For most normal people with busy lives, the phrases “ABC1” and “C2DE” are entirely meaningless. Bring them up in conversation, and it’s as likely that people will assume that they’re friends of R2D2 from the Star Wars franchise as understand what you are talking about.
ABC1 and C2DE are in fact categories of social class and household income used in marketing and advertising, as well as in opinion polls, in order to differentiate people according to wealth, education, and general social class. As a simple guide, the closer to “A” you are, the wealthier and better educated and more well off you are. The closer to “E”, the more likely you are to live in a council house and describe yourself as unemployed.
There’s a third category as well, generally used in Ireland: “F”, which stands for farmers and generally refers to people of a rural, agricultural background.
I mention all of this because this weekend’s Irish Times opinion poll figures on immigration made entirely clear what a lot of us might have suspected: That there’s a significant wealth and social class gap when it comes to attitudes to immigration and the impact of immigration in Ireland.
When asked, for example, whether “immigration has been a net positive for Ireland”, the overall national result was a “yes”: 48% of people said it was a positive, just 35% said it was a negative. Break that figure down by social class, though, and the results are stark: The majority for “positive” is derived from overwhelming positivity from the richest people in Ireland: fully 59% of the ABC1s said immigration is a net positive, with only 28% saying negative.
When you ask the same question of poorer people and farmers, the answer is very different: In both cases, 43% of people say that Immigration has been a net negative, with only 37% in the C2DEs and 34% in the Farmers group saying “positive”.
The gulf is also clear when it comes to current immigration policy: While all three groups want a “more closed” immigration policy (that is, fewer immigrants) the numbers asking for a “more open” immigration policy (that is, more immigrants) show that support for that position comes overwhelmingly from the most well-off: More than twice as many ABC1s want a “more open” immigration policy than in any other group.
Interestingly, social class and wealth is really the only measurement where we see real differences between groups based on demographics. Attitudes towards immigration are pretty consistent across age, sex (women are marginally more anti-immigration) and geography (though people in Connaught and Ulster are marginally more anti-immigration, which probably reflects a poorer and more rural population).
This data is highly relevant for a simple reason: The institutions of Irish society, naturally enough, are dominated by people who were either born into or who have achieved ABC1 status. In politics, the media, law, NGOs, academia, and even the churches, elevated positions correspond with higher social class and income, and these factors, as the poll shows, meaningfully shift social attitudes to immigration to the left.
One might speculate on the reasons for that: It’s probably true that the wealthier you are, the more positive your experience of immigration will be. From the tired (but entirely true) old joke that there are few asylum centres in Dublin 4 to the equally tired but also entirely true old observation that Au Pairs tend to come from overseas, and many migrants make excellent lattes in your favourite coffee shop. For poorer people and those in rural areas, their experiences are simply much more likely to correspond with unwanted migrant centres, and perhaps crime and anti-social behaviour.
These figures are not unique to Ireland: Across the western world the pattern is almost identical. The poorer and more deprived you are, the worse your self-reported experience of immigration and its impacts on you will be. The wealthier you are, the better it will be.
This is why immigration has become such a vexed issue for parties of the left that traditionally represented the poorer people in society. Look no further than Sinn Fein: In this poll, by an enormous margin, its voters are the most anti-immigration of all the parties. That is almost entirely because its supporters are also the poorest and most deprived of all the big parties.
But at the same time, Sinn Fein operates in a world of ABC1s: Its TDs earn high wages. It interacts daily with privileged journalists and well-heeled lobbyists and answers questions in interviews from people whose default assumptions are those of an ABC1. It is trying, and thus far failing, to ride two horses.
In the old days, class war and class divides were almost entirely the province of the left. Across the western world, immigration is changing that wholesale: Donald Trump (whomever his opponent might be) will win many more votes this November from the poorest Americans than he will from the richest. Brexit was based on a rebellion in the North of England – the poorest and most deprived areas, which also gave Boris Johnson a stonking majority in 2019. In France and Germany, the Front Nationale and the Allianz fur Deutschland both win most of their votes in the poorest areas.
The class war, as such, is now being fought on immigration. Which is ironic, because for all the left talk about “privilege”, their attitudes on core issues are increasingly those of the privileged, not the deprived.
Loading ...
Good piece though it is a stretch to say Sinn Fein represent the poor. They don’t. The poor are their passport to the trough and nothing more.
Allied to your article is that the ABCs call the shots and they have few with fair and open minds. Kevin Myers, to take but one example, had his career destroyed because he was open to criticizing the government’s hara Kiri policies. You had a recent article on Desmond Fennell and John Waters is still in our ether. None of those would now have a hope in hell of getting a column into the Irish Times, whose columnists refused point boa k to truthfully report the impact the Roma”s execution of Ashling Murphy had on those who loved her (as she had loved them).
