Understanding political alignments in contemporary Britain: do localities matter?

POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY QUARTERLY, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1987,53-76

Understanding political alignments in contemporary Britain: do localities matter?

MIKE SAVAGE

School of Cultural and Community Studies, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BNl 9QN, En&and

ABSTRACT. Since the 1950s there has been increased local variation in British voting patterns with the Conservatives doing especially well in the South of England and rural areas, and Labour doing less badly in the North and urban

areas. Three possible explanations of this trend are discussed: firstly that it is related to the changing geography of social class (or other relevant interest groups); secondly that it reflects the revitalization of ‘local political culture’ or ‘territorial identity’; and finally that it is linked to the growing salience of local labour and housing markets as bases of stratification and political mobilization. The latter option is preferred since it explains why similar types of locality are having increasingly similar voting patterns regardless of their respective political histories or of their exact geographic location. Much greater theoretical understanding of local processes are needed here, and the paper concludes by suggesting two relevant points: that the trajectories of localities (whether declining or expanding) are extremely important but are often overlooked by analysts who simply characterize localities on snapshot characteristics from one period of time, and that several types of economic interest, especially those arising from housing tenure, have no general effects on voting patterns, but lead to different forms of political alignment in different localities because of their relationship with other features of the local social structure.

This paper examines whether localities have become more important in the structuring of

political alignments in Britain in recent years, and if so, in what ways. This is an extremely

important, though difficult, question to address. As sociologists and political scientists have

become more interested in ‘space’ in recent years (the work of Giddens, 1979,1981,1985,

is important here; as well as that of Massey, 19781984; Urry, 1981; Dickens et al., 1985;

Murgatroyd et al., 1985) observers are becoming more aware of apparently spatial or local effects, yet it might be that other types of local effects have existed in earlier historical periods. It is difficult to disentangle the extent to which assertions that localities are becoming more important in the structuring of politics reflect changes in theoretical perspective rather than changes in reality. In particular I focus on possible ways of understanding the increased local variation found in British political alignments today. Here I consider the extent to which these changes can be explained by the changing geography of

0260-9827/87/01 0053-24 $03.00 0 1987 Butterworth & CJJ (Publishers) Ltd

54 Political alignments in contemporary Britain

the social structure, the revitalization of local political cultures, and the significance of local labour and housing market structure.

In particular, I assess the significance of ‘local effects’ generally defined, for the moment, through the use of aggregate national election data. One of the problems for researchers who stress the significance of localities is that an appropriate research strategy appears to be the local case study or a comparison of a few local case studies. This type of research has produced interesting results, but by not confronting more orthodox nationally based research it may have only limited impact. While it may be possible, using Sayer’s (1984) methodology, to tease out causal chains through this sort of intensive research, it is still difficult to say whether the causal chain picked out is a really common one. Thus researchers may be attracted to ‘radical’ areas and see certain processes at work in having apparent effects, only to find that different processes are having much the same effect elsewhere. An example of this is the apparently inconclusive debate about whether local politics affects local public policy and spending patterns. Most case studies say it does (for instance, Darner, 1980; Daunton, 1984; Dickens et al., 1985; Mark-Lawson et al., 1985) but national surveys are rather more doubtful (Newton and Sharpe, 1984, survey this question).

An example of the way in which this problem has hindered analysis of these issues can be found in much labour history, particularly the now extensive literature on Chartism, the British radical movement of the 1830s and 1840s. As far back as 1959, Asa Briggs argued that it was not possible to understand Chartism without an appreciation of the significance of the local. ‘A study of Chartism’, he wrote, ‘must begin with a proper appreciation of regional and local diversity’ (Briggs, 1959: 2). H e went on to stress how ‘local differences need to be related to economic and social structure-to the composition of the labour force, the conditions of work, including relations between masters and men, and the timing and extent of local unemployment’ (Briggs, 1959: 3). Briggs’s clarion call had dramatic effect in producing an astonishing number of local studies of Chartism. l

There was, however, considerable conceptual doubt as to what these local case studies were meant to show. For Foster (1974) they were a means of bringing out the general social conditions needed for revolutionary mobilization, and it was a contingent matter that these were found in Oldham. Briggs, however, clearly felt they indicated the uniqueness of local

traditions which could not be generalized beyond those areas. Other writers have simply used the local studies as a means of getting at other features which interested them-work or class relations, for instance (e.g. Goodway, 1982; Smith, 1982) or the role of particular leaders (Belchem, 1985).

The failure to resolve these problems has meant that in recent times there has been a reaction away from this type of research, which is rather ironic given that other social

science disciplines are only now getting interested in these questions. Jones, most notably, has argued that ‘too much attention to local or occupational peculiarities can obscure the extent to which Chartism was not a local or sectional movement. Chartism was a national movement’ (Jones, 1983: 98-99). J ones advocates a return to studies of ideology (as manifested in national journals and the declarations of particular leaders), national campaigns and state policy. In a similar way, despite the fuss about local effects current in recent work on voting and politics, some writers continue to talk about the ‘nationalization’ of politics (most recently Green, 1984).

In this paper I try to assess the significance of the ‘local’ on political alignments by retreating from the terrain of case studies to an examination of national electoral studies, and I argue that many of them, usually despite themselves, do in fact testify to the importance of examining local social processes, though these need better conceptualization. I start by examining the growth of local variation in political alignments in the recent past.

MIKE SAVAGE

Local variation in British political alignment

55

The best evidence concerning local variation is provided by Curtice and Steed (1982, 1984; though see also Johnston, 1979, 1981, 1985), and Table 1 uses their data to show the different swings in different types of constituency.

Table 1 shows a growth of polarization both between regions and between urban and rural areas. The South of England and Wales both swung to the Conservatives between 1955 and 1970, whilst the North of England and Scotland swung to Labour. Similar patterns were found in 1970-1979 (when boundary changes made it necessary to produce a different table) except that the North of England also swung to the Conservatives in this period though only marginally and much less than average. At the same time the most urban areas swung to Labour (by 5.9 per cent ,between 195 5 and 1979) whilst mixed towns moved slightly to the Conservatives (by 4.88 per cent between 1955 and 1979), and very rural areas swung very heavily to the Conservatives (by 10.13 per cent). Much of this change is consistent with Butler and Stokes’s (1974) observations that there is a long-term trend for the two parties to do better where they are already strong (see also, here, Johnston, 1981, 1985), although Wales, while still a Labour heartland, does not fit this trend since there have been big swings to the Conservatives here. The main result of these changes is that there are now fewer marginal seats in Britain, as Labour becomes entrenched in its urban bases and the Conservatives in their rural ones. Between 1955 and 1970 there were 159 marginal seats in Britain, but between 1974 and 1979 this fell to between 98 and 119, and in 1983 there were only about 80 (Curtice and Steed, 1984).

Explanations: The geography of social class

The most obvious response to these findings is probably to assume that they are linked to the changing geography of social class, or other relevant interest groups. Curtice and Steed

TABLE 1. Local variation in British elections

South and Mids. North Eng. Wales Scot. Mean

19SS-19 70 (mean swing + 0.09 to Conservatives) City - 1.93 -7.51 Very urban + 0.08 - 5.60 Mainly urban + 1.19 - 2.09 Mixed + 3.01 - 2.09 Mainly rural + 3.59 - 1.35 Very rural +4.97 + 1.29 Mean + 1.21 - 2.98

19 70-l 979 (mean swing + 2.24 to Conservatives) City +0.24 - 4.74 Very urban + 1.48 - 1.81 Mainly urban +4.25 - 0.60 Mixed + 6.24 + 2.77 Mainly rural + 7.87 + 3.75 Very rural + 8.82 + 7.79 Mean +4.24 +0.10

- -4.55 - 4.47 -4.16 +5.16 + 0.42 + 2.89

- -8.12 + 1.45 -7.15 + 2.42 -4.22 +6.17 - 2.17

+ 10.49 +0.31 + 15.16 + 4.03

+ 7.60 - 2.84

-9.53 - 9.02 -6.81 - 5.74 - 2.06 - 1.40 - 5.82

- 3.92 - 2.78 - 1.08 + 0.40 + 2.17 + 1.68 - 0.98

- 1.98 -0.28 + 1.67 + 4.48 +6.27 + 8.45 + 2.49

Definitions: city= 35 + per hectare; very urban = 22-35 p.h.; mairlly urban= 6-22 p.h.; mixed = O-6 ph.

with - 6 per cent in agriculture; rural = 6-l 5 per cent in agriculture; very rural = 15 + per cent in agriculture.

