ABSTRACT
The point of class analysis, we have insisted, is to be able to show how social classes form as stable social collectivities and hence help cause historical change. In this chapter we examine the relationship between middle-class formation and political alignments in contemporary Britain. It is therefore the centrepiece of our argument - the chapter the other chapters have been leading to. But as we have seen earlier, there are differing tendencies at work affecting middle-class formation: some fragmenting the middle classes, others unifying them. Class formation is a fluid process and the way in which political alignments are based in class divisions is always complex, testifying to the variety of causal processes and contextual conditions at work.
