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The article reflects on two 20th-century Marxist historians who studied Great Britain in the 19th century, E. P. (Edward) Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm, looking at what their work contributes to both British historiography and to research directions for contemporary historians. Topics include Thompson's book "The Making of the English Working Class," the place of class analysis in their work in comparison with more recent historical research, and their views of conservatism and liberalism.

This article seeks to place the debate about affluent working-class people in the inter-war and post-war periods within the broader context of long-term economic and social change. It explores why important structural changes were ignored for a long time, and how they came into view as the focus of professional social inquiry shifted following the Second World War, only to be reconceptualized as a new 'social problem' in the politically driven controversy about 'affluence' in the late 1950s. The article argues that we need to pay more attention to the gulf between official and vernacular understandings of social class in twentieth century Britain, drawing a distinction between everyday usage and professional languages of class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to position the debate on the Labour Aristocracy, an important one during the early years of the Society for the Study of Labour History, within the wider controversies of the 1970s and 1980s on the future of the Labour Party and the adoption of post-modernist methodology. Its objective is to return discussion to the usage of the term as originally developed by Marx and Engels. This, it is argued, was not essentially about income differentials. Its central focus was on the active process of working-class formation and fragmentation. It assumed that working-class consciousness in the full sense was a historically rare though socially transformative phenomenon, usually constrained by the apparent inevitability of capitalist relations, and requiring a specific conjunctural analysis of working-class challenge and capitalist crisis and response. The article seeks to re-establish the validity of this approach using recent research on the Chartist movement and its decline. It takes issue with the interventions by Gareth Stedman Jones and argues for the continuing relevance of Marx's cultural analysis, as elaborated by David Harvey, for the understanding of social stereotyping and class fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about progression in further and higher education for migrants to the United Kingdom who are users of non-standard varieties of English. The focus is on the struggles of Tobi, a first-generation migrant Nigerian student. Tobi's story describes the local barriers he must navigate in order to gain access to the courses he wishes to follow, both at the college where he is studying and at the local university to which he wishes to progress. These barriers include mastery of academic English and assessments of literacy. The contrast is drawn out between Tobi's aspirations to progress 'up' along an educational trajectory, and his actual experience of moving 'downwards'. Widening participation and the stratification of higher education are seen in relation to other processes and structures that impact on Tobi's experience: migration, social class and capital, language and language ideologies, and academic literacy. Tobi's trajectory also exemplifies the tension between his own language use and the variety of English he is expected to orient towards. We end the paper with a discussion of models of academic literacy, which may provide a starting point for addressing the pedagogic challenges faced by Tobi and his teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate about how best to measure social class in women complicates the analysis of socioeconomic inequalities in women’s health. The changing position of women in the labour market may mean that the commonly used “conventional” approach where a woman’s partner’s occupation is used to estimate her social class may no longer be appropriate. Alternative measures grade a woman’s class according to her own occupation or the most dominant class position in the household regardless of gender. We examined the association between “conventional” and personal measures of social class and all-cause mortality in a prospective study of women aged 39–79 years, without prevalent disease, living in the general community in Norfolk, UK, recruited using general practice age–sex registers in 1993–1997 and followed up for an average of 11.9 years. The risk of mortality increased with decreasing social class. There was little difference in the relationship between mortality and social class in women assigned using personal or partner’s occupation. When both measures were included in the same model, the effect of both measures was slightly attenuated. We found little difference between the different methods of assigning social class in women and mortality risk prediction. Both measures appear to share some common pathways through which they affect risk of mortality, although confidence intervals were large and neither measure was statistically significant. Further research is needed to disentangle their separate effects and pathways to mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last quarter of the 20th century gave rise to debate in this journal and elsewhere regarding the treatment of women in class analysis. It is argued here that the question of minority ethnic achievement has given new impetus to arguments in favour of taking account of mother's occupation in class schemas. The article constructs three different class schemas and tests their utility in this context. It then uses one schema to assess the importance of social class in explaining achievement differentials among minority ethnic pupils in Britain. Class background is found to be a key factor for all groups. The analysis finds significant differences between ethnic groups even when pupils from the same social class background are compared. When disparities within ethnic groups are examined, however, it is found that the effect of moving one place down the social class structure is similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on social class and whiteness points to disquieting and exclusive aspects of white middle class identities. This paper focuses on whether ‘alternative’ middle class identities might work against, and disrupt, normative views of what it means to be ‘middle class’ at the beginning of the 21st Century. Drawing on data from those middle classes who choose to send their children to urban comprehensives, we examine processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’ in order to uncover some of the commitments and investments that might make for a renewed and reinvigorated democratic citizenry. The difficulties of turning these commitments and investments into more equitable ways of interacting with class and ethnic others which emerge as real challenges for this left leaning, pro-welfare segment of the middle classes. Within a contemporary era of neo-liberalism that valorises competition, individualism and the market even these white middle classes who express a strong commitment to community and social mixing struggle to convert inclinations into actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how urban working-class youth display their identities through taste and style within the educational field. The authors examine data from longitudinal tracking interview to see how such practices contribute to shaping young people's choices and attitudes towards higher education. The authors suggest that while young people try to generate worth and value through investments in style, these practices also play into oppressive social relations and keep the young people within marginalized social positions.

