Towards a Classless Society? (Hardcover)

In recent years, the Right has made all the running in the debate over class with its rhetoric of a classless society coupled with the notion of an underclass; it was not always so. The issue of class has been a long-standing tool of analysis for social commentators and historians of all shades of opinion, as well as an inspiration for fundamental social change. By covering young people and their poverty, health, education and training, homelessness, youth crime and young single mothers, this book underlines the role played by the labour market in influencing an individual's life chances, and the way in which labour market position is closely linked to class position. This book provides an alternative to the right-wing paradigm which has highjacked discussions of class; and by focusing on the specific ways in which class inequalities manifest themselves in 1990s Britain, it exposes the hollowness of politicians' rhetoric over the classless society.