It is the 21st century, I guess we could say that we live in a multi-cultural society with equal opportunities, Right? I guess not. This blog will be discussing how social class has an effect on political engagement specifically focusing on working class and political disengagement.
In today’s society, we are ruled by the right wing known as conservative power, which I feel objective is to promote the interests of the elite as well as marginalise the working class. According to Evans and Tiley (2015) within the 21st century, the political system of Britain is focusing on the marginalisation of the working class and they are doing this by preventing access to better opportunities. An example of this was when tuition fees rose to £9000 per year in 2012, this created disorder as many students who were from lower social backgrounds had plans to go to university and obtain a good job but became quickly discouraged from doing so when they realised how much their debt will accumulate to. This affected me and those around me, as I am from a working class background in addition to being a student who wanted to attend university, I had to rethink my choice and question if attending university was even worth it?
Political socialisation is when an individual is taught about politics through the main institutions such as the home, education system and the internet. The main role of political socialisation is to give young children an understanding of the political system so that they grow up to have a political understanding. Social class plays a role in political understanding as those who are from a lower social background may lack an understanding of the political system and may not show that much interest as studies have shown that the social class of the parents has an influence on a child’s studies, Shepherd (2010). A study was conducted and found that 11,000 seven-year-old children who had professional jobs were eight months ahead of the children who were from lower-working class backgrounds, Shepherd (2010), this relates to political socialisation as it could be argued that social class has an effect on how politically engaged a person is. Solt (2008) states how economic inequality has an effect on an individual’s political engagement and the working class are more likely to experience economic inequality as they are not aware of what is going on around them. Ferragina et al. (2013) also agreed with this as they found that political participation drops as income declines and many low-income households may suffer from material deprivation.
According to the European social survey (2002-2012), studies have shown that you are less likely to vote when you are from a low- income family and have less educational qualifications, as we can see from the table that only 75.5% of people from low-income households (lower-working class) got involved in voting in comparison to the high- income household’s (middle-upper-class) which had a turnout of 86.8%, so far we can see that income has an effect on political engagement. I also noticed that those from low educational backgrounds lacked political understanding as only 17.1% had political understanding in addition to 20.1% of low-income households that had political understanding whereas 43.9% of high-income households had political understanding, so it could be argued that those who are from lower-working class backgrounds lack political understanding.
There has been a decline in the political involvement of the working class since the general elections in 2010, Heath (2015) this possibly could be due to the lack of working class representation amongst MP’s who are part of the labour party. Heath (2015) discovered that in 1964, 20% of MPs had a working class occupational background in comparison to 2010 where the amount had decreased to just 5% of MP’s from a working class occupational background. This could be a reason as to why there has been a decline in political engagement from the working class backgrounds as Labour party is supposed to be a political party that represents the real working class by having working class MP’s, but in 2010 there was only 10% of MP’s who were from a working class occupational background? So do the labour party understand the struggle of the working class, if the majority of them are from privileged backgrounds?
How do we solve this?
It is by law that a young person has to stay in school until the age of 16, so what they learn in schools has an effect on them, I feel that through subjects known as PSHE or citizenship, politics should be a topic that is taught more within these subjects so everyone has equal political understanding regardless of their social background.
To conclude, it is clear that the working class are becoming politically disengaged as political engagement and understanding stems from the home and the education system, so when an individual lacks education and political socialisation, they become apathetic because of their lack of understanding. So it is best to ensure that politics is a compulsory subject that is taught in schools and equality is promoted so that those from working class backgrounds do not become marginalised and are politically aware.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
12th, F., Featured, 2015, 2015, G.E., Comments, O.H., 2015. Has the rise of middle class politicians led to the decline of class voting in Britain? British Politics and Policy at LSE.
Education, Equality and Participation, n.d. . Crick Centre.
Poverty, participation and choice [WWW Document], 2013. . JRF. URL https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/poverty-participation-and-choice (accessed 3.7.17).
Shepherd, J., correspondent, education, 2010. Social class has more effect on children than good parenting, study finds. The Guardian.
Solt, F., 2008. Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement. American Journal of Political Science 52, 48–60.
The new class war: Excluding the working class in 21st-century Britain [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.ippr.org/juncture/the-new-class-war-excluding-the-working-class-in-21st-century-britain (accessed 3.7.17).