Source: Curtice and Steed (1982).

56 Political aiignments in contemporary Britain

partly go along with this. They stress the decline of middle-class city dwellers and the rise of suburbanization in explaining these changes. They note that ‘the tendency for urban Britain to move towards Labour, and rural Britain to move towards the Conservatives has been matched by congruent changes in the spatial distribution of the classes’ (1982: 263). Yet there are some problems connected with this argument. Curtice and Steed rely on the work of Miller to back up their argument. Miller carried out a multiple regression analysis of British parliamentary elections between 19 18 and 1974, and found that a certain measure of the constituency’s class composition, the proportion of employers and managers, was a constantly good predictor of the vote, and indeed increased its predictive power between 195 5 and 1970, just as the polarization between localities I have indicated above was taking place (see also Warde, 1985). This would suggest that the different swings in different areas could be linked to the movements of various social classes. Miller’s chosen indicator for class, however, was the number of employers and managers in the constituency in 1966 and did not take into account the changing movement of that class before and afterwards (although it might be the case that this had some relationship with migration, so that, for instance, areas with high numbers of employers and managers in 1966 may be more likely to attract them in the future).

The main concern, however, is to do with Miller’s indicator of class. Since the number of employers and managers is relatively small (only about 10 per cent of the population) it cannot be the case that it is the votes of this ckm alone that explain these voting patterns. There are far weaker correlations between the proportions of the larger classes and voting behaviour. In 1966 in England there was a negative correlation of 0.7 1 between the Labour share of the vote and the number of employers and managers in the area, yet there was a positive correlation of only 0.34 between the Labour vote and the number of skilled workers, 0.19 between the Labour vote and semi-skilled workers, and 0.38 between the Labour vote and unskilled workers (killer, 1977: 57). In other words, the reason for the correlation between social class (as manifested by the numbers of employers and managers) and voting remains obscure. Large numbers of working-class individuals apparently vote against their class interest if they happen to live near concentrations of employers or managers. Miller attempts to resolve this problem by pointing to a ~neigh~urhood effect’, based on the way in which a ‘core class’ of either managers and employers or {more specula- tively) unionized manual workers can exert an influence on other local residents.

The sig@f&a?zce of core ckzsses

The neighbourhood or ‘contagion’ effect is seen as important by both Miller (1977) and Warde (1985), both of whom are influenced by Putnam ( 1966).2 Warde argues that a high presence of employers and managers ‘must be considered contagious. High local concentrations of managers and employers affect members of other classes, causing them to prefer the Conservative to the Labour Party’ (Warde, 1985: 32). Warde suggests that this effect is best explained by the role of contact mediated through voluntary associations. In informal neighbourhood contacts it is unlikely that members of separate classes will meet, and hence it is difficult to see how employers and managers could have any effect on other people. Formal associations are, however, likely to attract a wider range of people and allow contact between them, so allowing employers and managers to influence others. Yet if one assumes that these associations attract a representative cross-section of a local population, employers and managers will still he in a small minority, even if they are proportionately well repre- sented, so it is difficult to see why their political preferences should prevail, unless one assumes that they are more articulate. Given that professional people are generally nought

MIKE SAVAGE 57

to be more articulate, this seems an unreasonable assumption. The more serious problem is that there is in fact little evidence that people are equally

likely to join these associations. Numerous community studies have shown that different associations are likely to attract different types of people (e.g. Gans, 1967). Bealey et al. (1965), who in a survey in Newcastle under Lyme found distinct evidence that working- class people in middle-class wards were more likely to vote Conservative, showed that this was not linked to club membership, length of residence or the allegiance of friends (1965: Chapter 8). Orbell (1970), who carried out a similar inquiry in the US, found that members of voluntary organizations were least likely to be responsive to neighbourhood influences, since they were likely to have well-formed political opinions already.

These points are more pertinent since the tendency for people’s voting to be determined by their location, rather than their occupation, is especially apparent among working-class people, who are less likely to be voluntary association members, than middle-class people. The work of Heath et al. (1985) shows conclusively that working-class voters are more sensitive to their environment than middle-class ones. Thus in 1983 61 per cent of

working-class people voted Labour in working-class wards, but only 23 per cent in middle- class ‘salaried’ wards. For the ‘intermediate’ class the differences are less dramatic: 4 1 per cent vote Conservative in working-class wards, and 60 per cent in ‘salaried’ wards (Heath et al., 1985: 77). The reasons for the differences in working-class voting remain obscure and

there is no evidence that they are linked to a ‘contagion’ effect (see also Dunleavy, 1979). An alternative way of conceptualizing the significance of these ‘core classes’ is through

looking at the role of workplace relations. A high number of employers probably reflects a large number of small firms in the area which, as literature on the ‘size effect’ tends to argue, is more likely to lead to paternalist relations, less unionization, greater employer-worker mixing, and hence possibly a less militant workforce (Ingham, 1970; Newby, 1977).3 A large number of managers may well be linked to a deskilled and closely supervised workforce, hence with fewer capacities to develop strong opposition to management. Wright (1985) thus suggests that at a national level there are, pro rata, more managers in the US than Sweden, which he links to the stronger managerial authority there, and which might help to explain the weaker labour movement in the States. The obvious problem with this argument is that the workplace may be situated in a different constituency from the residences of the employers and managers, and hence one would not expect to see a strong correlation with voting behaviour. This point does not entirely dismiss the case. Con- stituencies where there are large proportions of employers and managers who commute may also have high proportions of subordinate workers who also commute to the same types of firms. In localities where there are few proportions of these groups, however, and large concentrations of manual workers, there may often be large measures of workplace control by workers through the role of the occupational community. There is plenty of historical evidence that workplace control can be linked to politicization. In South Wales the exodus of employers at the end of the last century, linked to the workplace autonomy of the local industries, did help generate a strong Labour movement (Cooke, 1985). In East London the emergence of the Labour party after World War I was associated with the decasualization of the docks and the growing strength of workplace bargaining (Bush, 1984). While being an interesting argument, it must remain speculative (see Savage, 1987, for further discussion).

A third possible explanation for the way in which the presence of employers and managers may affect the voting of other groups might conceivably be constructed by using theories of reference groups. Here workers’ voting patterns may be affected by the way in which they perceive social relations in their area, even without face-to-face contact with other social groups. Workers living in a middle-class area may see themselves as middle class


and vote accordingly. The processes by which this identification takes place, however, remain unclear. Relative deprivation theory (Runciman, 1966) argues that where the reference groups of the working class are expanded they are more likely to be radicalized, since they would be more likely to feel relatively deprived. If this were true one might expect working-class people in middle-class areas to be more radical than those in predominantly working-class ones; but in fact the reverse is the case.

Generally, then, it seems best to conclude that Miller’s correlation between employers and managers and voting patterns is spurious, for it is difficult to identify any causal mechanism which can link the two. It is rather more likely that large numbers of employers and managers are a surrogate measure for some other process at work (see also Longhurst et al., 1987). It is noteworthy that few other studies suggest that this group is of such critical importance. Johnston (1985), for instance, argues that it is of no special importance in explaining the local 1983 General Election results. I argue later in the paper that there is no need to invoke a ‘contagion’ effect in order to explain why working-class (and to a lesser extent middle-class) people are receptive to the local environment.

