Skilled Workers in the Class Structure Author:Roger Penn This book reinterprets the British class structure and its evolution since the mid-nineteenth century. It provides a detailed empirical study of the growth of trade unions, and development of earnings differentials and patterns of class inter-marriage during this period, and uses this material to reassess theoretical questions of class conscious... more »ness, the notion of the 'traditional working class', and the ideas of a 'labour aristocracy'. A particular feature is that this book is part of the development of a mode of sociological analysis intended to be compatible with contemporary economics. The book's primary focus is on the relationship between skilled and non-skilled manual workers. It suggests that an internal division of the manual working class on the basis of skill has been a persistent feature of economic relations throughout the last hundred years. It goes on to show, however, by the extensive analysis of inter marriage, that this economic division has not been translated into equivalent social boundaries.« less