New class divide
Over almost five decades the social process called “embourgeoisement” has been as inexorable as globalisation.
Blue-collar workers’ jobs have been replaced by white collar employment as traditional industries declined or indeed disappeared.
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Hide AdToday former “working class” people enjoy “middle class” life-styles and have shed collective values for individualism.
Isn’t it as if the socio- economic structure is no longer a pyramid but more resembles a diamond shape? At the top there is the elite; at the bottom a relatively deprived group but a large group in the middle.
Noticeably, this has resulted in a loss of class-consciousness, workers’ solidarity and trade unionism.
Arguably the SNP, like New Labour, became electable because it overtly appealed to the “new middle classes”.
Ellis Thorpe
Old Chapel Walk
Inverurie