Before going on to discuss other studies, it is worth noting that in fact Miller does give some incidental details on regional and rural factors, although these are not his main concern. He does enough to indicate that these cannot be entirely reduced even to his measure of class, and that they seem to be becoming rather more important in recent years. He indicates that ‘peripheral’ regions (the North; Northwest; YorkslHumber; and South- west of England) have shifted from a pro-Conservative orientation (once social class is taken

into account) in 1955 to a neutral one. Scotland also began to deviate from the Conserva- tives after 1964, as did the Northwest of England (Miller, 1977: 88-92). Miller also recognizes the increased significance of rural factors in recent years. Between 1951 and 1964 very little of the variance in voting could be explained by this, yet by 1970 it explained about a fifth of that explained by class, and by October 1974 it had reached over 40 per cent of that explained by class (Miller, 1977: 153, 156). Once again, however, there must be a word of caution, since Miller’s measure of rurality was the percentage of those employed who were in agriculture in 1931.

Factor analysis

There are some other works which try to avoid Miller’s problem. The work of McAllister and Rose (1984) on the 1983 Election is an example. They argue that most of the variation in voting patterns can be linked to social structure if careful indicators are chosen. McAllister and Rose suggest that the number of employers and managers is linked to a variety of other social-structural features which together explain voting patterns. Basically they see high numbers of professional and managerial workers linked to high numbers of owner-occupiers, low numbers of unemployed, unskilled manual workers, council tenants, and semi-skilled manual workers. This appears to resolve the problem associated with Miller’s work since a much higher proportion of the electorate falls into one or more of these groups. One can hence account for voting patterns without resorting to a neighbourhood effect simply by assuming that voters are voting out of self-interest. It is, however, difficult to know which of the factors is the decisive one for they tend to be correlated together. It is not clear for instance whether council-house tenants are more likely to vote Labour because they are council-house tenants, or because where there are council-house tenants there tend to be a lot of unemployed, unskilled and semi-skilled workers and few professional people. Yet the most remarkable aspect is that despite the number of variables only 34 per cent of the variance in the Labour vote can be explained by this, only 40 per cent of the Conservative

MIKE SAVAGE 59

vote, and 9 per cent of the Alliance vote (McAllister and Rose, 1984: Table IX.1). They

give their model more plausibility by adding an extra variable for ‘agriculture’ (based on the numbers of people engaged in ag~c~t~e), which explains a further 13 per cent of the Conservative vote and 19 per cent of the Labour vote. As with Miller’s work the mechanisms behind this are obscure, since there are not enough farmers and agricuhural workers to directly account for this sort of variance. It may be that they are a surrogate for an otherwise unexplained rural-local effect. The number of immigrants can explain a further 5 per cent of the variance in the Labour vote (the more immigrants, the less the Labour vote), and, finally, Labour do slightly worse where there is a high proportion of elderly (2 per cent of variance in the Labour vote). Generally the claim of McAllister and Rose that ‘common social structural influences are the principal determinants of votes’ seems rather excessive.

These two accounts, which emphasize the centrality of social structure in explaining voting patterns and hence the growth of local variations, have rather different problems. For Miller, and where McAllister and Rose refer to ‘agriculture’, there seem to be strong correlations between a social group which is actually rather .a small proportion of the population and the voting patterns of other groups. The mechanism producing such correlations is rather obscure, however. Why should employers and managers have these effects? Why are rural areas more Conservative? On the other hand, when McAllister and Rose produce a model which seems more plausible because it accounts for more people, its predictive power is much more limited.

Johnston (1985) offers the best critique of the idea that voting patterns can be reduced simply to the social structure. He emphasizes that ‘voting in the English constituencies in 1983 was not a series of local representations of the national trends’ (p. 279). He compares the national survey data on the voting patterns of specific so&economic groups with the voting figures in English constituencies to show that once the s&o-economic character of that constituency is taken into account, only in 31 per cent of the cases was the actual election result within 10 per cent of what would be expected. The predictions for the Labour vote were extremely askew, and only in 11 perrent of cases were they within 10 per cent of their predicted measure. Even if tenure is included, there is little improvement.

Johnston’s own indicators, which allow for complex core class effects, are generally good predictors (see Johnston, 1985: 68, for a discussion of these), but as with McAllister and Rose the reasons for the correlations are frequently obscure. Thus for every 1 per cent of the workforce engaged in agriculture, the percentage of blue-collar tenants voting Labour falls 0.53 from its constant term of 13.4 per cent (Johnston, 1985: Table 6.9). There are

similarly regional effects, as well as those linked to the number of miners, the unemployed and those in manufacturing. The reasons for this are not, however, clear. Why should the numbers employed in agriculture affect non-agricultural workers? Why should manufacturing workers and miners be more Labour-inclined than other workers? Why are

Northerners more Labour-inclined? Johnston in the end tends to place great emphasis on traditions: miners and industrial workers have always voted Labour. More particularly, Johnston argues for the significance (among other factors such as local issues and camp~gns) of ‘local political culture’ in accounting for these variations.

Thus in the industrial regions where labour built its electoral base in the 192Os, the strength of pro-Labour partisan attitudes created an environment which still remains (Johnston, 1985: 292).

He stresses the continuities of political alignments in various localities based on this factor (1985: 220), and in line with Butler and Stokes (1974) argues that dominant parties tend to become stronger in a locality.


Explanations: Local political culture

It is the case then that there is increased local variation in voting patterns, but these do not reflect in any clear way the geography of social class. At this point I discuss the extent to which these increased local variations can be related to some sort of ‘local political culture’. The paradox I develop is that the salience of this seems to have declined just as local variations have become more pronounced. Many political scientists speak of the recent ‘nationalization’ of British politics. Johnson (1972-1973) defined this as ‘a process through which local political arenas are increasingly subordinated and integrated into a single national political arena’ with the ironing out of ‘autonomous local political characteristics, styles and behaviour’ (Johnson, 1972-1973: 53). Green (1984: 297) sees the process as part of modernization more generally, with a move ‘from an electoral system where traditional, particularistic and ascriptive criteria were paramount to one in which

modern, universalist and achievement-oriented characteristics assumed dominance’. There is, however, no consensus as to when this nationalization took place. Briggs, in his work on Chartism (1959), sees it as happening as early as the 1840s as Chartism organized national campaigns and movements, in place of localized radical movements. P. F. Clarke (197 l), in his famous study of politics in Lancashire in the first decade of this century, argued that the decline of Tory influence there was linked to this process. ‘Tory England’, he wrote, ‘had been built around local politics; but in almost every sphere, national influences were becoming more important’ (Clarke, 1971; see also Joyce, 1980, for a not dissimilar account). He singled out the rise of national political figures and the media in this process.

Green also emphasized the period around World War I, but Johnson, however, analysing a rural area in East Anglia, argues that nationalization took place only after 1945, with the decline of the local significance of religion and local notables.

There are some studies which have argued for the continued significance of these local traditions. ~unbabbin (1980) argues that since 1885 there have always been regional cleavages which have persisted in the face of social change. Thus the Southeast and

Lancashire have always tended to be pro-Conservative. This work is problematic, however, not only in failing to recognize the long-term regional changes discussed above but also in failing to recognize changing shifts of alignment within regions. Thus in the later 19th century it was urban areas which supported the Conservatives in Lancashire, while rural areas, with their wider franchise, had some scope for more radical sentiment. Today, however, most Lancashire towns are solidly Labour while the rural areas are Conservative.

Husbands (1983) in his account of National Front support in the 1970s also argues that local political traditions were important, since it was only in areas with a weak history of working-class politics that the National Front developed. Yet this argument is problemat- ized by the fact that Husbands’ main test of the strength of working-class politics in the area is the performance of Labour in 1906. He finds that in all the areas where the NF did well in the 1970s (Bradford, Blackbum, Slough, London’s East End) Labour was weak in 3 906. Yet Labour was weak almost everywhere at this time, often in places where the NF failed to find a footing in the 1970s.

