Social Attitudes, Class and Gender (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes
Social Attitudes, Class and Gender
Changing social attitudes and tensions
Britain in the 1950s remained a deeply stratified society. Class divisions were immediately apparent to anyone entering the country, manifesting in numerous visible ways:
- The types of employment people undertook
- The lifestyles they maintained
- The schools their children attended
- The clothing they wore
- The public houses they frequented
- The language, accents, and vocabulary they used
Class and Language
People could be classified by their social position as soon as they spoke. A person's choice between eating 'dinner and tea' or 'lunch and dinner/supper' revealed their class background. Nancy Mitford's 1955 distinction between 'U' (upper-class) and 'non-U' speech, though it may appear quaint or amusing decades later, reflected a genuinely partitioned society at the time.
Even national sport operated along class lines. Cricket divided participants into 'gentlemen' (amateurs) and 'players' (professionals), with the latter referred to only by surnames. Rugby union and rugby league, though appearing similar on the pitch, separated participants and spectators by an enormous social chasm. A lifetime ban might await a union player who ventured into the rival code.
Status consciousness and condescension
Large numbers of people remained acutely conscious of their position in society. Broad social groupings tended to be internally sub-divided, at least in the perception of those within them. Condescension – the patronising attitude of treating others as inferior – characterised interactions between classes. For many working-class people, asserting superiority over those deemed to be of lower status held considerable importance. The temptation to dismiss those considered to be of lower standing as 'common' proved uncomfortably strong.
The Middle-Class Paradox
Census data suggested that around 28% of the population belonged to the middle class, yet surveys from the same period asking individuals to categorise themselves produced figures of 40% or higher. One housewife explained the discrepancy by suggesting that the middle classes' chief value lay in providing a standard of living which the working class could aspire to emulate.
The question of social change
No society remains entirely static. However, except during the most turbulent periods, change tends to be incremental and evolutionary, often barely perceptible. Social analysis involves generalisation on a massive scale. While individuals not following a perceived overall trend can be numbered in millions, much can be learned from examining broad patterns.
Historical Perspective: A Frozen Society
Historian David Kynaston judged that British society was frozen during the decade after 1945. Most people, following the disruption of war, experienced an instinctive retreat to familiar ways, familiar rituals, and familiar relations within the context of slowly lifting austerity and uncomfortably limited material resources. The subtext of this assessment is that factors bringing about substantial change in society later in the decade – such as the emergence of recognisable youth culture and mass migration from the Commonwealth, alongside higher disposable incomes – did not profoundly impact early-1950s Britain. The later 1950s should be seen as a springboard for the altogether more dynamic decade that followed.
Daily life and leisure
The majority of the male population worked long hours in British industry. Women were still seen, and largely saw themselves, as 'homemakers'. For leisure, men usually drank in pubs, and more women now did the same without the social stigma that would have been attached before the War. The cinema, though past its heyday, remained popular.
The young still flocked to dance halls, at least before marriage. A bet on a horse offered a moment of excitement to many mundane lives, though bookmakers' shops remained illegal. A weekly flutter on the football pools offered a safer option. A weekend might be enlivened by a place on the terrace for a man, perhaps with his son, to support the local football team. Those whose wages were sufficient for a small weekly sum to be put away could reap the benefit with an annual week or fortnight's family holiday at the seaside. These patterns suggest a simpler, less sophisticated lifestyle than has since become the norm.
Class and the Establishment
Britain's divided society remained overtly hierarchical and often deferential. At the top stood the monarchy, deeply respected by most, especially while its private activities remained better protected from public scrutiny than in later decades. A BBC survey discovered that 59% of the population objected to the corporation's cancellation of scheduled programmes during the ten days of mourning following George VI's death in 1952.
Beneath the monarchy, people began to identify from the mid-1950s onwards an 'Establishment' – a group whose precise identity was unclear but which consisted of what might later be called 'the great and the good'. This grouping included:
- Leading politicians and churchmen
- Landowners and aristocrats
- Heads of prominent cultural organisations
- Captains of industry
- Bosses of major financial institutions
The Self-Perpetuating Elite
Here existed a sort of self-perpetuating ruling elite – 'invisible' but 'ubiquitous', according to Reginald Bevins, a Conservative minister of humble origins. This elite was sustained by a largely unseen network of family and social relationships. Underpinning it was the British educational system, or rather its exclusive peak. An astonishingly high percentage of the Establishment were products of the leading public schools and the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Changing attitudes in the early 1960s
By the early 1960s, attitudes towards the Establishment began to shift. Hostility grew towards a system that seemed to resist penetration by outsiders and which valued the talented amateur at the expense of the more accomplished newcomer who lacked the necessary background and upbringing.
