Selina Todd - The People

Notes from Selina Todd's book The People - Rise and Fall of the Working Class

After reading Selina's 'Tastes of Honey' I wanted to read her book on the working-classes throughout 
history I find her writing really informative and it helps to give an overall context to the different events in history. 
I haven't finished it all yet but will update this post with more quotes

Some quotes I found helpful/interesting

Bobbed-Haired Belligerents

‘In China and the East generally,’ he declared, ‘they continued to live under the parental roof quite contentedly.’ Boscawen’s comments illuminated just how remote the working-class voter was from his party’s interests. His suggestion that working-class Britons had less in common with the middle and upper classes of the country than with the native peoples of China and Asia.’ P.37

‘That men were turned out of their jobs by women was a myth – but a very powerful one. The Conservatives were not alone in blaming male unemployment on women workers.’ P.38

‘The Governments Ministry of Reconstruction published this in a short series of pamphlets designed to ease the transition back to civilian life. Middle class women’s ‘health and prosperity’, concluded Ellen Askwith, ‘is of more vital importance to the future of the race than satisfying the demands of a single body of workers.’ Despite the fact that the mass majority of Britons were working-class, this writer and most of the government, presented their interests as marginal and insignificant, it was the middle class whose needs were of ‘vital importance.’ P.39

Enemies Within

Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister of Labour’s short- lived minority administration, admonished the strikers for ‘disloyalty’, and his Cabinet dismissed those responsible as proof of ‘Communist influence’ within the trade union movement. From then on, the trade union leadership would approach Labour leaders with a good deal more caution, realizing that a conflict existed between their members interests and Labour politicians desire to court a wider electorate.’ P.47

Politics at the Palais

‘In 1926 strikers had been represented as anti-democratic. But by the mid-1930’s, as the threat of Fascism and totalitarianism rose across Europe, the energies and aspirations of ordinary workers and consumers increasingly looked like Britain’s best defence against dictatorship.’ P.100

‘On 7 December 1931 those ‘gaping’ women, who Priestley had found so frighteningly apathetic, downed tools and walked out of the factory.’ P.103

‘The workers’ modification of mass production was slight, but nevertheless important.’ P.104

The People’s War

‘The Second World War was the people’s war,’ p.120

‘Most politician’s had little interest in making Britain a more equal society. In fact, their notion of how to win the war was predicated on the assumption that economic inequality was a natural and helpful part of British life’ p. 120

‘But the working class remained just that: a class of workers who depended on earning a living and were in that way distinguished from the rich who lived on the labour of others.’ P.120

‘They did so from a new position of strength: no longer were they caricatured as enemies of the state- as in the General Strike of 1926 – or viewed as helpless victims, like the dole claimants of the 1930’s.’ p.121

‘Mass Observation found that ‘middle-class people were concerned for personal, economic, luxury and independence reasons.’ But many ‘working class people said it wouldn’t make much difference to them anyway.’p.122

‘Ministers/ assumed that the proletariat were bound to crack, run, panic, even go mad, lacking the courage and self-discipline of their masters or those regimented forces.’ P.122