ABSTRACT
That Scotland is a class society would seem to be unarguable. After all, social class has underpinned most of the popular political movements of the past hundred years: Scotland's history can largely be written in terms of class con¯ict and class politics. In the ®rst half of the twentieth century, the political milestones of `Red Clydeside' around the Great War, the events of the General Strike in 1926 and the Labour landslide of 1945 were matched by class struggle on the Clyde in the 1970s, labour resistance to Thatcherism in the 1980s and Labour's disproportionate success north of the border in the ®nal quarter of the century. If Scotland was stony ground for the New Right in the 1980s and 1990s, most would explain that in terms of a quite different sort of class politics than south of the border. In similar vein, Scotland has always seemed to generate disproportionate support for socialist parties and movements, for the communists and Independent Labour Party, and in the 1999 Scottish Parliament for the Scottish Socialist Party. Scotland was not only con®gured by class con¯ict, but some even spoke of the country as a class in and of itself.
