ELITES IN THE BRITISH CLASS STRUCTURE.

Over the past two decades, sociologists in this country have given a great deal of attention to studies of the manual working class, and to the 'new' middle class, but they have paid less heed to the upper echelons of the class structure. In the first place, on the general level, the study of social class has always been closely linked to the analysis of 'power' or 'domination'; and this is an area which can hardly be adequately understood if only one side of the coin is examined the 'subordinate' classes. Secondly, and more specifically, the fate of the British 'ruling class' is of special significance historically and sociologically, since Great Britain was the 'cradle of the Industrial Revolution', and the first 'industrial society' the world has known. This supposed transformation is usually portrayed as part of a generalized process of `decomposition' of class relationships as they existed in nineteenth century capitalism. One pole of this argument concerns the lower levels of the class structure, whereby the `traditional' working class is presumed to have become internally fragmented or diversified, and the boundaries separating it from the white collar `middle class' blurred or dissolved altogether.