CLAIRE AINSLEY, author of The New Working Class, is the recently appointed director of policy of the Labour Party. Her declaration that “in politics class really matters” may be a truism but it is welcome. Her book collates a mass of information regarding British social class: if the Labour Party is trying to work out how to pitch some its policies, this could be very useful.

The background to the book is developments over the last 40 years with the loss of traditional working-class support for Labour and a fracturing of its identity. Written and published before the 2019 election, it anticipates the loss of Labour’s “heartlands.” For some it is prescient and will describe the way forward.

Certain of Ainsley’s policy proposals are interesting, others are appalling. The surprising thing is that her argument is so openly driven by dogma, with a Kantian attribution of six innate value attitudes to the “new working class.” All campaigning and policy proposals have to be fitted into this framework. The key “lies in activating its moral frames,” she contends.

Ainsley describes this new working class, based on social, cultural and economic factors, as being “made up of the traditional working class (representing approximately 14 per cent of the population), emerging service workers (19 per cent) and the ‘precariat’ (15 per cent). Taken together, these groups equal roughly 48 per cent of the population.”

It is multi-ethnic, of all abilities and more likely to be female than male. This class “is more disparate, more atomised and occupies multiple social identities, which makes collective identity less possible.” The interests of its component parts are not always immediately compatible, in fact they can be conflicted.

If the object is to identify differences that have to be addressed in order to overcome them, then the book makes a contribution — but in describing the new working class as “not one cohesive monolithic whole” Ainsley seems strangely unaware that this is hardly new.

A community of interest was never automatically felt between, for example, Welsh miners, Upper Clyde ship workers, London dockers, Sheffield steel workers and Oxford’s Morris Motor workers. The opposite was often true.

Thus, there was an emphasis amongst trade union and political organisers on the primary task of building unity. It never was a given. In terms of other strata Ainsley also seems unaware that TUC affiliates long included at least some of those her sources refer to as the technical class, as well as middle classes. Of course, teachers and indeed some doctors have also been in TUC affiliates for a long time.

What is more it should not be long before unions representing the “self-employed” and “precariat” are also affiliates. Ainsley’s definition is populated by straw men and aunt sallies.

Foremost amongst these creatures is the positing of the “traditional” working class. Where did this tradition come from? Traditional for whom? Not for generations of socialists or the vast world of thinkers influenced by Karl Marx.

They see class and power as inextricable with ownership of the key economic levers. For them, the working class consists of all those who are excluded from this and are obliged to sell their labour to live. Furthermore, it was always envisaged that the middle classes would be propelled towards their ranks, including teachers, doctors and others.

In a work centred on class, Ainsley has little to say about the ruling class. She refers to the “elite” as 6 per cent of the population but there is little more about them. There is no apparent concept of their role in society or the need to tackle it.

Alongside the ahistorical nature of the bulk of the book, this leads to a failure to grasp how things have actually come about and how they can be changed — radically at least.

She refers to the decline in trade-union membership and restrictive industrial relations laws, without saying why and by whom they were introduced, let alone recommending remedying them.

Again, she proposes a ternary system for post-18s, bringing back technical education and calling several times for greater involvement of employers in running the system. Once more she is apparently unaware of the source and history of the general run-down in education finance.

There is no grasp of governments consistently opting for a low-skills, low productivity economy, supplemented by immigration. Nor is there an appreciation of the motive behind establishing privatised academies. There is no recognition of the destruction of tripartite and bipartite bodies like industrial training boards, along with the decimation of apprenticeships.

Similarly, she refers to zero-hours contracts, unpaid internships and shrinking industrial employment but fails to acknowledge where they derive from.

The key to understanding Ainsley’s contribution is in her assertion of the need to construct a political coalition anew — a call being made by the centre and the right, including the very recent “Labour Together.” This is a call we will hear more and more of.

Her book maintains that “parties must build coalitions in order to win power.” Some will feel this also to be a truism and will ask where the harm in it is. She goes on:

“Today, any party wanting to appeal to the new working class needs to have a first-hand understanding of the demographics, affiliations and identities of the diverse peoples who comprise this large constituency… it cannot be tidied into a convenient identity group.

“Rather, its composite social identities need to be understood and their desire to align with appropriate coalitions of social groupings… there is no going backwards to an era of mass collective identity.”

For socialists, unity of the different elements of the working classes is followed by allying with other strata and groups gathering under its banner because of shared material interests. Ainsley diminishes the working class to less than half of the population, positing it as disparate and conflicted. No other social groupings could have any interest in lining up behind it.

For Ainsley the coalition of social groupings is primary, enabled by a realisation of their “innate moral attitudes” in policy. Material, objective class interest all but disappears and with it, the fundamental importance of the working class. It has no special, let alone key, leading role.

Following Ainsley’s logic, to achieve electoral success the party of Labour must abandon the cause it was founded for. Indeed, it should abandon its name, opting for the Social Groupings Party.

It is to be doubted whether Ainsley believes that the Labour Party doesn’t identify with the working classes out of rectitude or kind-heartedness. It does so because those whose livelihood depends exclusively on working for a wage are the vast majority of the population.

It does so because the working classes are the key to maintaining the fabric of society — clearly seen during the pandemic — with no interest in ruinous billionaire speculation and market manipulation, or in one section of society lording it over another.

Thus, this working class — differently defined to Ainsley’s New Working Class — is the natural champion of the radical change society needs and its cause can be on behalf of all but the tiniest most privileged group. Grasping this is what it means to be the Labour Party.

To summarise Ainsley’s work:

It is not about assessing a way forward for the working classes. The definition it deploys diminishes them, in terms of number, socio-economic importance and power.

It is not about how to pitch policy. The intention is that polls and market research determine policy.

It is not about achieving unity through identifying and overcoming differences and divisions. It spurns unity based on common material interest, in favour of a social patchwork of voters who may share various innate attitudes and values.

It is not about the need of the 94 per cent for radical change, relieving them of crushing burdens.

It is about taking forward the right and centre trends of social democracy in accepting the status quo with piecemeal reform.

It is about hoping to assume government by adopting a collage of policies whose internal logic makes no attempt to deal with the root of the objective problems that afflict society.

And in spite of an enigmatic use of a quote from Marx, it is not a call to organise, mobilise and launch campaigns. A call to canvass during elections is the nearest it would get to that. Because, regardless of its title, there is little that is new in Ainsley’s book: its philosophical inspiration comes from a time before Marx was born.

The roots of its sociology are in the likes of Durkheim, Webber and Mannheim, theorising in the first two decades of the last century — and the inspiration for policy composition is the polling and market research so treasured by Blair and company a quarter of a century ago.

It has neither the analysis nor the vision to engage masses for change. But it does have the ingredients to lead the Labour Party towards definitively turning its back on class politics. The fear has to be that Claire Ainsley has been chosen as Keir Starmer’s director of policy to do precisely that.