Small Business Still Speaks with the Same Voice: A Replication of ‘The Voice of Small Business and the Politics of Survival’

Abstract

We replicated Bechhofer and Elliott's (1978) study of Edinburgh shopkeepers to answer two important questions. First, have political attitudes and behaviour changed since 1969–1970 when Bechhofer and Elliott collected their data? Second, are the Bechhofer and Elliott findings applicable only to the one city where their study was conducted? We collected our data in 1978 from the cities of Bradford and Leicester and the borough of Ealing, in grater London. Our replication supports Bechhofer and Elliott's findings in three of the four areas investigated. First, small shopkeepers are consistent Conservatives, although they are not terribly enthusiastic in their support. Second, shopkeepers are recruited from a wide range of social origins, especially from the lower non-manual strata and skilled manual workers. Third, small shopkeepers are highly individualistic politically, being strongly against big government and anti-union. Fourth, although Bechhofer and Elliott found that shopkeepers' optimistic beliefs in the possibilities of social promotion were apparently fulfilled in Edinburgh, such was not the case in Bradford. Ealing, or Leicester. The difference between our results and theirs may stem from differences in city economic structures.