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Affluent Workers Revisited, Revisited. Radio Broadcast, BBC Radio 4 (Social History Feature), Tuesday 23rd February 2010

‘Affluent Workers Revisited, Revisited’ was conceived, researched and written by producer Sally Harrison in collaboration with presenter Sarfraz Manzoor and sociologist Prof. Fiona Devine. Harrison had developed an interest while an undergraduate student in the Goldthorpe study of car workers (‘Affluent Workers’, Goldthorpe) in the 1960’s and Fiona Devine’s subsequent study of a similar Luton-based sample in the 1980s.  Harrison approached, the now Professor, Devine ahead of a Radio 4 commissioning round and the proposal for the programme was agreed, pitched and commissioned.  In the programme, Luton-born Sarfraz Manzoor explores his home town as a subject of sociological fascination with Professor Fiona Devine, who studied the town's workers during the late 1980s. In the 1960s sociologists surveyed a sample of 'affluent workers' in Luton at Vauxhall Cars, Skefco Engineering and Laporte Chemicals. Luton was, at this time, a boom-town with the car industry being the dominant manufacturer. By the time Fiona Devine, revisited Luton in the 1980s, the place and the people were struggling in the economic decline of that decade and the car industry was half its size. More than 20 years further on, Harrison and her collaborators found that Luton had become a very different place, no longer affluent and no longer as reliant on the motor industry.  As to the affluent workers of past studies, many had long since retired and the programme explored what had become of their children.