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Lead book review

Our leaders have betrayed the noble worker. Oh really?

A review of Selina Todd’s ‘The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910–2010’. The working class may disappoint radicals, says Alan Johnson, but that doesn't mean their best days are over

12 April 2014

9:00 AM

12 April 2014

9:00 AM

The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910–2010 Selina Todd

John Murray, pp.295, £20, ISBN: 9781848548817

In his essay on the ‘Peculiarities of the English’, E.P. Thompson gave his theoretical definition of class:

When we speak of a class we are thinking of a very loosely defined body of people who share the same congeries of interests, social experiences, traditions and value-system, who have a disposition to behave as a class, to define themselves in their actions and in their consciousness in relation to other groups of people in class ways.

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