The Meritocracy Question
Was it genuinely the case that an Oxbridge 'first' in 'Greats' (classics) was ideally equipped to take up the reins of government or industry, rather than pontificate on knotty problems of ancient Greek? It took money rather than brains to get into Eton, yet this seemed no barrier to a future exalted position in the City or civil service. Was not the answer a genuine meritocracy, in which people advanced on the basis of ability and nothing else?
This changing attitude towards the Establishment fed into the growing contemporary feeling of the early 1960s that there was something fundamentally wrong about Britain and the way it was governed. The increasing criticism formed part of an insistent agenda at this time.
Harold Wilson, elected Labour leader in 1963, possessed such instant appeal partly because of his background. Here was a man from relatively humble origins in Huddersfield who, in contrast to Macmillan and Douglas-Home, was not part of the Establishment but a true meritocrat. In cultivating a working-class image, the pipe-smoking Wilson (in private he preferred cigars) went out of his way to conceal the powerful intellect of one who had been an Oxford economics don before the War.
Position of women
If Britain was a deeply divided society in the 1950s, those divisions looked unlikely to translate into serious unrest or conflict. Most people seemed reasonably content with their situation as part of the natural order of things. Attitudes remained fundamentally 'conservative'. Despite several 'causes célèbres', this was a country that still sanctioned the death penalty and criminalised homosexuality.
Conservative Social Attitudes
Nothing testifies better to the essentially conservative nature of British society than the continuing subordinate status of women. The War had acted as a catalyst for substantial social change. Out of sheer necessity, women took on many roles previously regarded as preserves of the male workforce. Yet concentration on what happened between 1939 and 1945 obscures the extent to which social and cultural life reverted to pre-war patterns once the struggle against Hitler was won.
Domestic roles and expectations
According to Evelyn Horne, the much-read agony aunt of Woman magazine, 'most women, once they have a family, are more contented and doing better work in the home than they could find outside it'. Average female wages were less than two-thirds those of men – less surprising than the fact that this disparity was widely held, not least by women themselves, to be right and proper.
The 'Pin-Money' Perception
Women worked for 'pin-money', to enable the household to afford the 'little luxuries' that made life more agreeable. Yet it was indubitably a man's responsibility to provide for his family.
Writing in 1955, one as yet unmarried correspondent to Woman's Own voiced the contentment which many of her sex found in a life of domesticity: 'If a man cannot support a wife, he doesn't deserve one. I don't mind cooking, sewing and cleaning for him – so long as the place he asks me to do it in isn't too old and won't cost him, too.'
Women in the workforce
Between 1951 and 1961 the percentage of women in the workforce did rise, but only from 26% to 35%. The Victorian notion of 'separate spheres' remained strong. Very few women made it into senior positions in industry, commerce, politics, or the civil service. Women MPs, particularly in the Conservative Party, comprised a tiny minority.
Barriers to Women in Politics: Margaret Thatcher
The young Margaret Thatcher, turned down as candidate for the safe Conservative seat of Orpington, largely because the local party doubted whether she could look after two young children and stand for election, concluded that her political ambitions should be put on hold for several years.
This example illustrates the pervasive assumption that women could not balance family responsibilities with professional careers, even in cases where exceptional talent was evident.
A Mass Observation survey in 1957 found that a large majority of working-class men opposed the idea of married women going out to work, with the simple maxim that 'a woman's place is in the home' the most frequent explanation of their point of view.
Voices from the past: Anthony Sampson
Anthony Sampson's influential book Anatomy of Britain (1962) sought to dissect and understand the country's ruling elite, producing a damning verdict:
Briefly it is that the old privileged values of aristocracy, public schools and Oxbridge which still dominate government today have failed to provide the stimulus, the purposive policies and the keen eye on the future which Britain is looking for, and must have... The old fabric of the British governing class, while keeping its social and political hold, has failed to accommodate or analyse the vast forces of science, education or social change which (whether they like it or not) are changing the face of the country.
Sampson's critique linked the country's educational system directly to its social structure. He argued that the dominance of aristocratic values, public schools, and Oxbridge institutions prevented Britain from developing the forward-looking policies and adaptability required for modern governance. His analysis suggested that this self-perpetuating elite, though maintaining its position, had failed to engage meaningfully with the forces of science, education, and social change transforming the country.
Key Points to Remember:
- Britain remained deeply stratified by class, with divisions visible in employment, lifestyle, language, and leisure activities. Status consciousness and condescension characterised social interactions.
- The Establishment – a self-perpetuating elite of politicians, aristocrats, industrialists, and financiers sustained by public school and Oxbridge education – dominated British society, though criticism grew in the early 1960s.
- Women occupied a subordinate position, with wages less than two-thirds of men's, low workforce participation (26-35%), and strong expectations to prioritise domestic roles over careers.
- Contemporary observers like David Kynaston and Anthony Sampson argued that British society was 'frozen' in traditional patterns, with the old privileged elite failing to adapt to modern forces of change.