Working Class in Britain

Did Britain ever really have a working class? Was a truly unified and homogeneous class ever able to emerge from British factories, ports and industrial cities? How did the greater class-based social movements affect the United Kingdom? The Working Class in Britain answers these important questions through a rigorous analysis and description of class activism, collective struggle and working class history as a whole. Shattering commonly held beliefs, the history of the working class is shown to be distinct from Labour movement history and from the story of 'the boring bureaucracy of unions and proletarian parties'. While the struggle of activists was no doubt fundamental to many working people, there is little evidence to support the notion of a widespread revolutionary class consciousness. Instead, through newly discovered information and social science research, the working class is shown as a large and multi-layered stratum of British society with diverse interests, concerns, lives and life-styles.