The majority of Britons identify as working class even if they have stereotypically middle-class jobs, holding values that suggest they are more likely to be socially conservative on issues such as immigration, according to the latest official survey of British social attitudes.
Although just 25% of people now work in routine and manual occupations, 60% of Britons regard themselves as working class, a phenomenon described as a “working class of the mind” that has withstood dramatic changes in the labour market.
Although politicians have on occasion declared that “we are all middle class now” the survey shows that Britons have clung to working-class values even when they have moved up in the income scale. Nearly half of people in managerial and professional occupations identify as working class.
The survey showed that within each occupational class, those who identify as working class are more likely to be conservative on a range of social issues, including the death penalty, homosexuality and morality, as well as immigration.
While 63% of middle-class identifiers in managerial and professional jobs reported that they are pro-immigration, for example, that percentage falls to just 38% in the same occupational category for those who identify as working class.
In recent years politicians from both main parties have declared an ambition to liberate Britain from old class identities, or suggested that family background is irrelevant. In 2013 David Cameron rejected criticisms that the country was run by a private school-educated elite by arguing “what counts is not where you come from, it is where you are going”.
But the survey suggests that working-class values – more likely to be socially conservative – not only often remain intact despite upward social mobility, but can prove influential in the outcome of elections, such as the recent EU referendum where immigration was a central issue.
“Class identity, and especially working-class identity, is alive and well,” write the authors of the study, Geoffrey Evans and Jonathan Mellon of the University of Oxford.
Evans told the Guardian that identification with socially conservative working-class values had almost certainly been a factor in the EU referendum, where working-class voters voted in higher numbers than they do in general elections.
Although family background is an important indicator of class self-identity – having parents who worked in a manual or routine job, for example – the study suggests that some objectively middle-class people identify as working class because they perceive they are disadvantaged in a society dominated by a tiny wealthy elite.
“People who see themselves as at the bottom of a structure in which there are a few super-rich and then everyone else might well think of themselves as ‘working class’ relatively speaking, even if they do hold a middle-class job,” the survey report says.
The survey, which has acted as an annual barometer of attitudes and social trends since 1983, also found that respondents consider Britain to be increasingly divided along class lines, with a plummeting belief in the possibility of social mobility.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents felt that the class divide was “fairly or very wide”, while 73% said it was fairly or very difficult to move between classes, compared with 65% who held this view in 2005.
A counter-reaction against economic austerity is picked up by the survey, with rising support for higher public spending after a decade in which the survey’s respondents have consistently said they do not wish to see more investment in public services.
There were strong satisfaction levels with the NHS, although there was also a recognition that the health service was facing a financial crisis. Increasing taxes to pay for health services was the most popular solution.
The survey detected a softening of views on social security policy, with increased public support for higher spending on benefits for people who are disabled and single parents – although there is less sympathy to those who are unemployed, particularly if they don’t have children.
Although more people than in past surveys were positive about the quality of their jobs – perhaps counter-intuitively, the survey notes, in a period of slow wage growth – this was not universal, with people in the lowest-paid jobs more likely to feel stress and less likely to have workplace flexibility than a decade ago.
Kirby Swales, of NatCen Social Research, which carried out the study, writes in the foreword: “Although austerity appears to have had a discernible impact on attitudes, for the most part the changes are not big attitudinal leaps, but rather small steps.
“This is of course usually how attitudes change. But a cohesive democracy should worry about a public that describes society as divided by class and says social mobility is decreasing, if the jobs of those at the bottom are getting worse while those of others get better, or if the public is gradually losing faith in the electoral system.”
The 2015 British Social Attitudes survey consisted of 4,328 interviews with a representative, random sample of adults in Britain with a response rate of 51%. Interviewing was carried out between July and November last year.
Swales said: “The class divide is alive and well in Britain and the economic instability and austerity of recent years seem to have sharpened our belief that it is difficult to move from one class to another.
“Class divisions have been highlighted recently with the vote to leave the EU, with some commentators talking about disaffection among the working class.
“Our findings certainly show that people who believe themselves to be working class are more likely to believe in a class divide than those who say they are middle class, and more think it is difficult to move between classes than did in the past.”