The Higher Education of the UK's Political Elite (1964-2015): a Bourdieusian Prosopographical Study

Abstract

This dissertation draws on published memoirs, autobiographies, biographies and other sources to explore the higher educational experiences of people who served in UK cabinets and shadow cabinets between 1964 and 2015 and some of their contemporaries. It applies and seeks to contribute to thinking on elite formation associated with Pierre Bourdieu - in particular his work on habitus and capital. It further seeks to explain why graduates of Oxford and Cambridge were so heavily represented at senior levels in the field of parliamentary politics throughout this period, comprising 54% of the political elite and 62% of its graduate population. The thesis argues that Bourdieu’s analytical framework provides as useful and valid a means of analysing elite education in the UK as it does in France, despite the very considerable institutional differences between our established systems. It does not, however, provide a complete explanation of why some individuals are more successful than others at reaching elite positions in the political field. This is because Bourdieu only took account of sociological factors in his work, downplaying or ignoring the significance of those which are psychological or biological in nature. On the question of disproportionate representation of Oxbridge graduates among the UK political elite, the thesis concludes that this can be explained to a considerable extent by the opportunities that have been available at Oxford and Cambridge for undergraduates to engage in confidence-building activities and to accumulate non-financial forms of capital while also imbibing field-specific forms of habitus. While similar opportunities were provided at most universities during the Twentieth Century, they tended to be somewhat richer and more plentiful at Oxford and Cambridge.