Background: There have been few detailed longitudinal symptom studies of bipolar disorder.Aims: To describe the course of bipolar disorder over 18 months in 204 patients receiving mental healthcare.Method: Patients were interviewed every 8 weeks, with weekly ratings of depression, mania and overall severity.Results: Participants were symptomatic 53% of the time, with sub-syndromal symptoms present for twice as long as major disorder, and depressive symptoms three times more than manic symptoms. Individuals who were experiencing an episode at baseline spent 33% of the 18 months with substantial sub-syndromal symptoms, 17% with major disorder and 28% symptom free. Those not experiencing a baseline episode spent twice as long symptom free and half as long at disorder levels. Changes in symptom level were frequent. Predictors of sub-syndromal symptoms were similar to those of major disorder.Conclusions: Sub-syndromal residual symptoms are an important problem in recurrent bipolar disorder and require therapeutic intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a group of British rebels in the mid-1600s led by British minister Thomas Venner, and opposition to the Protectorate ruling class in Great Britain. It examines the complaints of the rebels, particularly bodily expropriation and impressment, and how it reflected radical republican opposition to the Protectorate. It discusses the English revolution in the context of the larger Atlantic world and how the defeat of the so-called Leveller democracy in 1649 inspired radicals. The article discusses the radical experience in England and the U.S. and campaigns against expropriation in the 17th century.

Background The negative effect of birthweight on systolic blood pressure has been suggested to be initiated in utero and amplified with age. We aimed to investigate this hypothesis. Methods A sample of 3634 people from a birth cohort study of men and women born in Britain in 1946 were included in analyses. Cohort members have been contacted regularly since birth, and systolic and diastolic blood pressures were measured at ages 36, 43, and 53 years. Multilevel models, with blood pressure as a repeated outcome, were used to test the amplification hypothesis and to compare results for birthweight with those for childhood social class. Findings Considering both men and women together, a consistent negative association between birthweight and systolic blood pressure was noted from age 36 to 53 years, but no evidence was recorded of substantial amplification with age. A 1 kg higher birthweight was associated with a slower mean increase in systolic blood pressure by --0.4 mm Hg (95% CI --1.3 to 0.4; p=0.3) per 10-year increase in age. Birthweight was not associated with diastolic blood pressure at any age. People from a manual social class in childhood had higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure than did those from a non-manual class. The effect on systolic blood pressure rose with age, by 1.0 mm Hg (95% CI 0.1 to 2.0; p=0.03) per 10 years, but was largely accounted for by current body-mass index, which was an increasingly strong determinant of blood pressure. Interpretation These findings suggest that weight control throughout life is key to prevention of raised blood pressure during middle age. Understanding the link between the early childhood socioeconomic environment and adult obesity could make this strategy more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background In health inequalities research there is a growing impetus to examine the development of inequalities in health over time. However, many of the sources of longitudinal data in Britain are not designed specifically for health research. Typically, health status is assessed by self‐reported problems and the use of symptom checklists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The controversial issue of ‘meritocracy’ can be most productively addressed if it is treated as one of direction of change over time: i.e. whether individual merit, understood in terms of ability, effort, or educational attainment, is growing in importance in processes of social selection. To test the thesis of ‘increasing merit selection’, we analyse data from two British cohort studies relating to children born in 1958 and 1970 respectively. We find that, from the later to the earlier cohort, the pattern of relative rates of class mobility changed little; and that individual merit, as we are able to measure it, did not play a greater part in mediating the association between class origins and destinations. In fact, the effects of ability and educational attainment on individuals' relative mobility chances diminished somewhat. These findings, we argue, are less surprising than they may at first appear if viewed in the context of the problematic relationship between the idea of meritocracy and the operation of a free-market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in the September 1996 issue of the British Journal of Sociology. According to the author, sociologists hardly need reminding that over the last three to four years there has been considerable debate in Great Britain about the future, or lack of it, of class analysis, much of it conducted in the pages of Sociology. It is interesting to note that in the half dozen or so articles on the topic published in that journal since August 1992, which between them have well over 100 references, there are only three references to work by sociologist David Lockwood, only one of which refers to work published in the last decade. Lockwood's approach is distinctive and somewhat outside the mainstream of British work on class over the last ten or fifteen years. Lockwood has always, with justification, favored analysis using the boxes formed by the intersection of two binary dimensions, and here it again stimulates thought. Something however is not quite right. Civic expansion as a goal or civic activism as action are surely of a different order to civic exclusion as a social status. The difficulty lies in the dimension of citizenship itself.

