I have tried to analyse the class, education and social background of members of the newly elected House of Commons by going through the potted biographies contained in the Times supplement on the election. Perhaps readers of The Week will be interested in my findings. Straight away, the point needs to be made that these figures are very rough - the potted biographies varied greatly in the amount of detailed information they gave. In addition they were somewhat selective. In all cases it is fair to assume that my figures are underestimates (in a few cases gross underestimates). Immediately one is struck by the difference in class structure between the Tories and Liberals on the one side, and Labour on the others 76 Tories are listed as comprny directors (this refers to their main means of making their living - a very, very much higher figure will be, among other things company directors), 40 Tories are listed as landowmers or farmers, and another 30 odd are listed as verious types of businessmen, 3 of the 9 Liberals are down as land2wmers and farmers, whilst 3 Labour also came under this category. On the other hand a large proportion of the Labour ranks had been or were manual workers = the biggest group being just under 30 minf¥s ~str angely enough there were no Tory or Liberal miners!
But it is when one comes to education background that the clearest differences emerge: no less than 677 Tory MPs went to Etong again in proportion. the Liberals show the same kind of background - 2 0f their 9 being old Etonians. Labour scores 2 on this front. Harrow provided the Tories with 17 MPs, Winchester with 11 (2 Labour went to Gaitskell's old school, and are both in the Government: Crossman and Jay), in contrast LSE gave Labour 14 MPs but the Tories only 1. 17 Lebour MPs had the NCLC listed as part of their educational backgrounds 6,Ruskin; 3,Co-op Colleges; and 2,Fircroft. Yale helped in the educatiion of 6 Tories and 3 Lebour. In the field of education it is interesting that Labour was overwhelmingly in front when it came to teachers ,24 listing their profession as teaching, whilst the Tories had 2, and Liberals only 1. Four Tories were privately educated, in contra*t to one each Liberal and Labour. (12 Labour were listed as university lecturers but none for the other parties. 3 Tory MPs are liverymen in the City, and another 10 are connected with Lloyds. Among Labour MPs there are 17 Fabians (maybe more), 2 ex-chairmen of NALSO and one Catholic Knight.
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