Given this confusion, is it possible to come to any conclusions about the contemporary significance of ‘local political culture’ ? A number of indicators can be used to gauge its importance. Many writers see local traditions as bound up with the salience of religion (e.g. Clarke, 1971) with Anglican areas supporting the Conservatives. Miller’s work is some

MIKE SAVAGE 61

help in attempting to assess this. Using admittedly crude measures for religion (all figures were from 1921) he compared the significance of religious alignments in comparison with

ones based on class, and found that throughout the interwar years religion explained about half as much as class; but this fell to under a fifth by 195 1, though in more recent years has risen once more, only slightly, to a quarter.

Another way into this question is to examine the salience of local issues in people’s political awareness and in particular to assess whether local politics seems simply to be determined by national factors, such as swings against governing parties (Dunleavy, 1980). The decline of these forms of awareness is clearly one trend which Johnson and Green refer to in their discussion of ‘nationalization’. A number of studies, recent and not so recent, have chronicled people’s ignorance of local political affairs (Bealey et al., 1965; Bulpitt, 1967; the Maud Report, 1967; Sharpe, 1967; Gyford, 1976; Newton, 1976). The most recent of these (Bristow et al., 1984) examined voters in the 1981 Merseyside County Council election and found that only 29 per cent of electors who had just voted knew it was a county council election, and that only 45 per cent knew the Conservatives controlled the county council. Bristow concluded, on lines familiar to all students of local politics: ‘it is

clear that national factors dominated the perceptions of the majority of voters in Merseyside’ (Bristow et al., 1984: 181). It is difficult to assess changes over time here, since all postwar sources tend to concur on this point, and certain quantifiable sources, such as turnout in local elections, tend to show a generally low level going back into the interwar years at least (Gyford, 1976).

Nonetheless, there is some evidence that before 1914, at least, local politics could not simply be seen as reflections of national trends. This is most notable in the rise of the Labour party, whose progress was uneven, with considerable local variations in levels of support. Electoral success was generally incumbent on prior local organization and campaigning. Thus Bealey and Pelling (1958) showed that in one of Labour’s first major electoral victories-the by-election win at Clitheroe in 1902-the strength and neighbourhood base of the Weavers’ Union was a vital factor. Labour’s spectacular success at the Colne Valley by-election in 1907 was also preceded by more than 20 years of strong Labour organization, based on a powerful network of Labour Clubs (Clark, 1981). Furthermore, Labour frequently did badly in periods of sharp national confrontation between Conservatives and Liberals, such as that after 1910 (Douglas, 1974). The rise of the Labour party was a local affair, which cannot be very well explained by reference to national trends since these generally favoured the Liberals when the Tories did badly. These tendencies persisted well into the interwar years. At the local level there were a great variety of local coalitions between parties and groups: in some areas Liberal-Conservative pacts, in others Liberal- Labour ones, in others coalitions of ratepayers and local pressure groups, all deriving from local conditions. It does seem, however, that the interwar years were the critical ones in which local politics was increasingly subordinated to national political patterns. Cook

(1976) shows how in the 1920s the Labour party began to make large municipal gains in unison across a number of localities, and in line with parliamentary trends.

A comparison with the recent Liberal revival is perhaps revealing. To a much greater extent this rise does appear to be linked to national trends, something manifested by the fact that the Alliance has very few areas of real strength where it has established a strong power- base, and those where it has have often followed extensive national interest following by- elections. Ten of the Alliance’s 2 3 seats won in 1983 were originally won in by-elections or through defections. The levels of organization in localities, particularly for the SDP, remain very poor and indicate that their support is not linked to specifically local factors. Only in a few areas, Liverpool, West Leeds and some Pennine towns being the outstanding examples,


was Liberal success the outcome of active local campaigning. The contrast with the early Labour movement is considerable, for its support was not dependent on national exposure, and indeed it often did worse in by-elections than local elections (Douglas, 1974; Clarke, 1981).

Political histories and contemporary voting

After these general arguments supporting the idea that in some respects politics did become ‘nationalized’ from the interwar years, I want to present some evidence which suggests that received ideas about the political traditions of a place do not appear to help in explaining the contemporary relative strengths or weaknesses of Labour, once social structure is taken into account. One way of getting at this is to see the ‘local political culture’ component of voting as residual from what could be predicted from its social structure. Table 2 provides details of these and gives figures on the extent to which the Labour vote exceeds or is smaller than that which could be expected given its social structure. In this Table I have used McAllister and Rose’s measure of the social structure. (I have discussed in more detail above precisely what is meant by social structure in their work: it includes measures of the presence of employers and managers, unskilled workers, housing tenure, agriculture, immigrants, and the elderly). The table gives measures of all English towns outside London where there were two or more constituencies-an arbitrary cut-off chosen in order to reduce the impact of individual candidates-and the measures for the Labour residuals and the swing are simply average figures. Hence the table should be treated with caution and used only as a general guide.

Table 2 shows that the residuals indicated are generally not what might be expected from what we know of the political traditions of the towns listed. Those areas noted in the past for being strongholds of working-class Conservatism frequently deviate to Labour now. Birmingham, known for its Conservative leanings going back to Chamberlain’s municipalism (Hennock, 1972; Smith, 1982) and at the centre of the West Midlands region which Miller noted to be pro-Conservative in the 1960s now deviates to Labour, as do other West Midlands towns such as Wolverhampton and Warley, whilst Walsall and West Bromwich are only slightly pro-Conservative. Liverpool, famed for its working-class Orangeism and weak Labour movement (Smith, 1980; Waller, 1980; Savage, 1985) tends to Labour now and, with its suburb of Knowsley, had the biggest pro-Labour swing between 1979 and 1983. The ring of textile towns famed for their old Toryism (Clarke, 1971; Dunbabbin, 1980; Joyce, 1980), in an area which deviated to the Conservatives as late as the 1960s (Miller, 1977), now have large Labour residuals, with Bury having a pro-Labour residual of 13.1 per cent, Bolton 9.6 per cent, Oldham 6.2 per cent, and the pattern continuing in the single-seat towns (Blackburn + 10.8, Burnley + 9.6, and Preston + 7.6 per cent). St Helens with its paternalist tradition based on Pilkington’s glass is also a very strong Labour town. To some extent the pattern holds in reverse, with some towns famed for their radical tradition, notably Sheffield, and to some extent Bristol and Norwich, not appearing to have particularly strong Labour propensities.

These points do suggest that there has been a change in political traditions even since the 1960s. It also problematizes Johnston’s argument that parties do better where they are already strong. While this appears true for the 1979-1983 period, on a long-term basis there are numerous cases where L&our has done increasingly well (or at least less badly) in areas of historic weakness. This point can be developed by comparing the above table with the residual analysis of Piepe et al. (1969) who examined the 1955 and 1966 elections. Their work used a much simpler measure for the social structure than McAllister and Rose, merely the proportion of the population who were in classes 4 and 5, so the results are not

MIKE SAVAGE 63

TABLE 2. Residual votes in English towns, 1983

Town

Constituencies Average swin Labour residuala 1979-1983 $

Total (Labour) (%) (%)

Bamsley

St Helens

Bury Stoke Coventry Doncaster Bolton Oldham Wolverharnpton Knowsley Manchester Derby Sheffield Luton Bradford Warrington Birmingham Liverpool Warley Colchester Bristol

Leeds Hull Sunderland Newcastle Brighton walsall Stockton West Bromwich Norwich Northampton Reading Southampton Portsmouth Nottingham Plymouth Boumemouth

3

: 3 4 2 2

: 2 5 2 6

: 2

11 6 2 2 4

6 3

: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

: 3 2

+ 18.5 - 2.5 + 13.3 -1.0 + 13.1 +2.1 + 10.7 +4.7 + 10.5 +2.1 + 10.3 + 2.3

+ 9.6 +2.1 + 6.2 + 1.2 +6.1 +4.2 + 5.3 -4.5 + 4.9 -0.8 + 4.0 +5.4 +4.0 + 2.0 + 3.3 +5.8 + 3.3 +7.3 + 3.2 +0.7 +3.1 -0.6 + 2.5 - 3.7 + 2.2 + 3.2 +0.7 + 12.3 +0.2 +5.8

-0.4 +5.4 -0.8 +6.8 -1.0 +3.3 -1.3 -0.5 -1.5 +4.0 -1.8 + 2.6 -2.1 + 10.2 -3.0 +2.1 -3.3 +4.7 -3.7 + 7.8 -3.8 + 9.8 -5.7 + 10.8 -7.7 +11.5 -9.6 + 6.8

-13.0 + 14.5 - 13.7 +9.2

a Percentage by which the Iabour vote is more (+) or less (-) than could be

predicted from its social structure (McAllister and Rose, 1984).

b The ‘Steed swing’, between the estimated 1979 result and 1983. A swing to

the Conservatives is (+). to Labour (-). The national mean swing was +6.2

(Crewe and Fox, 1984).

directly comparable, although for the 1960s their measure was a reasonable one. It should also be remembered that there have been boundary changes. In Table 3 I have updated their work (Piepe et al., 1969: Tables 3 and 4) which listed those towns deviating most from the norms in 1955 and 1966.


