Gown

Gown (pronounced goun) 

(1) A type of woman's dress or robe, especially one full-length and worn on formal occasions and often styled as “evening gown” or “ball gown”.

(2) As nightgown, a loose fitting garment worn by sleeping (historically by both men & women but now most associated with the latter); the shortened for is “nightie”.

(3) As surgical gown, a light, protective garment worn in hospitals by medical staff, a specialized form of which is the isolation gown.

(4) As dressing gown (also call bathrobe), a garment in the form of an open robe secured by a tie and often worn over pajamas, after a bath and prior to dressing or on other occasions where there’s no immediate need to dress.

(5) A loose, flowing outer garment in various forms, worn to denote an office held, profession practiced or as an indication of rank or status, most associated with formal academic dress (sometimes in the phrase “cap & gown”).

(6) Those who work or study at a university as opposed to the other residents of the university town, expressed in the phrase “town & gown”.

(7) Historically, the dress of civil, as opposed to military officers.

(8) To supply with or dress in a gown.

1300-1350: From Middle English goune & gowne, from Anglo-Norman gune & goune (fur-trimmed coat, pelisse), from the Old French goune (robe, coat; nun's habit), from the Late Latin gunna (a garment of fur or leather), from the Ancient Greek γούνα (goúna) (coarse garment), of unknown origin but may be from a Balkan or Apennine language where it seems to have been used as early as the eighth century to describe a fur (or fur-lined), cloak-like garment worn by old or infirm monks; More speculatively, some scholars suggest a Celtic source.  The alternative explanation suggests a Scythian origin, from the Proto-Iranian gawnám (fur), the possibility of this link supported by the Younger Avestan gaona (body hair) and the Ossetian гъун (ǧun).  The alternative spelling gowne is obsolete and descendants in other languages include the Bengali গাউন (gaun), the Japanese ガウン, the Korean  가운 (gaun), the Malay gaun, the Punjabi ਗਾਊਨ (gāūna) and the Welsh gown.  Gown is a noun and verb and gowned is an adjective; the noun plural is gowns.

Surgeon in blood-splattered surgical gown (also called hospital or medical gowns), mid-procedure.

As late as the eighteenth century, gown was the common word for what is now usually described as dress and gown in this sense persisted in the US longer than in the UK and there was on both sides of the Atlantic something of a twentieth century revival and the applied uses (bridal gown, nightgown etc) became more or less universal.  The meaning “a loose, flowing outer garment in various forms, worn to denote an office held, profession practiced or as an indication of rank” emerged in the late fourteenth century and the collective singular for “residents of a university” dates from the 1650s, still heard in the rhyming phrase “town & gown”.  The night-gown (worn once by both men & women but now associated almost exclusively with the latter) became a thing in the fourteenth century.

Lindsay Lohan in white & black color-blocked bandage dress.  With a flawless figure, Ms Lohan doesn't need the "corrective" effects the bandage construction provides and this one may really be a bodycon dress with the visual effect of "bandage layers" created by stitched folds. 

Dress dates from circa 1300 and was from the Middle English dressen & dresse (to arrange, put in order), from the Anglo-Norman & Old French dresser, drecier (which persists in as dresser), from the unattested Vulgar Latin dīrēctiāre, from the Classical Latin dīrēctus, the perfect passive participle of dīrigō (to arrange in lines, direct, steer), the construct being dis- (the prefix in this context meaning “apart; asunder; in two’) + regō (to govern, manage), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European h₃reǵ- (straight, right).  The noun dress was derived from the verb and emerged in the sense of “attire” in the early 1600s.  Originally, a dress was always something which covered both the upper and lower parts of the female body but not of necessity in once piece.  The dressing gown seems first to have been described as such in 1854 although in French both robe de chambre (dressing gown) & robe de nuit (nightgown) had been in use for centuries.

Lindsay Lohan in dressing gowns; in the US such things would usually be called bathrobes.

