The primary aim of this blog is to observe the difference in political engagement based on social class. I, Myself come from a working class background, in which I have always faced different challenges due to this, whereby those who are of a higher social class, would not necessarily understand, due to their lack of experiences of living as a working class citizen in society. As a member of a working class background financial limitations was a major part of my everyday life experience when growing up; like many other working class families, my family didn’t have the means to fund a private education to strengthen my political knowledge; this automatically puts my social group at a disadvantage due to the fact that those in power such as Teresa May comes from a wealthy, affluent upbringing which is completely dissimilar in comparison to mines, because of this they won’t have the knowledge, nor the experience to advocate for people like me, this is one of the reasons behind the lack of political engagement from working class citizens (Patrick Ruth, The Guardian 2016).
Society is generally divided into groups based on social and economic status, people are grouped into hierarchical social categories with upper class citizens sitting at the top (the government). Social class is a huge determinant of many fundamental aspects of modern life such as ones education, occupation, income etc. this was shown in Karl Marx’s political and economic philosophy known as Marxism whereby he stated that those who own the means of production hold the power in society, known as the bourgeois (upper class), while the proletarians (middle class) were used as cheap labour. This conveys a clear distinction in the gap between the rich and the poor, Marx saw the system as one that tried very hard maintain social inequality(Karl Marx 2001. Marxism, Socialism and Religion), which is still present in contemporary society. One reason behind the lack of political engagement from working class citizens is due to the shortage of working-class representatives in parliament, most are white and of an upper-class background (YouGov 2014) and as a minority it makes my voice feel unsupported, because they are unable to relate to my every day struggles as a working-class citizen.
The graph above shows that the UK is least populated by social grade A citizens, although this shown to be the case, it doesn’t take away from the fact that parliament is filled with grade A citizens who have the power to dictate what happens in society. On the other hand, grade DE combined equal to 25% of the population, which consists of under skilled manual workers, and unemployed individuals whom would be reliant on the government for support. Could this have a knock-on effect on if working class citizens vote or not? or even whom they vote for? Well according to figure 2 bellow, Conservative and LibDem are the two leading parties with the most votes, as you can see from the graph there is no clear evidence that indicates that one’s social class dictates who they vote for, as Conservative has the leading vote for both working- and middle-class citizens
As Britons it is our right to vote, it enables us to have an opportunity to have our voices be heard, reports have shown that there is a social division within society when it comes to political engagement (Jennings, W., Bua, A., Laurence, R. and Brett, W., 2017) For many of the poorest families in the UK, voting is an act that they tend to not participate in, according to the guardian this is because these groups of people feel completely excluded and disconnected from the political process. They believe that politicians are not in favour of advocating for their welfare and needs (Patrick Ruth, The Guardian 2016). This is shown in the video below, where working class victims living in an area surrounded by affluent neighbours have been left without housing a year after their homes were lost in a devastating fire caused by the government’s incorrect precautions. I believe that if it was white wealthy families who were affected by a fire that was caused by negligence, those responsible would be held accountable for their actions, and also victims would have been rehoused already.
This video became a symbol of the social inequalities in the UK
After all how would an affluent individual from a wealthy background understand the struggles and hardship that one is faced with as a working-class citizen, if you haven’t lived it, you will not understand it, and this is the mind-set that some working-class individuals have, which makes them feel discouraged to vote.
Bibliography
Curtis, Chris. 2017. The demographics dividing Britain | YouGov. Online, Available at: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/04/25/demographics-dividing-britain. Accessed 11 March 2019
Jennings, W., Bua, A., Laurence, R. and Brett, W., 2017. Cities and towns: the 2017 general election and the social divisions of place. report for the New Economics Foundation.
Karl Marx (2001). Marxism, Socialism and Religion. Resistance Books
National Readership Survey (2016) Social Grade. (Online, Available at: http://www.nrs.co.uk/nrs-print/lifestyle-and-classification-data/social-grade/ Accessed on 11 March 2018)
Patrick Ruth (2016). The Guardian: How poverty makes people less likely to vote. Online, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/16/poverty-election-vote-apathy (Accessed 11 March 2019
YouGov: The changing politics of social class (2014). Online, available at: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/06/09/changing-politics-social-class (accessed on 12 Mar. 19