Table 3 shows that many of the ‘deviant’ constituencies in 1955 and 1966 have remarkably changed course over the past 20 years. The majority of those towns with relatively weak Labour votes in earlier years now have a positive Labour residual: these towns would include Oxford, Lancaster, Liverpool, Bootle, and Middlesbrough, and Tynemouth has also seen a swing to Labour. Only Poole, Maidstone and Portsmouth have been consistently anti-Labour. More of the pro-Labour towns in 1955 and 1966 have retained this leaning, though a few, notably Northampton, Norwich, Lincoln and to some extent Sheffield, have seen swings to the Conservatives. Johnston’s argument that there has been long-lasting stability of the electoral map overplays the continuities.

A number of interpretative points can be made here. The fact that many areas have shifted their leanings to Labour should not obscure the fact that most of these have seen a considerable decline in Labour support also. Thus in Lancaster in 1966 Labour got 60 per cent of the vote, whilst it got only 25 per cent in 1983 (though this change is made to seem more dramatic because of boundary changes), yet did worse in the former than might have been expected, whilst in the latter rather better.

There are also some problems with my use of residuals as the ‘political culture’ component in voting patterns. This is because elements of local political traditions may lead to various socioeconomic outcomes which are then read as objective elements of the social structure. The clearest way in which this might happen is that localities with Labour traditions might build more council housing. Hence the fact that council-house presence

TABLE 3. Labour strength, 1955-1983

L&our residuul Town 195s (X) I966 1983

Poole -9 -10 -13 Maidstone

r; -7 -5

Oxford -6 +4a Lancaster -11 -6 +9 Portsmouth -9 -5 -8 Northampton +8 + 10

Norwich +9 +8 If

Lincoln +8 +2 -6 Mansfield + 15 +G +7 Wakefield +9 +8 +5 Swindon +6 +4 +2 Sheffield +8 i-11 +4 Liverpool -12 -8 +3 Tynemouth -17 -15 -1 Swansea +9 +9 +13 Bradford +7 +1 +3 Blackbum +6 +6 +10 Merthyr +17 +7 +25 Rhondda +12 +11 +30 Boone - 14 -10 -t-G Mid~esbrougb -12 -9 +5 Wigan +9 + 16 + 17

Note. Oldbury and Smethwick have been excluded due to extensive

boundary changes. a Oxford West and Abingdon have been excluded from 1983 figure: if

included, 1983 = no residual.

MIKE SAVAGE 65

tends to go along with Labour voting may not be due to the fact that council-house tenants are themselves more likely to vote Labour, but rather to the fact that co’uncil-house tenants are more likely to live in areas with pro-Labour political traditions. It is difficult, if not impossible, to test out these points in any simple way. Some work has been done on the determinants of public housing expenditure in postwar Britain which tends to be inconclusive on whether Labour councils are more likely to build public housing. Newton and Sharpe (1984) found that, of all forms of local public spending, housing was the most closely linked to the socio-economic character of the area, rather than political control. Goodwin% work on council-house provision (in Dickens et al., 1985) also suggests that they may be built in areas not known for Labour hegemony (such as North Norfolk), whilst ‘radical regions’ such as South Wales (Cooke, 1984) preferred mutualist solutions (on these see Savage, 1987) to housing problems which involved developing working-class owner- occupation, sometimes through local authority mortgages. Nicholson and Topham (197 1) found that a measure of unfit housing rather than political control per se was the best guide to public provision of housing, which they took to argue for the insignificance of politics. Yet, as was pointed out, it could be that the very perception of housing as unfit was likely to be political.

While it is possible that the residuals given by McAllister and Rose do cover up the existence of ‘radical’ traditions in areas of historic Labour strength, it is worth pointing out that the main finding of the above section was that towns with previously weak Labour movements have changed their political complexion recently, and it seems difficult to see how this could be due to these sorts of surrogate variables creeping in. It also seems difficult to link to Johnston’s stress on the significance of Labour traditions from the 1920s. Even in those areas where Labour failed to make much impact until the postwar period (notably Liverpool and Birmingham) they are now strong today. More detailed studies of the Scottish (Agnew, 1984) and Welsh (Cooke, 1984) nationalist movements also show that their support cannot simply be seen in terms of long-term cultural ethnic traditions (as argued by Hechter, 1975) but is based on contemporary developments (in the Welsh case, according to Cooke, on the political mobilization of Plaid Cymru; and in the Scottish case based on the significance of the oil industry and the locations of multinational enterprises in certain areas enhancing the attractiveness of independence).

What seems to have happened, in short, is that towns have become more homogeneous in their voting patterns. Towns previously noted for their working-class Conservatism have become more Labour inclined; and this links back to our earlier observation that there is increased local variation in Britain. What Johnson observed in East Anglia was the decline of traditions based on rural non-conformity and the role of local notables; a tradition which had previously helped Labour in an area not generally favourable for working-class politics. In urban areas, however, there has been a general demise of traditions of urban Tory&n which had previously hindered Labour in what is generally their heartland. These factors would explain the points made by Curtice and Steed that rural areas are drifting towards the Conservatives and urban ones to Labour. Local political cultures are becoming less distinctive between similar types of area. It might even be argued that local political cultures have become altogether less important in explaining voting behaviour.4

Explanations: Cluster analysis

One of the most interesting ways of fleshing out this point is to show that in similar types of seats, regardless of what part of the country they are in, there are quite similar political alignments. McAllister and Rose show that by arranging different sets into clusters, each


having distinctive social characteristics, there can be reasonably good prediction of election results. These clusters are in no sense theoretically derived, but are simply produced by dis- aggregating constituencies by their most distinctive statistical traits. Such a procedure has lots of problems, since different structures can have similar statistical outcomes. Thus, to take one example, McDowell and Massey (1984), and Mark-Lawson et al. (1985) have shown that one cannot read off the nature of local patriarchal relations from simple statistical indicators such as the proportions of women in the labour force. Interwar Preston and Nelson, despite being superficially similar textile towns in North Lancashire, have completely different types of gender relations.

Nonetheless, it is striking that the clustering of localities does show up common political patterns. Thus, to use an extreme example, in those 19 constituencies distinguished by having a high degree of owner-occupation and old people, Labour got only 10 per cent of the vote in 1983, yet in those 13 characterized by having high proportions of council tenants, manual workers and immigrants they got an average of 5 2 per cent of the vote. It would be an extremely interesting project to see if theoretically derived clusters (such as those offered by Cooke, 1983) would provide even better results. Even with conventional cluster analysis, there seem good grounds for confirming the general argument I am making about current political trends: that whereas in the past constituencies of a similar type often had different political alignments because of the salience of their local political cultures, this is becoming much less apparent, and constituencies of a similar type are behaving in similar ways, whatever part of the country they are in. But there is also a twist to this argument which I want to develop by using McAllister and Rose’s data on residuals, together with the clusters used by Crewe and Fox (1984) to point out some overlooked implications of their argument. Table 4 is derived from their residuals and the clusters identified by Crewe and Fox (1984).

