New class divide

Surely, Jim Fairlie (Letters, 27 October) must accept that no political party appealing to a single socio-economic group would be electable.

Over almost five decades the social process called “embourgeoisement” has been as inexorable as globalisation.

Blue-collar workers’ jobs have been replaced by white collar employment as traditional industries declined or indeed disappeared.

Today former “working class” people enjoy “middle class” life-styles and have shed collective values for individualism.

Isn’t it as if the socio-
economic structure is no longer a pyramid but more resembles a diamond shape? At the top there is the elite; at the bottom a relatively deprived group but a large group in the middle.

Noticeably, this has resulted in a loss of class-consciousness, workers’ solidarity and trade 
unionism.

Arguably the SNP, like New Labour, became electable because it overtly appealed to the “new middle classes”.

Ellis Thorpe

Old Chapel Walk

Inverurie