“Woking class” – just drop the “r” from the familiar, established term – and you have the term for large numbers of those who reside in South Dublin (where I “hang out” – and – given the dangerous stridency of such people – where I could be soon be found, literally, “hanging” from some tree or other !).
Don’t worry about being hanged – your more likely to mown down by a hit squad of Lycra wearing cyclists!!
Yeah, as good ole chopper said – they wouldn’t knock the froth off a cappuccino.
One thing we don’t need to worry about with these limp wristers is them physically harming us to any great degree. They might get us fired from jobs or otherwise deny us a voice but when they going gets tough they’ll be hiding under the bed
This actually confirmed my suspicion that mostly well off toffs who live in d4, dun Laoighre and other such places read the times who would not be affected by the diversity and inclusion plandemic. It also confirms that it’s their readership are dictating the polls. I do find it interesting that the government are bring in class division and racial hatred to distract the masses with the help of the likes of the Irish Times. It also shows with the breakdown that their readership is not a true representation of the country. Nice article John.
Irelands corrupted shill Media controls the narrative,by manipulation of opinion and management of perception.
It can alter reality in a certain demographic which by material privilege is protected from the realities of the world ,as in the rarified Lattefratti perfumed air of D4.
But in working class areas swamped with fake asylum seekers and fake refugees, the Irish working class suffer the assaults ,thefts, rapes, and reality is a raw lived experience of insecurity and fear.
Not anymore bud, most people think the MSM are full of inversion and projection. Dublin might be the golden calf but the rest of the country won’t tolerate another fffgg government and we are the majority, not the dubs. There next trick was to bring in Sinn Fein but alas, people won’t put up with those globalists either. There are going to be record numbers voting this time and if another kakistocracy gets in, I would not like to be them, even the black n tans won’t be able to help them.
The use of Power is to remain in Power. FF/FG control the Electoral Process and appont all the personnel and security of ballot boxes. They will not give uo their Power and privileges without a figth and wikk use every trick in the book.
They have a trapped constituency in the 33,000 NGO sector ,the Civil service and can easily expand the Electoral Register with the fake asylum .refugee hordes,to outnumber the native Irish electorate.
I Question why after 100 years they appoint an Election Commission,whose remit has not included the oversight of the Electoral Register
This is something we are going to have to plan for and work out how to deal with. I’ve no doubt they’ll mess with ballot boxes. On the other hand, they could unleash a whirlwind they can’t control if people think an election has been rigged
If you believe a mainstream ‘poll’ that says that 48% overall say that immigration has been a net positive for Eire then I’d have to suggest that you’re a card-carrying member of the comatose collective. It’s panic-propaganda and anyone who lives in the real world knows it’s nonsense.
I would think it’s fairly accurate.
What is more striking is that in the face of 25 years of relentless propaganda from all Dail political parties, media printed and electronic. business leaders, NGOs, trade unions, churches, universities, sporting organizations (e.g Bohemian FC) a full 35% of people Galileo-like are steadfast in saying NO.
I’m surprised (but moreso pleased) to see that views on immigration vary little between the two genders.
The term ‘luxury beliefs’ is due a comeback. Not enough juice was squeezed out of it. I also want to help popularise another phrase: ‘celebration parallax‘. This is when the response to a statement is dependent entirely on who said it. For example, John McGuirk dares to point out ‘a record amount of asylum seekers came to Ireland this year’ and the reaction is ‘boo, hiss! Bigot!’ Some regime darling says the same thing, and the reaction might be ‘yaaas. Slay Kween!’
Very true. McEntee’s recent murmurings would have been written off as far-right last year when ordinary people were saying the same thing
Yes the class divide on immigration is between those who own property and those who dont. By “property” I mean those who have built up a portfolio, who own a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and more houses apart from their family home. These people are loving immigration and want more of it — and why wouldn’t they when it is driving up the price of property and massively inflating rent. The more immigrants that enter the country the richer they get.
On the other hand, those who merely own their family home and those who are not property owners are hit with all the negative impacts of uncontrolled immigration. Some single unit property owners (lower middle class) will have a positive attitude will have a positive attitude towards immigration if they are in a position to rent out a room and are getting the 800 euro per month windfall for housing Ukaranians , But everyone else who has nothing to gain from it financially and indeed have everything to lose such as the increased demand places on rental pressures and that further contributing to a rise in the cost of living as well as anti social behaviour and the alienation Irish people in some communities are feeling as the character and structure and social cohesion of their towns and villages are being ruptured by the sudden and too high an influx of foreign people into there hithero settled communities.