ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 we saw that Bachrach and Baratz (1970), writing in a US context, stress the domination of WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) in setting the agenda of US politics. In Britain we could perhaps go further and suggest that the ‘chattering classes’ who dominate politics, the media, academic and professional life, and the Civil Service, are predominantly still London-resident public school/Oxford or Cambridge arts graduates and the like. What such people define as urgent problems are not necessarily the same as what ordinary people, who left school at the minimum leaving age,
are employed in manual jobs (or are unemployed) and live in Lancashire or Scotland, see as in the same category.
