Community cohesion and working-class politics: workplace-residence separation and labour support, 1966-1983

One frequently advanced explanation for the mounting electoral difficulties of the British Labour Party in recent years has been 'the decline of cohesive traditional working-class communities'. This paper assesses this explanation by examining the empirical connection between the proximity of homes and workplaces in communities and the level of Labour voting. Regression analysis using census and election data for English constituencies shows that community cohesion significantly affected Labour support in each of the four elections analysed, though not in the direction expected on the basis of contemporary interpretations of Labour's electoral decline. Cohesive communities tended to support Labour less than non-cohesive communities. This effect increased over time. Several alternative explanations for these unexpected findings are considered in the concluding section.