Robe dates from the mid-thirteenth century Middle English robe & robbe and was from the Old French robe, robbe & reube (booty, spoils of war, robe, garment), from the Frankish rouba & rauba (booty, spoils, stolen clothes (literally “things taken”)), from the Old High German roub, from the Proto-Germanic raubō, raubaz & raubą (booty, that which is stripped or carried away), from the primitive Indo-European Hrewp- (to tear away, peel off).  The noun use of robe to refer to garments had entered general use by the late thirteenth century, an adoption of a meaning from the Old French, presumably because fine clothing looted from defeated enemies were among the most prized of the spoils of war.  The Old French robe (and the alternative spellings) had as concurrent meanings both “clothing” & “plunder: as did the Germanic forms including the Old English reaf (plunder, booty, spoil; garment, armor, vestment).  By the late thirteenth century, robe had assumed the meaning “a long, loose outer garment reaching almost to the floor, worn by men or women over other dress”, those closest European equivalents being the twelfth century Old French robe (long, loose outer garment) and the Old High German rouba (vestments).  In royal, academic and ecclesiastical circles, the particular style of robes became regulated to denote rank, function or or membership of a religious order and royal courts would include offices like “page of the robes”, “mistress of the robes”, master of the robes etc” although those titles are (to modern eyes) misleading because their responsibilities extended to garments generally and not just robes as they’re now understood.  The metonymic sense of “the robe” for "the legal profession" dates from the 1640s, a reference to the dark robes worn by advocates when appearing in court.  Robe went on productively to be adopted for other purposes including (1) in the US “the skin of a bison (later applied to other slaughtered beasts) used as a cloak or wrap, (2) a short form of wardrobe (especially when built into a wall rather than being stand-alone) and (3) the largest and strongest leaves on a tobacco plant.

Singer Dr Taylor Swift in academic gown after being conferred an honorary doctorate in fine arts from New York University, May 2022.

In formal and vocational use, gown and robe and well understood and there tends not to be overlap except among those unacquainted with such things.  That’s understandable because to the casual observer the things can look much the same and the differences in nomenclature are more to do with tradition than style or cut.  Judges for example ware judicial robes and in the US these are usually black whereas elsewhere in the English-speaking world they can be of quite vivid hues, red and scarlet the most admired.  The US influence however seem pervasive and the trend is now almost universally black, certainly among newly established courts; in the same courts, barristers robes look much the same the term “judicial robe” is exclusive to the bench, the advocates garments variously called “barristers’ robes” “legal robes” or lawyers’ robes”.  Academics however wear gowns and again, the Americans tend to favor black while in the English tradition, all the colors of the rainbow have been seen.  These differ from surgical (also known as hospital or medical gowns) which, compared with just about every other gown, really aren’t gowns at all.  Surgical gowns are made usually in a blue, beige or green pastel color (better to show the blood) and are a kind of inverted dress which is fastened at the back (by an assistant so the wearer’s fingers don’t pick up germs).  In the UK parliament, there were many robes for offices of state and the one worn by the speaker made its way to colonial and dominion parliaments.  They're now rarely worn except on ceremonial occasions and the best known is probably that of the UK’s chancellors of the exchequer although the last one, dating from the late nineteenth century, is said to have “gone missing” while Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010) was chancellor.

The Welsh Wizard robed: Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1911) (David Lloyd George, 1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922, severed as chancellor between 1908-1915), oil on canvas by Christopher Williams (1873–1934), National Library of Wales collection.

Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) was in 1924 both surprised and delighted when Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; UK prime-minister 1923-1924, 1924-1929 & 1935-1937) offered him the Treasury; he’d heard rumors of appointed “chancellor” as assumed the best he could hope for was the chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster which, although an ancient office dating from the fourteenth century, he knew to be little more than a sinecure of slight influence, having in 1915 been for a few months relegated there after leaving the Admiralty in the wake of the failure of the Dardanelles campaign.  To atone, he went to the trenches of the Western Front and for some six month commanded a regiment of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.  Though never forgotten, much was by 1924 forgiven and Churchill was pleased to tell the prime minister he’d be glad to take the exchequer, one slight benefit to the public purse being “I still have the robes my father (Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895; Chancellor of the Exchequer August-December 1886)) wore as chancellor”.  In retrospect, that sartorial convenience might have been an inadequate background for handling the nation’s finances and Churchill often is listed high up the list of the UK’s “worst chancellors”, the main charge being returning sterling to the gold standard and maintaining an over-valued currency but just about all the great institutions of state (the Treasury, the Cabinet, the Bank of England etc) and most economists (a notable dissenter being John Maynard Keynes (later Lord Keynes) 1883-1946) who predicted depression as a consequence) recommended the move.  Still, it was Churchill was who signed the documents and the consensus among historians of such things is that had he known anything of economics, he’d likely have signed with even greater alacrity.

