U

The idea of an underclass, which has entered sociology theory from the USA, is a politically charged and controversial concept. If it has a valid application even in the USA, its application in the United Kingdom is even more problematic. An underclass is not just another class, at the bottom of the class hierarchy; it is not simply like the working class but even less affluent. Rather, an underclass is seen as almost outside the usual institutions and mechanisms of society, cut off from the working class almost as much as from the middle class. An underclass is defined by a multiplicity of indicators, involving a breakdown of normal relations to society. For example, permanent and intergenerationally inherited unemployment is a crucial part of the definition. Anyone can become unemployed; some are unemployed for very long periods, and if unemployment strikes when one is old enough, it may be unlikely that one will succeed in ever getting a job again. Such unemployment is, of course, much more common the further down a class hierarchy one is. But unemployment of an underclass is different. The second generation of an underclass probably has never had, and can never expect to have, a job; he or she comes from a family unit where possibly no one has ever worked in their own life experience. Welfare is the expected and permanent source of income. Education is minimal, with no parental expectations of it being taken seriously, or having any useful function in life. The family structure itself is negligibleÐalmost inevitably a (female) one-parent family background, probably with several half-siblings, with the fathers all absent and having played no part in one's life. The consequences of all these factors, along with the inevitable deep poverty are to produce a class of people with no emotional or ideological commitment to society, with no sense of a valid role, with no expectations of mutuality of duties and rights, emotionally incapable of self-organization and efforts at `betterment', either for the individual or the group. This is an ideal stereotype, naturally. Any particular individual of the

underclass may lack some of the aforementioned characteristics. Similarly some characteristics, particularly bad employment histories, may be experienced by people who, none the less, occupy more traditional and socially

integrated class locations. The concept is criticized both theoretically and empirically, but it has a certain robustness so that it continues to be taken seriously even by those sociologists who denounce it. At core, it is based on the urban black experience in the USA and translates badly to the UK andWestern Europe. In part the theoretical problem is that it is too early to be sure whether such a phenomenon has developed, because it depends largely on the inheritance over generations of these characteristics, and outside of the USA there has not been time for a second generation to mature and risk passing on its own inheritance. (See also Welfarism.)

Unilateralism is the removal by one side in a potential armed conflict of an entire class, or at least a significant proportion of one, of weapons, whether of not any other country agrees to do so. It first came to prominence in the British anti-nuclear movement of the 1950s, led by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) after its foundation in 1958, which had the specific objective of persuading the government of the United Kingdom to abandon all of its nuclear weapons, irrespective of the actions of other countries (see pressure groups). During the late 1950s and early 1960s CND attracted considerable mass support for its unilateralist campaign, as was especially demonstrated during its annual symbolic march from the town of Aldermaston (the site of the nuclear weapons research establishment) to London. It also attracted politically important support from within the Labour Party and certain trade unions. The Labour Party adopted a motion advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament in 1960, but has always veered away from unilateralism when in government. CND and unilateralism experienced a revival of support during the late 1970s and 1980s, initially associated with the decision to base US ground-launched cruise missiles on British soil. This class of missile was multilaterally abandoned under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987, but the public opposition to the missiles in the UK and other Western European countries was of less significance here than the new impetus to general disarmament which accompanied the Gorbachev era in the Soviet Union. The unilateralist position is not, in principle, restricted to nuclear weapons.

Clearly any fully-fledged pacifist, who holds that it is wrong in any and all circumstances to use force, would logically be required to be in favour of total unilateral disarmament. British advocates of disarmament in the 1930s had also used the term, but not in such a strictly pacifist sense.What makes unilateralism special is that it is not necessary to be pacifist to adopt it, and many unilateralists insist that they support at least the current, and possibly a considerably increased, level of defence spending on conventional arms. The arguments

of unilateralism are diverse, as is the motivation of its supporters. They break down roughly into two aspects. The first, more often prominent in the 1950s than in the later period, is that it is wrong in general to use weapons of such power, and which can only cause massive destruction to non-combatants. The second is that the proliferation of nuclear weaponry makes all-out nuclear war more rather than less likely. It is thus held that abandoning Britain's nuclear weapons is, among other things, a policy most likely to protect the UK from attack. It was further argued, in this direction, that abandoning nuclear weaponry and removing US nuclear forces from UK territory would ensure that the `enemy', traditionally the Soviet Union, had no reason to use similar weapons on the UK. As such the unilateralist argument essentially conflicts with the general deterrence theory behind much nuclear strategy. There is no doubt that the unilateralist argument commanded considerable public support up to the mid-1980s. It was again the official policy of the British Labour Party for most of the 1980s. However, there was at least equally strong opposition to unilateralism, and its place in the Labour manifestos for the 1983 and 1987 general elections undoubtedly contributed to the party's heavy defeats. There was substantial sympathy for unilateralism in other parts of the political spectrum, especially the Liberal (now Liberal Democrat) Party, whose leaders, however, prevented unilateralism ever becoming official policy. The arguments for unilateralism have now become much weaker with the end of any serious nuclear threat from the successors to the Soviet Union. In fact, the nuclear threat is now widely perceived to be from minor powers desperate enough to try to blackmail a country like the UK. Here the argument for a credible deterrent may, in fact, be stronger than it ever was against the vastly more powerful Soviet bloc. It is noteworthy that by 2002 both the USA and the UK found it worthwhile explicitly to state that they would have no hesitation in using nuclear weapons against such a state, though the British Secretary of State for Defence went on, curiously, to state that he was not at all sure this threat would work as a deterrent.