Voters are moving away from class categorisation in greater numbers

“OVER the last 50 years Labour has changed either by accident or as I personally believe by design” says the ever-engaging correspondent David J Crawford (Letters, July 14). However it is not so much Labour that has changed as the labour force.

In post-industrial Scotland the major shift in the objective character of the workforce in our society has seen the Labour Party staggering around in search of its old certainties of blue-collar working-class solidarity when the society has moved on and left Labour without a constituency.

The figures in Scotland are quite startling, with more than 300,000 in self-employment and 690,00 in parttime work – that is, 40 per cent of all workers (STUC figures.)

Against this backdrop, Labour has been unwilling/unable to discover a new “socialism”; a fresh ethos reflecting the objective change in labour. Instead Tony Blair went in search of the new intermediate “white-van man” or “Sun man” offering instead of social justice a New Labour ethos of “neo-liberal personal opportunity”. Now Jeremy Corbyn is harking back to auld “clothcap” working-class socialism.

What we have objectively is a highly plural, shifting (zero-contract, part-time, casual, self-employed, freelance, cash-in-hand, piece-work, contract-labour, fee-based, salesearning, commission-based, homebased work, consultancy work, agency work) labour force creating a highly plural post-class society. And they don’t vote Labour.

Thus we have seen the rise of postclass-based parties such as the Greens, as well as multi-class empowering parties like the SNP and community political movements of autonomous radicals like RISE.

It is the objective change in postindustrial labour relations that has created the surge towards these multistrata parties. No longer will we see 60 per cent of the working class defined as manual workers or 50 per cent voting Labour or mass-based trade unions. Instead we see Labour crumbling to around 30 per cent in the popular vote and trade unions with less than 60 per cent of their 1940s-50s figures.

What has replaced traditional left class-based forces are groups/ communities, social-media activists, radicalised by education and angered by social deprivation, “unfairness” and a search for sovereignty built around shared community issues who don’t need or want “auld” Labour. Thom Cross, 18 Needle Green, Carluke.