NSW (New South Wales (Australia)) Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges in judicial robes and wigs for a ceremonial event during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s in women’s fashion where the distinction between a gown and a dress can become muddied and probably most illustrative is the matter of the “wedding dress” and the “wedding gown”.  Even among couturiers, there’s actually no agreed definition of where one ends and the other begins; it’s very much in the eye of the beholder although the eye of the retailer is doubtless quite an influence, the theory being the grander the design and the greater the volume of fabric, the more plausible is the label “wedding gown” and the higher the price-tag.  These informal (but serviceable) rules of thumb work also for dresses & gowns in general, the distinction more one of semantics and personal preference although, in saying that, it’s only at the margins where there can be confusion; a minimalist LBD (little black dress) would never be confused with a gown and the grandest creations recalling those worn at the famous balls held in conjunction with the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) would never be called dresses.

Watercolor by unknown artist of one of the many balls held during the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815).  Being ankle-length, gowns were not the ideal garment for ladies dancing and it's likely some made temporary modifications, "hitching them up" a bit.

Despite that, in the narrow technical sense, to a seamstress, all gowns are dresses, but not all dresses are gowns and as late as the early eighteenth century the word "dress" was still not the exclusive province of women’s clothing ensembles.  In recent centuries, the dress has been defined by its modifiers (sun-dress, summer-dress, evening-dress, travelling dress, tent dress, riding-dress etc) and the modern convention seems to be that if an invitation specifies "semi-formal" then an evening dress is expected and that might be something thought a gown but not necessarily.  However, when an invitation states that the occasion is "formal", women are expected to wear an evening gown.  Classically, that’s understood to be something at once precise yet frivolous, with a tight fitting bodice and a skirt at least brushing the floor and this was once the accepted standard for any red-carpet event of note but the recent trend towards displays of flesh has in the entertainment industry subverted the tradition although the audience is expected still to adhere.

Illustrating the modern gown: Actor Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) in a gown with an upper-level silk tulle (a netting-like weave) by Zac Posen (b 1980), Met Gala, New York, 2007 (left) and model Kate Upton (b 1992) in a gown by Victoria Beckham (b 1974, the one-time “Posh Spice”, now Lady Beckham), Vanity Fair Oscars after-party, Los Angeles, 2016.

Fashion has since the Congress of Vienna become simplified and rather than voluminous layers of fabric, a gown’s effects are now generated by cut & color.  For his diaphanous piece, Zac Posen included a quadrilateral (a four-sided polygon) cleavage split, designed cleverly to emulate a tie (in Euclidean geometry defined as a “kite” (two pairs of adjacent, equal-length sides with the two shorter sides meeting at the bottom vertex, the longer pair intersecting at the top so a line described from top to bottom produces an axis of reflection symmetry, as does the fall of a tie)).  What Lady Beckham included would probably now be called a “uvage” although physiology can affect outcome; on a different model (with less pronounced “forward projection”) the fabric would likely fall to create a “veagage”.  While there can be overlaps in cut, construction and cues, there are points at which a LBD becomes re-defined as a “dress” (possibly with a modifier or two) or a “gown”.  Although motifs can matter (what sometimes appears on a gown often not suitable for a LBD that depends on simplicity for effect) the prime determinate really is length, the classic LBD’s hemline stopping somewhere on the thighs while a gown properly should be ankle-length although calf-left implementations have become not uncommon.  The “rule” is however selectively applied and depends also on style and intended purpose; an ankle-length “maxi-dress” will typically not be a “gown”.  Again, physiology can also influence things, someone especially statuesque could appear in a LBD while the same garment on someone shorter might be classed a “black cocktail dress”, simply because the hemline reaches below the knee.  So usually it’s not difficult to tell what is a gown but, at the margins, the distinctions can become blurred and it’s really “eye of the beholder” stuff, a subjective exercise expressed best (in another context) by Potter Stewart (1915–1985; associate justice of the SCOTUS (US Supreme Court) 1958-1981) in his famous concurring judgement in Jacobellis v Ohio (378 U.S. 184 (1964)): “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within [the term], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so.  But I know it when I see it…”

