Background
Although the Labour Party is sometimes considered the "natural choice" for the working class, there has traditionally been a group within that class who have voted Conservative, who are distinct from the "Essex man" phenomenon.
After World War II, there was considerable social change in south-east England. Working-class families were encouraged to leave the war-damaged slums in inner London and move to newly built council-owned properties in the suburbs and "new towns" in the home counties, including Basildon and Harlow in Essex.
With the decline of manufacture and skilled manual work in the 1980s, this group increasingly looked to middle-class professions for employment or became self-employed. Their children enjoyed housing, education and employment opportunities far removed from the experiences of their parents.
Read more about this topic: Essex Man
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)