There are a number of interesting points to be made from this table. With the exception of the cluster of ‘textile towns’ all the clusters have very clear political profiles. As McAllister and Rose indicate, this is the most illuminating way in which the social structure can be said to affect local voting alignments. In other words similar types of locality have much greater patterns of alignment than do specific places. Old industrial and mining areas are consistently more likely to give more support to the Labour party than could be predicted from

their social structure, whatever part of the country they are in. A second point is even more interesting. Because of the way that McAllister and Rose

constructed their index of the social structure one would not expect to see any marked residuals in these results, since most of the factors used in developing the clusters (class structure, tenure, immigrants, housing amenities, agriculture and rurality, age structure) have been included in their model to explain voting patterns. What I mean by this is that one would expect, for instance, old industrial and mining towns to be Labour towns simply because of the proportion of manual workers in them. Yet the level of the Labour vote is generally well above that which could be expected from this alone. The fact that there remain large, consistent residuals suggest that where certain of these factors are found in large quantities they have extra effects over and above those which can be derived from

aggregate patterns. The most notable of these effects is linked to the presence of immigrants. McAllister and

Rose argue that the presence of immigrants can explain 5 per cent of the variance in Labour’s vote in a negative direction (the more immigrants the less the vote). Yet the cluster analysis shows that where large numbers of immigrants live a totally different pattern is found of above-average Labour support. In other words there is no simple continuum whereby a given proportion of immigrants adds or subtracts a little from the overall voting patterns; but there are qualitative shifts, so that a constituency with say 20 per cent of

MIKE SAVAGE

TABLE 4. Clusters and voting patterns, 1983

67

Chstera Con.

5 = Old, industrial, mining towns 1= Metro., inner cities, with

immigrants

4

2 7 = Poor domestic conditions 3 = Poorest immigrant areas 6 = Textile areas 2 = Industrial areas with

immigrants

9

23 = Stable industrial town 4 = Intermediate industrial areas

3 1 = Agricultural areas 16 = Inner metropolitan areas 24 = Small manufacturing town,

rural hinterland 10 = Maritime industrial area 26 = Manufacturing town with

commuter hinterland 15 = High-status inner metropolitan

area

4 19 10 40

2

23 1 1 13

25 1 +0.5

9 20 = City constituency with

service emphasis 27 = Metropolitan industrial area 19 = Conurbation, white-collar

8 = Conurbation, local authority housing

18 28 25

4 9 = The Black Country

17 = Outer London suburbs 25 = Southern urban constituencies 28 = Modestly affluent urban Scotland 22 = Recent growth and modern

26 26

6

housing 1 1 = Poor, inner-city 12 = Clydeside

15 1

13 = Scottish industrial constituencies 1 30 = Prosperous towns, little industry 18 18 = Very high status 28 2 1 = Resort and retirement 28 29 = Areas of rapid growth 16 14 = Scottish rural areas 10

seats

hbour Other Inbow residual (urge ofconsts)

30

6 6 4 8

13 7

20 1

11

4 1

20 9

2 10 16 24

1 6

1

2

2 1

1

f 13.1

i- 12.9 t 12.1 t 11.9

+7.4

+7.1 +6.3 +5.1 +3.4 +1.9

+1.8 +1.5

-0.5

- 1.2 -1.4 -1.9

- 2.6 -2.7 -2.8 - 2.9 - 3.0

- 3.0 -3.2 - 3.4 -4.0 -4.9 -5.4 - 6.9 -7.3 - 8.9

a Full descriptions of clusters in Crewe and Fox (1984).

immigrants may have a fundamentally different political dynamic to those with say 15 per cent (see also Savage, 1985). Or to take another example, although gender may not appear to be a relevant variable in explaining voting from national surveys, it may have extremely important effects in particular localities depending on its relations with other local social processes. The whole is very much more than the sum of the parts: just as the properties of water are qualitatively different from those of hydrogen and oxygen, so different combina- tions of certain social factors in particular localities have effects not predictable from those of

68 Political alignments in contemporary Rritain

their constituent elements. This point is of considerable theoretical significance in establishing the importance of localities in understanding political alignments. Now of course these observations may even lead one to doubt the validity of nation-wide multiple regression analyses such as those of McAllister and Rose. You can always find an average, yet in certain cases these appear to be averages of essentially qualitatively different things, so it is not surprising that the predictive power of their model is both relatively weak and unexplained.

Johnston (1985) recognizes that it is not possible to read off voting patterns in localities from aggregate national patterns. 5 He substitutes the idea (along with the stress on political cultures discussed earlier) that there are discontinuous class effects so that the effects of, for instance, the numbers of working-class voters on other voters vary according to the strength of that class numerically. If there are only, say, 25 per cent working class in a constituency its effect on other groups may be negligible; if they are 50 per cent it may be considerable. Yet Table 4 shows that this is too simple. There are some clusters where Labour is strong, yet where there are negative Labour residuals (notably Scottish industrial constituencies). Here Labour wins seats because of the overwhelming proportions of working-class people in that constituency. In other clusters (old industrial and mining towns) there are positive residuals which indicate that large numbers of manual workers are only one element behind

the success of the Labour party. Here levels of support are consistently higher than would be expected simply from national patterns. Whether large numbers of working-class people have these extra effects is not a mere function of that class’s size (for there are overwhelming proportions of these in both old industrial and mining towns and the Scottish industrial

areas) but also depends on the way it meshes with other social features. Only certain social factors seem to work in this way, however. Others appear to work

rather more in a continuum-like fashion. Thus those areas distinguished by having very high proportions of council housing have a relatively small (though consistently negative) residual. The same generally applies to working-class people in conurbations (clusters 8, 10, 11, 12, 16, 27). The critical things which do appear to operate in this non-cumulative way are the number of immigrants (clusters 1, 2, 3). considerable numbers of manual workers in old industrial towns (clusters 5, 6, 23, 24), and numbers of old people (cluster 29).

These points are of considerable importance in thinking about the ‘core class’ effect among the working class. Table 4 suggests that in certain types of area the high proportions of workers can lead to a strong Labour hegemony. This is not due to the strength of numbers alone, but also the type of environment and the way it links with other local social features. To some extent this has been recognized. Crewe (1973) noted there were a number of distinctive coalmining constituencies that had their own political behaviour which was out of step with national trends, notably in being non-volatile with high levels of loyal Labour

support. To summarize the argument so far: the increased local variations in voting patterns in

Britain are not caused by changes in the geography of social class, or an intensification of ‘local political culture’, but can be linked to the fact that similar types of localities are having increasingly similar political patterns. Thirty years ago the politics of Liverpool were fundamentally different (in terms of voting) from those of London’s East End, despite a broadly similar occupational and industrial profile; today they are generally the same. Local distinctiveness has declined as local variation has increased. Yet how can we account for this? Is there need for a recourse to the long-discredited notion of the ‘culture of cities’ (or coalmining areas, or market towns, etc.) to explain these developments (see Castells, 1977, and Saunders, 198 1, for critiques of these ideas). I argue that greater attention to the trajectories of localities can provide the proper solution.

MIKE SAVAGE 69

The contemporary significance of localities

I speculate that the distinctiveness of localities results from two key features. Firstly, localities are not static objects but have trajectories which are often obscured by data taken from one period of time alone (see Warde, 198513). Thus two towns with an identical occupational profile in, say, 1981 may be undergoing fundamentally different trajectories: one may be deindustrializing, the other industrializing. And it is this perception of how your locality is performing vis-a-vis the nation as a whole which helps give people a political sense. In this respect the nationalization of politics discussed above may aid this since people are better able to compare their own locality with a media-wonted ‘national’ one (see also Taylor, 1982). Secondly, the economic performance of your locality vis-a-vis other parts of the country has a vital effect in forming your economic interests and hence will also provide an instrumental rationale for voting patterns.

Why should this be? The starting-point here is the work of Thorns (1982). Thorns argues that individuals can earn money both through the labour market (ii the form of well- paid emplo~ent) and the housing market (through house-price inflation so that people can sell their houses at prices well above those at which they were bought, even allowing for inflation). He points out that one’s ability to use the housing market in this way to make large capital gains is vitally dependent on the local labour market, since the higher one’s income the greater the potential to buy an expensive house, and, more importantly, the rate of house-price inflation is closely linked to the overall prosperity of the kxal labour market: the prosperous areas see higher price rises.