Dictator

Dictator (pronounced dik-tey-ter)

(1) A person exercising absolute power, especially a ruler who (at least ostensibly) has absolute control (ie effectively not restricted by a constitution, laws, recognized opposition, etc) in a government (and officially without hereditary succession); applied particularly to those exercising tyrannical rule.

(2) In republican ancient Rome, a person vested by the senate with supreme authority during a crisis, the regular magistracy being subordinated to him until the crisis was met (typically by conducting a war).

(3) A person who makes pronouncements, as on conduct, fashion etc, which are regarded as authoritative.

(4) A person who dictates text to someone or some sort or mechanical or electronic recording device.

(5) In Ancient Rome (during certain periods), an elected chief magistrate.

1350–1400: From the Middle English dictatour, from the Old French dictator, from the Latin dictātor (genitive dictātōris), (Roman chief magistrate with absolute authority) the construct being dictā(re) (inflection of dictō (I repeat, say often; I dictate (to someone for writing))), frequentative of dicere (to say, speak); I compose, express in writing; I prescribe, recommend, order, dictate)) frequentative of dicere (to say, speak)" (from the primitive Indo-European root deik- (to show (also "solemnly to pronounce") (and related to dīcō (say, speak) + -tor (from the Proto-Italic -tōr, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr from -tor-s; the suffix added to the fourth principal part of a verb to create a third-declension masculine form of an agent noun).  The feminine forms were dictatress or dictatrix, both probably now obsolete except in historic reference or as a jocular form; the old alternative spelling dictatour is obsolete.  Some European languages (including Dutch and Romanian) were like English and borrowed directly the Latin spelling while others used variations including Catalan (dictador), French (dictateur) Italian (dittatore), Piedmontese (ditator), Polish (dyktator), Portuguese (ditador), Russian (дикта́тор (diktátor)), Sicilian (dittaturi), Spanish (dictador) and German (Diktator).  The feminine forms dictatoress & dictatrix are now rare.  Dictator, dictatoress & distatorship are nouns, dictatory is a noun & adjective, dictatorial, dictatorlike & dictatorless are adjectives and dictatorially is an adverb;the noun plural is dictators.

The noun dictatorship (office or term of a (Roman) dictator) came into use in the 1610s to describe the historically specific terms of office the Roman Senate sometimes granted individuals in extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances while the now familiar general sense of "a ruler exercising absolute authority" evolved by the late seventeenth century.  The noun dictator had already proceeded along this path, the historical sense being first used in English circa 1600, the extension to “one who has absolute power or authority" (in any context and not just political power) noted by the 1690s.  The nasty and not infrequently genocidal nature of some of the dictators of the twentieth century and beyond certainly influenced the understanding of the word which, as late as the 1800s could be used neutrally, effectively as a synonym for president.  The adjective dictatorial (pertaining to a dictator; absolute, unlimited), dating from 1901 evolved also to enjoy use outside of descriptors of absolute government and by 1704 had acquired the general sense of "imperious, overbearing", usefully (and often applied as required to husbands, mothers-in-law, parish priests etc); the related form was the adverb dictatorially.  In that vein, to convey the notion of "pertaining to a dictator" there had been dictatorian (1640s) & dictator-like (1580s).  Etymologists insist historic duality of implication in "dictatorial" ((1) a disposition to rule & (2) a sharp insistence upon having one's orders accepted or carried out) has survived in modern use but instances of the former are now less common.

