Working-Class Identities in the 1960s

Abstract

This article reports a secondary analysis of the fieldnotes collected by Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechhofer and Platt as part of their studies of affluent workers in Luton in the early 1960s. I argue that the ideal type distinction between power, prestige and pecuniary images of society, elaborated by Lockwood, fails to recognize that money, power and status were often fused in the statements and attitudes of the workers they interviewed. I show that most respondents had a keen sense that dominant social classes existed. I go on to argue that the hesitations evident in the fieldnotes when respondents were asked about class were not due to defensiveness so much as fundamental differences in the way that the researchers and the workers thought about class. The central claim that respondents sought to elaborate was their ordinariness and individuality; findings which, when compared with recent research, suggest considerable continuities in popular identities.