The interesting feature of Thorns’ work, together with Hamnett’s response (1984), was that they show that trends in house prices appear tomatch trends in political alignment very closely. That is to say, leaving aside for the minute the question of council tenure, the value of houses has been rising faster in suburban and rural locations than in inner cities and industrial areas (Kemeny et al., 1981). Some writers (Dunleavy, 1979; Saunders, 1984) have placed great emphasis on tenure as the basis of political alignment, but wrongly assume that all owner-occupiers have the same material interests. In Dunleavy’s work the critical cleavage is the way owner-occupiers and public tenants mobilize to get state support. The argument presented by Dunleavy is that tenants will support the Labour party since it advances their interests (through rent subsidies), whilst owner-occupiers will support the Conservatives, since they allow tax relief and encourage over-~~upation more generally.

Yet it might, however, be argued that in industrial areas the potential to make money from the capital gains of housing is closely connected to the overall prosperity of the locality. Hence owner-occupiers might have good reason to support a I.&our government committed to reducing unemployment, improving the urban infrastructure, etc. An owner- occupier wishing to make the maximum capital gains out of housing would support state intervention in the economy if this would be likely to make the area more attractive, but not if the area was growing without this. The interests of these groups are locally, not nationally based.

Now the significance of this argument is that it provides some good reasons why working- class people in ‘affluent’ middle-class areas, and middle-class people in working-class areas, should have different political propensities from their other class members. A working-class owner-occupier in an affluent area stands to make large capital gains from house-price inflation. A junior office worker or skilled manual worker in a working-class environment on the other hand will not be able to make as much money because of the generally depressed nature of the local economy. The fact that workers are more likely to vote Conservative in middle-class areas could simply be due to this factor, and there may be no

70 Politica/ alignments in contemporary Britain

need to invoke a ‘neighbourhood’ effect. Hence class and tenure interests may still be vitally important in sustaining politics, but these must be seen as based not on national factors but as linked to the local labour and housing markets. We should abandon the idea that class ‘interests’ are nationally rather than locally based. Whereas Miller’s model for explaining why working-class people were more likely to vote Conservative in middle-class areas rested upon notions of contact between members of the various social classes, this account need simply refer to the material interests of working-class residents in these areas, and the relative prosperity of these workers who live in such areas.

People vote for a mixture of instrumental and expressive reasons: but the decisions behind this are based primarily on some notion of how their locality is performing. Owner- occupiers, being more tied into the locality through their financial stakes (see Cox, 1983), may well have more clear perceptions of trends than public tenants. South Welsh miners for instance stand to lose not only their jobs but also their capital tied up in their often owner- occupied housing if their pits close. Table 4 indicates how some clusters with distinctive trajectories (notably 29: areas of rapid growth; and 5: old industrial and mining towns) have very clear political patterns. Thus it may not matter so much in explaining political partisan- ship whether you live in a working-class or middle-class town; what does matter is whether it is expanding or not. It is worth recalling details from Table 3 here, for most of the towns which have deviated from previous Tory traditions appear to have suffered considerably more decline than is common nationally, whilst those which have retained these traditions remain relatively buoyant (in the case of Portsmouth especially bolstered by defence expenditure). This of course is not surprising when it is recognized that most political debate is actually about how economic growth can take place.

Can any more precise evidence be advanced in support of these ideas? The intuitive attraction is that it may explain the urban-rural shifts we have seen to be central to electoral change in Britain. In a nutshell, Hamnett indicates that central urban areas are not witnessing the same levels of house-price inflation as suburban and rural areas: a process closely linked to labour market change. It is also these very areas which are moving increasingly to the Labour party. There is not as yet sufficient local evidence to rigorously test this idea. Kemeny’s work on Birmingham does offer some way in, however (Kemeny et al., 198 1). Kemeny notes that in central Birmingham between 1972 and 1979 house prices did not rise as fast as they did elsewhere in the West Midlands (in 1972 the average house price in central Birmingham was 40 per cent of the West Midlands average: in 1979 it was 30 per cent). These areas also saw swings to the Labour party (in a traditionally weak Labour town). More precisely, of the three areas studied by Kemeny, Soho saw the least rise and Sparkhill the greatest. Interestingly, between 1979 and 1983, Soho in the Ladywood seat had one of the biggest anti-Conservative swings in the country ( - 3.7 per cent), whilst Sparkhill in Sparkbrook had a lesser swing ( - 0.1 per cent). Electoral swings do appear to tie up with house-price changes, but this argument clearly needs more research.

As we saw in Table 1 there is also a North-South cleavage in electoral trends. Whether these can be explained by the same tendencies is not clear. Hamnett argues (against Thorns) that there was no regional differential to house-price inflation, and that although house-price booms started in London and the Southeast they filtered through to all parts of the country within 2-3 years, but more recent evidence suggests a regional dimension to house-price differentials as well (see Barlow, 1987).

Some other general points can be made if Table 4 is consulted: (a) Most of the areas with negative Labour residuals are expanding prosperous areas.

Clusters 30, 18,21 and 29 are notable here. In these areas workers, regardless of the level of rewards of their jobs, may stand to gain from massive house-price inflation, and are likely to

MIKE SAVAGE 71

perceive their area in a favourable light. The case of new towns is an important example. In the 1960s these were generally Labour strongholds. Indeed Sharpe (1967) noted that:

. . so persistent has been the New Town’s allegiance to Labour despite high average incomes that there are grounds for suspecting that consciously designed public housing schemes of the New Town type may strengthen rather than weaken allegiance to the Lahour Party (p. 8).

Today there is relatively low unemployment and extensive selling-off of relatively high- quality public accommodation to owner-occupiers, allowing many working-class people to make considerable gains in the housing market. New Towns are now uniformly Conserva- tive, as Table 5 shows. This example of the rapid decline of Labour voting in New Towns (despite formerly strong Labour traditions) suggests how important the relative buoyancy of housing and labour markets may be.

TABLE 5. New towns and the Lahour vote, 1983

Seat ZLZbOW

(%) COTZ. Other LaboUr Steed (%I (%I residual swing

Harlow Crawley Milton Keynes Berks. East (Bracknell) Stevenage Herts. West

(Hemel Hempstead)

34.2 41.1 24.2 - 10.4 +6.1 26.2 48.1 25.7 -8.8 +11.7 22.2 48.0 28.4 - 12.3 +9.8 13.3 56.8 29.9 - 14.3 + 13.0 24.0 39.4 36.1 - 14.8 + 13.2

22.3 46.7 31.0 - 10.7 + 18.3

Note. Only constituencies dominated by New Towns are included. Source: McAllister and Rose (1984).

(b) On the other hand, in certain areas working-class owner-occupation may be conducive to Labour voting (see also, on this, Johnston, 1985: 145-152). In these areas, if my argument is correct, the prospects of making capital gains through owner-occupation are constrained by the depressed state of the local labour market, and hence owner-occupation may lead to a support for a Labour government committed to tackling that problem. It is worth listing those seats noted by McAllister and Rose as having the highest pro-Labour residuals (Table 6). Only two of these 10 seats have below 50 per cent owner-occupation. In these contexts owner-occupation goes along with Labour voting. It can be seen that most have high levels of unemployment (only Bolsover and Carmarthen have rates significantly below their regional average), and are in regions of general economic decline. In these areas owner-occupation cannot be expected to lead to major capital gains without considerable state intervention to develop the economy. Further, insofar as owner-occupation gives people a stake in a locality, it may lead to more radical politics along these lines. It is worth noting that the cluster of ‘textile towns’, which generally have a high rate of owner- occupation and are in economically declining areas, also have a considerable L&our

residual.