1929 Studebaker Dictator Royal Coupe with rumble seat and "artillery wheels" in the style made famous on Bugatti's roadsters and race-cars.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was of course the dictator who has for almost a century loomed over the word and “Hitler” was used figuratively for "a dictator" from as early as 1934, a use persisting despite there being no shortage of dictatorial tyrants in the years since his assumption of power.  One amusing variation emerged in England in the early years of World War II (1939-1945), a “little Hitler” being someone appointed to a minor post (archetypically an air-raid warden (someone employed to walk the streets during a “black-out” telling folk to extinguish their lights)) and, cloaked in this brief, unaccustomed authority, soon intoxicated by their power.  In the post-revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran (1979-), the regime encouraged a similar put-down aimed at opponents, the US being شيطان بزرگ (Shaytân-e Bozorg (the great Satan)) and Israel شیطان کوچک, (Shaytân-e Kuchak (the little Satan)) and it’s a worse slight even than it sounds because “great” is not the perfect translation, the idea of the great Satan being one of derision rather than awe.  When ayatollahs are in a bad mood (it does happen), sometimes the UK is also described as a “little Satan”.

Lindsay Lohan, glad to see a dictator go.

Lindsay Lohan never forgave dictator Hosni Mubarak (1928–2020; president of Egypt 1981-2011) for shouting at Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001).  When told in 2011 he’d fallen from power as one of the victims of the Arab Spring, she responded: “Cool.”  When told it was brought about by a military coup she replied: “Gross!”  Lindsay Lohan doesn’t approve of coups d'état and believes soldiers should "stay in the barracks", allowing due constitutional process to be followed.   

Because of the evil of Hitler and his many spiritual successors in this century and the last, dictator really doesn’t cry out for synonyms but autocrat, despot, tyrant, absolutist, authoritarian, oppressor & totalitarian all tend in the direction.  Associatively however, the noun generalissimo (supreme military commander), dating from the 1620s and a borrowing of the Italian generalissimo (superlative of generale, from a sense development similar to the French général), can in some cases be applied to dictators because in the twentieth century the title was granted (ie self-conferred) to the dictators comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975) and Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975).  Despite that roll-call, it has never come into use as a general term for "in the manner of dictator", possibly because historically it's too specific (to the military context) and has just too many syllables to be catchy slang.

1935 Studebaker Dictator phaeton (left) & 1936 Studebaker Dictator sedan (right).

The Studebaker Dictator was produced between 1927-1937, the naming scheme using titles from government service to indicate a model’s place in the hierarchy, the Dictator replacing the Standard Six as the entry-level model, the progressively more expensive models being the Commander and President.  Other manufacturers have adopted the concept idea, Opal in Germany once merging admiralty and political ranks, offering the Kapitän, Commodore, Admiral & Diplomat.

Some of the opposition to crooked Hillary Clinton's (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) presidential campaign in 2016 accused her of wanting to turn the US into a dictatorship.  Given that she couldn't manage even to keep her husband "on the porch", fears crooked Hillary might in the Oval Office morph into dictatorial Hillary may have been hyperbolic but the meme makers any responded with agitprop.

To many it will seem strange a US manufacturer would, as late as 1937, call one of its cars the Dictator but in 1927 the Nazis were years from power and Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943), was far from the tainted character he would later become, public perception of his rule still in the moment of admiring him for “making the trains run on time”.  Whether any improvement in punctuality was noted by many Italians is dubious but the Duce would anyway have been pleased at least one train arrived in good time.  Because the image of a mass-movement black-shirted supporters taking to the streets to overthrow an old, corrupt government was just the sort of propaganda dictators adore, the 1922 "March on Rome" became part of fascist mythology but although a good "photo opportunity", Mussolini joined the march only for it's final stage; he caught the Naples-Rome train.  Studebaker anyway had always explained the name as suggesting “a fine car at a moderate price” that would “dictate the standards” in the vital mid-priced field.  That was fair enough but with the benefit of post-Nazi hindsight, when the option of a straight-eight engine was offered as an upgrade from the straight-six, Studebaker probably would not to have used the marketing slogan “a brilliant example of excess power”.  By 1937, the use of excess power by the Third Reich’s dictator was becoming obvious and Studebaker quietly dropped the Dictator name for 1938, re-positioning the Commander as the base model, the cars exported to the Europe, the UK and the British Empire having early been renamed Director.  Of those changes, probably just about everyone except Henry Ford (1863-1947) approved.  Briefly, Studebaker had also offered the Chancellor but, presumably because it wasn’t a title that much resonated in the American imagination, it was short-lived (only in the catalogue for the 1927 season); that was a stroke of luck for Studebaker because Hitler took over the Reich Chancellery in January 1933 and had the Chancellor remained in production, it too would have faced the linguistic cull for 1938.  

