It has appeared to many commentators that the most fundamental change in what it is meant to be working-class in twentieth-century Britain came not as a result of war or of want, but of prosperity. Social investigators documented how the relative affluence of the 1950s and 1960s improved the material conditions of life for working-class Britons whilst eroding their commitment to the shared life of traditional communities.

Utilising an oral history case study of sociability and identity in the Yorkshire town of Beverley between the end of the Second World War and the election...