important, as it did not necessarily shape or determine one’s subsequent life, the declining ability of people to escape the class they were born into has revived the notion of class as determining social existence. While Britain has never been a ‘classless society’, such divisions were often obscured by the celebration of and organisation around other identities.
However, despite other identities being a focus of attention, it becomes clear that certainly those in what might still be regarded as working-class occupations (manual work or so-called unskilled service employment) retain strong sense of being working class. Indeed, in the new millennium, with the rise of more precarious working conditions, economic insecurity and a greater awareness of economic inequalities, there has been a growth in the number of people who identify themselves as working class. This may not be their only identity; intersectionality captures very clear tendencies for people to regard themselves as characterised by more than one social identity. But, nonetheless, class has returned to many people’s perception of who they are.
This leads to two important questions: firstly, how is the everyday experience of class distinctions maintained? Secondly, if we now understand ourselves more readily in terms of the class that we might feel we belong to (or that others think we belong to), how will this impact on our political views and actions?
Class and the maintenance of inequality
There are many ways class divisions are maintained but we might broadly say they can be divided into two approaches: the material, the way economic life is organised; and the cultural, the way our lives are (re)presented to us through cultural production(s), such as television programmes or how everyday lives are portrayed in the media. There is, of course, an interaction between these two sets of practices, but they are also distinct.
Although still a relatively small proportion of the working population, those in the (so-called) ‘gig economy’ have seen their workers’ rights undermined through their designation as self-employed or contractors, thereby excluding them from the rights accorded to staff directly employed. The gig economy has also contributed to the expansion of precarious working conditions. Perhaps most clearly this has revealed how some employers would like to treat all workers, if only they could. This has prompted moves to strengthen workers’ rights by the current Labour Government, clearly indicating how, since the election in 2010, the legal protection of workers has been weakened. However, equally this has emphasised how the decline in union membership has left many workers exposed to precarious work, insecure working conditions and low wages, as the power of labour has declined while the power of employers over their workers has not.
Decline of the unions means stagnation of wages
The decline in unionisation has contributed to keeping wages in check, leaving workers unable to improve their standards of living over the last twenty years. But, equally, class-based networks around recruitment have also ensured that the well-connected remain at the front of the queue, to get the better paid jobs that are available. From unpaid internships to the nepotistic hiring of people with personal contacts, many sectors present subtle but relatively impermeable barriers to poorer aspirant candidates. Developing a career is less about promise or talent, and more about whether your family can support you in unpaid work (often in London), who your parents know, or who you went to (private) school with. This is relatively widespread across the professions, but is perhaps best documented in the cultural industries, where the barriers to working class cultural workers have been increasingly noted, but is relatively widespread across the professions more widely.
This results in the cultural industries downplaying working-class themes or stories, and the relative invisibility of class as a narrative element in how the arts depict our society. Especially in television and on film, the depiction of the rich and varied culture of the working class has largely disappeared from contemporary output, leaving the working class to be depicted merely as criminals and occasionally victims of social change. However, as this has become more noted, so responses, such as the avowedly working class literary on-line magazine The Bee, have also emerged.
The return of class politics?
Now that class seems (again) more obvious as a mode of social organisation, can we expect it to also become more politically salient? Certainly the Employment Rights Bill working its way through Parliament during 2025 would suggest issues around the plight of the working class are now more visible than they were under the previous government. Moreover, the previous leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, was explicit about seeing the need to return to class politics. However, despite the explicit appeal to the working class, in the subsequent election in 2019 the Labour Party actually lost working-class votes. It’s also clear that Jeremy Corbyn faced a particularly hostile media in the run-up to the 2019 election, which itself may be a problem for any revival of working-class politics.
Is a revival of working-class politics possible when the media is both owned by the rich and staffed by people with little connection to the working class? This lack of working-class representation can obscure and hide the interests of the working class behind the range of identities that seem to gain more media traction, from race and ethnicity to religion or gender, even if these identities themselves are misrepresented or are traduced.
No political party properly represents the working class
While Reform UK is clearly offering a populist based pitch to working class voters, there remains, other than the Labour Party, no political party that presents itself as a representative of a clearly defined working class. While Labour in power has pushed forward with its manifesto commitments on workers’ rights and specifically measures to better regulate work in the ‘gig economy’, these have also been subjected to much organised resistance from business representatives and corporate lobbyists, leaving it as yet unclear how significant the legislative changes to workers’ rights will be.
If this legislation is diluted to the point where there is little real improvement for the working class in precarious employment and Labour demonstrates an unwillingness to push back against business lobbying on this bill, we can expect considerable anger from and on behalf of a self-identifying working class. How this anger can be channelled into the political sphere and who has the ability to organise it into a more explicit working-class political movement looks like a key issue for Britain.
Will we see the rise of a party (again) focussed on the working-class economic interest, or more likely, an established party (as Reform UK is already doing) expanding their use of a language of working-class politics? In either case the revival of some form of working-class politics seems inevitable in the current economic climate. While the British Social Attitudes report (BSA 42) may see a reduction in the importance of class as an indicator of political preferences, might this actually be due to the lack of a party clearly articulating such an interest? With a revival of an explicit working-class political narrative, it is certainly possible that those who see themselves as working class might again regard their class position as of political significance.