So Studebaker’s tale is an example of how the shifting meaning of words can influence many things.  Still, if in 1937 any association with Hitler had become distasteful for a US corporation, even by 1940, some two years after the Nazi’s most publicized pogrom against the Jews (Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)), Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) released his satirical comedy The Great Dictator which parodied both dictators (Hitler and Mussolini), his argument being that however controversial it might be, “…Hitler must be laughed at."  He later admitted that had he known in 1940 what would later be understood, he’d never have produced the film.  When in 1940 Lord Halifax (Edward Wood, 1881–1959) arrived in Washington DC to take up his appointment as UK’s ambassador, he was taken to lunch by a group of Republican senators and told they regarded Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, POTUS 1933-1945) as “a worse dictator than Hitler or Mussolini” so Studebaker clearly made the right decision.

Studebaker US6 truck in Red Army use, configured as mobile Katyusha rocket launcher, circa 1943.  Under Lend-Lease arrangements, some 152,000 US6's were supplied during Great Patriotic War (1941-1945).

Comrade Stalin’s favorite cars by the 1930s were the big Packards but he acknowledged the importance of Studebaker trucks supplied by the US under Lend-Lease and the company also greatly benefited; like many US corporations, some of its golden years came during World War II (1939-1945) when industrial capacity was given over to government contracts fulfilling military demand.  A variety of materiel was produced but Studebaker’s most notable contribution to the war effort was the versatile US6 (G630 in the government purchasing system) 2½ (short) ton 6x6 trucks, over 150,000 of which were supplied to the Soviet Union.  Built in many configurations, the most memorable adaptation by the Red Army was as a mobile platform for the BM-31-12 (nickname: Andryusha) Katyusha rocket launcher, known to the enemy as “Stalin’s organs” because of the distinctive sound; before drones emerged as the preferred front-line weapon, the Russian army widely deployed such rockets in the “special military operation” (invasion) against Ukraine.  The US6 proved popular with Red Army troops who judged it superior to the locally-made ZIS-5 & GAZ-AA and better even than the captured German trucks with Maybach engines which (belying the German reputation for “good beer, good engines, good sausages”), were prone to overheating under extreme loads, unlike the Studebakers that never boiled.

Tough, durable and easy to repair, it was the WS6 that made possible the movement of the Red Army at the scale and speed achieved by 1943-1944 and it proved equally adept at handing the both the muddy and freezing conditions that became notorious on the Eastern Front; affectionately the troops nicknamed the things “Studer”.  The tale circulated that comrade Stalin even wrote a letter of appreciation to Studebaker, mentioning how important the US6 had been to the Red Army; that turned out to be apocryphal but in the Studebaker archives there are documents from Soviet officials expressing their satisfaction with the machines.  The flow of information between across the Iron Curtain was once highly restricted and one Soviet diplomat, arriving in the US in the late 1960s, expressed surprise Studebaker was no longer in business.  Brought up on the legends of the part the WS6 had played in Great Patriotic War, he'd assumed the company would still be a fixture in US manufacturing.  Of course, if corporate comings & goings in Detroit (actually South Bend, Indiana, where Studebakers were built, a place that wouldn’t again make the international headlines until 2020 when Pete Buttigieg (b 1982; US secretary of transportation 2021-2025), who served as mayor from 2012 to 2020 sought the Democratic presidential nomination), were a mystery to Russians, the Kremlin was just as opaque, even to experienced diplomats.  Probably no figure in the twentieth century was as dominating a dictator as comrade Stalin but even at the Yalta Conference (February 1945) there were senior figures in the US State Department and the UK’s Foreign Office who believed the one Russians knew as their vozhd (from the Russian вождь (vožd) (chieftain, leader) was a figure whose freedom of action was constrained by “hard liners in Moscow”.