(c) Middle-class owner-occupiers are most likely to he affected by these considerations in

the following way. If they live in a working-class area they may find it difficult to move out to more prosperous areas, since their house price will be governed by the overall state of the local economy, and it may prove impossible to afford to buy a house in an expanding area. Hence they are locked into the labour and housing market and this may lead them to greater than expected patterns of Labour support. They have local as well as class interests, and the

72 Political alignments in ~o~~~~orar~ Br&z~n

TABLE 6. Labour residuals and market location

Seat Labour Lubour midual (%I

Non- Ow9zer- manual Unemployed occupier

(%I (%I W)

Rhondda Ealing, Southall Blaenau, Gwent Carmarthen Merthyr Tydfil Barnsley East Ogmore Cynon Valley Workington Bolsover

+ 28.5 61.7 37.8 22.5 76.1 + 26.2 52.3 52.2 11.9 64.7 + 25.3 70.0 38.9 22.0 55.3 + 24.6 31.6 43.9 10.8 65.0 + 23.6 67.3 38.5 20.6 52.8 + 22.9 65.9 39.6 14.2 42.6 + 22.5 59.2 38.4 16.2 60.3 + 22.1 56.0 41.0 17.0 65.7 +21.5 52.0 43.1 14.1 52.2 “l-21.0 56.3 35.5 9.4 49.6

Source: McAllister and Rose (1984).

former may override the latter. Indeed, several of the areas with high Labour residuals are self-contained, relatively free-standing labour markets (clusters, 5, 6, 23). They are therefore unlikely to be overwhelmingly working class, as some of the inner-city conurbation seats are. Some middle-class service workers are likely to live in these constituencies. In these free-standing industrial areas these local effects may be most apparent. Thus Johnston (1985: Table 6.9) shows that white-collar owner-occupiers are more likely to vote Labour in the ~etro~li~n Boroughs and the Northern areas.

(d) The fact that council tenants cannot make capital gains out of housing explains why their political propensities are less extreme than those of owner-occupiers. There is much less local variation in the interests of these tenants, for they will usually benefit from low rents wherever they live. Table 4 shows that most of the clusters with high proportions of local authority housing do not see marked residuals. Their predominant concern is the state of the local labour market. As they are finding it more and more difficult to enter the private housing market (Hamnett, 1984), so their politics are becoming increasingly connected to the Labour party.

(e) These points also throw light upon the fact that rural areas are increasingly Conserva- tive. I have noted that all analysts have pointed to this, yet have not been able to offer an explanation. My point here is that it is not necessary to invoke some strange ‘rural’ effect, by which the small numbers of farmers have a mysterious influence over other inhabitants. Rather, these areas have been doing relatively well under recent Conservative governments, with economic growth and house-price inflation, and there is simply no reason to suppose that they should not support further expansion along existing lines.

Conclusions

This paper has clarified the ways in which localities can be said to form the basis of contemporary political alignments. There appears to be little evidence that ‘local political cultures’ have become more important in recent years, and indeed considerable evidence that they now hold much less importance in determining contemporary voting patterns. Local traditions are constantly being reformed and have little purchase unless they are

MIKE SAVAGE 73

sustained by enduring features of the local social structure. One of the paradoxes of contemporary developments is that the declining salience of these traditions helps explain

increased local variations in voting patterns, since radical rural traditions, and conservative urban ones, which previously prevented the Conservatives monopolizing rural seats and Labour monopolizing urban ones have now been seriously eroded.

What has emerged is a situation where the social structure of a locality is an extremely

important determinant of voting patterns. This must, however, be understood in the correct way. In particular, most studies of voting have misconceived the significant features of the social structure in two main ways. Firstly, they have seen the local social structure as nothing more than a fragment of a ‘national’ class structure. However, I have argued that the interests arising from the social structure are essentially linked to the local labour and housing markets. In the latter sections of this paper I have focused on one important element of this-the relationship between local labour market and local housing market. It is not useful to say that all owner-occupiers have the same interests. The interests of owner- occupiers are based on the way they relate to other features of the local social structure,

notably the state of the local labour market. Secondly, the local social structure must not be seen in a static way. The trajectories of localities are crucially important in helping explain their politics. People’s perceptions of their locality are closely linked to perceptions of what their locality ‘used to be like’. People who feel their locality is declining are likely to adopt a different approach to government policy from others who feel that their area is getting better. This point holds, to some extent, regardless of the precise socio-structural characteristics of that place.

In the light of this argument it is important to abandon attempts to specify the significance of any one factor in a general way. Gender is an extremely important basis for political mobilization, but its significance is obscured in works which attempt to show a uniform effect (that women are more conservative for instance). The way in which gender becomes a significant basis for political action is based on its local relationship with other factors (see,

for one instance of this, Mark-Lawson et al., 1985). Ethnicity is another example of the same point. As I have argued elsewhere (Savage, 1985) there is no single ethnic factor, but its effect on local political alignments depends on how the relationship between ethnic

groups is based. This is not, however, a statement that everywhere is different. Patterns of regularity can be observed, and can be related to certain relationships between the social features of that locality.

If the arguments in this paper are correct it is therefore necessary to stop meaningless research based on national surveys, and to pay more attention to local social processes which need to be analysed intensively (see Sayer, 1984, for a discussion of this; and Barlow and Savage, 1987, for a modest attempt along these lines). This may involve local surveys, investigations of the major local interest groups, and analyses of local labour and housing markets. We are still a long way from fully understanding contemporary political dynamics, but hopefully this paper has cleared the way for a more fruitful approach.

Acknowledgements

This paper has been written in connection with a research project with Alan Warde on local political alignments at the University of Lancaster (funded by the University of Lancaster), and in an ESRC Research Programme on ‘Economic Restructuring, Social Change and the Locality’ at the University of Sussex. Thanks to Simon Duncan, Pete Saunders and Alan Warde, and anonymous referees for extensive comments on an earlier draft, and to participants at the Urban Studies seminar at the University of Sussex, October 1985.

74

Notes

1. A not particularly extensive survey indicates that books, articles, or theses have been written on

Chartism in: Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Suffolk, Somerset, Wiltshire, Glamorgan, SE Lancashire, the Potteries, Nottingham, Halifax, Bradford, Birmingham, London, Dundee, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Coventry, Barnsley, Sheffield, York, Brighton, Dewsbury, the Black Country, Essex, Norwich, Newcastle, Dudley, Bristol, Monmouthshire, Stockport, Oldham, Merthyr Tydfil, Aberdeen, NE England, Montgomeryshire, Tyneside and Banbury. These are derived from Briggs (1959), Epstein and Thompson (1982), Thompson (1984) and those cited in Harrison and Thompson (1978).

2. The main evidence for the neigh~urhood effect is that of Putnam (1966) who showed that membership of voluntary associations did link into voting patterns in the US. It is doubtful that evidence from American politics, where the class dimension of political alignment is different from the English case, can really be used to sustain the argument.

3. Though some work (Joyce, 1981)) suggests that smaller firms, at least in some contexts, may have seen more employer-worker tension because of the smaller profit margins which these firms work under.

4. This point is not necessarily applicable to all forms of local political action. Indeed it might be argued that activists at the local level now have a much greater interest in developing various local initiatives-see Duncan and Goodwin (1985). It does not appear to be the case, however, that these have any necessary resonance with the ‘ordinary’ Labour voter. It is worth stressing that in my view voting patterns are not necessarily a good guide to other forms of political action. Voting is one of the easiest forms of political action (compared with organizing a demonstration, a political party or whatever), and hence it is least prone to the problems of collective action discussed by Olson (1965; and see Lash and Urry, 1984, for a discussion), and the most likely to be caused simply by social interests, regardless of the capacities for wider forms of action. These points are considered in more detail in Savage (1987).

5. One of the points arising from Johnston’s work is that national surveys of voting patterns must be misleading. Especially for the smaller occupational groups, accidental factors, notably the location of the sample, must vitally affect the results. This has implications for Miller (1977) since he measures the environmental class effect in terms of the difference between national surveys and local results, as well as more conventional survey research such as that of Dunleavy and Husbands

(1985).

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Understanding political alignments in contemporary Britain: do localities matter?