It is commonly argued that the research programme of class analysis is undermined by its apparent neglect of large numbers of economically-inactive adults who do not form part of the analysis, but are affected by class processes, and form distinctive elements within any class structure. This paper disputes the claim that welfare dependents, the retired, and domestic housekeepers show distinctive patterns of socio-political class formation. Nor are the class-related attributes of the supposed underclass so distinct that they require separate treatment in a class analysis. Evidence which supports the orthodox strategy of sampling economically-active men and women is taken from national sample surveys of adults in Britain and the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of Marshall, Roberts and Burgoyne makes an important contribution to current debates on class, but it is argued that its theoretical basis is in need of further development. Specifically, it is argued that the 'Nuffield programme' of class analysis has lost sight of its Weberian roots. The approach departs from a view of social classes as real social groups and moves towards a nominalist view of class in which categories are justified on purely predictive grounds. It is suggested that an awareness of Weber's distinction between class situation and social class provides a firmer theoretical basis for the arguments set out by the authors and allows a more dynamic view of class to be constructed. Such a dynamic account must address issues of labour market structure, household divisions and civic status. Only on this basis can the idea of the underclass be properly assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the circumstances of the present times that ardent patriotism and convinced religious determinism are considered anachronistic. But the British Israelite, in whom these strands of thought are forcefully allied, remains a familiar figure to Protestant churchgoers. It is important to note the gradual changes that have been taking place both in the movement's ideology and its social base. British Israelism is a movement, which has had very considerable appeal to the upper and upper middle classes, and which, at least formerly, recruited disproportionately from the aristocracy, the military and the colonial middle class. British Israelism appears to have, as of 1968, fewer such people among its supporters. Newer members are more inclined to emphasize the most recent phase of Israel-Britain's history, her time of troubles and have become retrospective, looking to the past for theft standards. The present is thus rejected in favor of the past, and British Israelism has become a denial of social change.

The article sheds light on 'embourgeoisement' and self rated class. In a paper published in the periodical "The Sociological Review," sociologists John H. Goldthorpe and David Lockwood, have convincingly argued against the view that post-war affluence has made manual workers and their wives 'middle-class' in attitudes and styles of life, and have put forward a model which gives the notion of 'embourgoisement' a precise and testable meaning. This paper sets out to show that figures for self-rated class in Great Britain can, on the contrary, be used to elucidate both these questions provided that respondents have been asked about the meaning of their self-rating. The data on which this conclusion is based are taken from a national sample survey carried out in the spring of 1962. The embourgeoisement thesis is of course not new. Before the Second World War many different observers spoke of a visible assimilation between the manual and non-manual classes. Proper examination of the embourgeoisement thesis requires, however, that the relationship with income should be more fully considered. The embourgeoisement thesis would presumably lead people to expect that the frequency of Conservative support should be highest among those manual workers (or their wives) who have reached the top third of the overall income distribution, and perhaps it would also lead people to expect that the correlation with self-rating should hold within all three levels of income.

The article mentions why people choose to become physicians and work in medicine. The author and his wife, who find satisfaction in helping their fellow humans, did a personal study on how doctors are perceived by the British public. The hypothesis was that businesses would quote different prices for jobs such as moving furniture or installing a burglar alarms if it were known that the couple are in the medical profession. The result was that most of the time they were quoted higher prices when they introduced themselves as doctors. The author has decided that he will take a course in do-it-yourself work so he can avoid being targeted with inflated prices.