The Hijab Police

Of the many “morality police” forces that have existed in countries with a majority Islamic population, the best known was Afghanistan's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice which actually pre-dated the Taliban takeover in 1996 but they certainly deployed it with an enthusiasm which went much beyond it functioning as “burka police” and in one form or another, it actually operated for most of the (first) post-Taliban era.  When the Taliban regained power in 2021, immediately they created the "Ministry of Invitation, Guidance and Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" and, in a nice touch, allocated as its headquarters the building formerly used by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

The institution is infamous also in Iran.  In the West, it’s usually referred to as the “morality police” and among women the sardonic slang is “hijab police” but technically, the instrument of the Islamic Republic of Iran which enforces, inter alia, the laws governing the wearing of the hijab is گشت ارشاد (Gašt-e Eršād (Guidance Patrol)).  On 16 September 2022, the hijab police arrested Mahsa Amini (2001-2022) because she was wearing her hijab in “an un-Islamic way”.  While in custody, Ms Amini suffered a medical event, dying two days later without recovering consciousness, the hijab police claiming the cause of death was heart failure, induced by pre-existing conditions.  Her family dispute this, saying the evidence suggests she was severely beaten and many witnesses have confirmed she was tortured in the back of a van before arriving at a hijab police office.

Handy guide for the hijab police.  Not only must hijab must be worn correctly but clothing must also be (1) not brightly colored, (2) not patterned with extravagant designs or shapes and (3) be loose enough that the shape of the body is not discernible.

Her death triggered waves of protests in Iran, which, on the basis of footage seen in the West, seem dominated by school girls and young women; that's not unique in the context of political protest but is historically unusual.  With protest signs and banners rendered in TikTok-friendly English, the headline issue is of course the matter of the hijab and whether women should be beaten to death for letting a lock of hair slip from beneath but the protesters are making clear they're there to highlight corruption (noting the poverty of most while the clerical elite have become very rich), the structure of the state, the economy and the very question of whether the republic should be an Islamic theocracy.  The ayatollahs are no doubt well aware that the standard calculation in political science is that if 3½% of the population can be mobilized to revolt, regimes can be toppled and most recently, the Afghan Taliban did it with a fraction of that.  For many reasons, Afghanistan may be a special case and the Iranian state, on paper, is much better equipped to suppress internal dissent but then the security apparatuses around Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi (circa 1942–2011; Libyan dictator 1969-2011) both looked impregnable until the volume of the protesters reached critical mass.  These things are however hard to judge from afar, Bashar al-Assad (b 1965; ophthalmologist and Syria dictator 2000-2024) looked vulnerable long before Gaddafi and Mubarak fell yet he sat as dictator in Damascus for another 14 years.  The ayatollahs of course watched things with concern but so did individuals in the Kremlin, aware their security apparatus proved inadequate to execute the battle plan of the "special military action" in Ukraine and observed, in a nice echo of the 1979 revolution, the protesters in Tehran again chanting the cry once spat against the Shah: “Death to the Dictator!”.

Class

Class (pronounced klas or klahs)

(1) A number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits; kind; sort.

(2) A collection or division of people or things sharing a common characteristic, attribute, quality, or property

(3) A group of persons sharing a similar social position and certain economic, political, and cultural characteristics

(4) In educational use: (1) The period during which a group of students meets for instruction, (2) A group of students meeting regularly to study a subject under the guidance of a teacher or (3) the physical classroom.

(5) Collectively (as “class of YYYY”), all students in the institution who graduated that year, the concept extended also to politicians in an assembly all elected at the same election.

(6) A social stratum sharing basic economic, political, or cultural characteristics, and having the same social position; caste.

(7) In sociology, political science & economics, the system of dividing society on that basis; (ruling class, upper class, middle class, working class etc); of late extended to include concepts such as “political class”, “entrepreneurial class”, “creative class” etc; in Marxist theory, a group of persons sharing the same relationship to the means of production & distribution.

(8) Social rank, especially high rank.

(9) Elegance, grace, or dignity, as in dress and behavior.

(10) The members of a given group in society, regarded as a single entity.

