ABSTRACT
In the 1980s and 1990s great debate has raged among historians about whether class, and particularly class identities, based on convictions that the interests of different classes were in conflict, have been the dominant form of social consciousness in Britain. Postmodernist and poststructuralist forms of social analysis and the 'linguistic turn' in historical studies have underplayed the significance of class identities and suggested that other forms of consciousness, such as nation, gender, ethnicity and religion, have been more powerful in shaping perceptions of the social order.1 In contemporary Britain class has been pronounced dead, but by no means all historians have accepted that class should be discarded as the dominant narrative of English social history.2 The term 'class' figured prominently in discourses surrounding social relations in England between the wars and was used readily by very many to describe their identity and status and those of others, though subscribing to the notion of a society stratified on the basis of class may not have been accompanied by beliefs that the interests of different classes were in conflict.
