In 1985, the theory of class dealignment came under attack from the Heath thesis which was a book which claimed that the was no evidence that there had been a fall in working class loyalty to the labour party but actually the numbers of working class people actually dropped which had lead to a fall in the number of labour voters which proves that Class is a rather important factor for voting. Class alignment was still important but the balance of classes was changing. At the heart of the argument between voting alignment is the definition of ‘Class’. Conventional definitions just said it was manual and non-manual workers but now many other things are taken into consideration. I can see this from what Heath said in 1991 “Distinguished according to their degree of economic security, their authority in the workplace, their prospects of economic advancement and their sources as well as their level of income.” In other words, these days there are factors such as Income and wealth, background and education, which determine Class, and so class is becoming less important in voting behaviour because people are changing class and classing themselves deciding what class they are. Some argue that labours decline of the vote been exacerbated by the process of class dealignment. Voting can also be affected by party dealignment when a party changes for example their role in education etc and then their following changes and classes that support them may change.
In 1983, Crewe said that he found by a survey that only 83% of manual workers actually voted for the labour party, the party could only rely on the shrinking traditional working class, and it was losing support in the new working class, those who belonged to the old working class were predominantly people who lived in Scotland and the north of England those who lived in council houses or worked in the public sector. People who were in the new working class were manual workers who were employed by private firms and lived in the south. Therefore, this again proves that class is a rather important factor in voting behaviour.
However, in the 1992 elections even though the conservatives still won, Labour had began to turn around the rising factor of the class gap between new and old working class and began to improve their overall swing. Crewe then later admitted that gap was ‘much narrower’ than previously. There has been a change in the occupational structure, which also affects the votes. De-industrialisation has gathered pace since 1979 and it is perhaps mo surprise that it has affected people’s votes. In the traditional manufacturing industries, they had a strong trade union identity. Historically there had links with the labour party. However, since the 1960s millions of people have lost their jobs or they have found new jobs in the hi-tech sector and they are not organised the same as the old industries. The role of the trade unions is reduced, as a result, the link with the labour party has been broken and this had led to class dealignment. However, class dealignment has not just affected the labour party there has also been some falling support from the middle class for the conservatives this to can be explained by the occupational and class structure. Many people have been able to gain promotion to managerial jobs and there for in affect they have changed classes to middle class but they have retained the right to continue to vote for the labour party and then in affect the conservatives are losing middle class voters which strongly changes voting behaviour.
From the elections 1945-92 the conservatives’ non-manual votes decreased at every general election and labours non-manual votes decreased but not as much and then by 1992, they finally increased and class came back aligned. Labours had most of the manual votes from the period of 1945-92 while the conservatives’ votes slowly decreased across the time. Dunleavy and Husbands (1985) argue that the significance of manual and non-manual divisions is being replaced by new sectoral cleavages based on public-private splits. It is argued that these cleavages have resulted in the development of new political alignments, largely irrespective of whether employees are in manual or non-manual occupations. Dunleavy and Husband argue that new alignments have been developing which relate party choice to patens of consumption. These new alignments, they argue, cut across the manual/non-manual class alignments.
In conclusion although there has been a degree of class dealignment class in voting behaviour is still important. Meanwhile there is a relationship between class and region for example in the south of England it contains a higher proportion of middle class homeowners than the north, this could partly account for the conservative predominance in the north and the labour stronghold in the south. But class is not the most important factor in voting behaviour as geography still is the number 1 factor.