(11) Any division of persons or things according to rank or grade.

(12) Excellence; possessing exceptional merit; in informal use, the best or among the best of its kind (sometimes as “touch of class”).

(13) In Hinduism, any of the four social divisions, the Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Shudra, of Hindu society; varna.

(14) Any of several grades of accommodation available on ships, airplanes, trains and such.

(15) In biology, the usual major subdivision of a phylum or division in the classification of organisms, usually consisting of several orders.

(16) In British and Commonwealth universities, the groups into which candidates for honors degrees are divided according to merit on the basis of final examinations or other method of assessment (first class, second class, third class and sometimes graduated (class 2A, 2B etc).

(17) In Ecclesiastical use (early Methodism, as classis), one of several small companies, each composed of about twelve members under a leader, into which each society or congregation was divided.

(18) In statistics, a grouping of data values in an interval, often used for computation of a frequency distribution.

(19) In mathematics (set theory), a collection of sets definable by a shared property, especially one which is not itself a set (in which case the class is called proper).  To please the nerds, every set is a class, but classes are not generally sets.  A class that is not a set is called a proper class.

(20) In computer programming (object-oriented), a set of objects having the same behavior (but typically differing in state), or a template defining such a set in terms of its common properties, functions etc.

(21) To place or arrange in a class; classify; to take or have a place in a particular class.

(22) As “class up” to improve the quality, tone, or status of; add elegance, dignity, style etc.

1590–1600: From the earlier Middle English classis (plural classes), from the fourteenth century French classis, from the Latin classis (a class or division of the people, assembly of people, the whole body of citizens called to arms, the army, the fleet, later a class or division in general, the singular form a back formation from the plural), from the primitive Indo-European kele- (to call, shout).  Classis displaced the Old English ġecynd.  The original use in the late sixteenth century was of a “group of students” (ie number of pupils in a school or college of the same grade) and that in North America became the standard form, enduring to this day.  The Latin classis was most used in military matters (of the army and the sea-fleet) and applied particularly to “a class, a division; army, fleet”, especially “any one of the six orders into which Servius Tullius (sixth king of Rome, reigning 578-535 BC) divided the Roman people for purposes of taxation” (traditionally, originally “the people of Rome under arms” (a sense in use in English by at least the 1650s), and akin to calare (to call (to arms)), thus the link with the primitive Indo-European kele- (to call, shout)).  Class is the standard abbreviation of classification and sometimes is used also for “classical” and “classified”.  The word is for many purposes used as a modifier and there are more than a hundred including asset class, business class, closed class, economy class, first class, leisure class, middle class, night class, professional class, school class, social class, working class. class action, type class, cruiser class, cattle class, class A, classable, class-based, class-conscious, classicide, classism, classist, class warrior, creative class, criminal class, high-class, low class, pseudoclass, ruling class, working-class, class enemy, class struggle and class reunion.

The 19BB (“Barrier Boat”, though sailor's slang is “Boomin’ Beaver”) is a specialized class of miniature tugboat used to deploy and maintain port security booms surrounding Navy ships and installations in port.  The smallest vessels on the USN's (US Navy) active list, the story Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) wanted to rename the BBs “Biden Class” (after Joe Biden (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 & POTUS 2021-2025)) apparently apocryphal.

Borrowing from the concept of classifications in educational & military use, the adoption in science for taxonomy (group of related plants or animals) dates from 1753 and has since been much expanded.  Dictionaries, perhaps surprisingly cite the 1870s as the origin of class being used with the meaning “high quality”, despite the sense of “a division of society according to status” (upper, lower, etc.) being in use since the early 1700s and the idea in societies of a “class-consciousness” will be ancient although it was only in 1903 the term entered English, from the German compound noun Klassenbewusst.  Special adaptations include the nouns classeme (in semiotics a generic or contextual seme, denoting a group of objects) & classitis (in web design, a critique of authoring stylesheets with redundant and semantically unhelpful classes).  Classy endures as an adjective (meaning “elegant; stylish) but the noun classy (also as clashee & clashy) is long obsolete.  Under the Raj, a classy (from khalasi) was an Indian worker at a port or dockyard, traditionally employed in pulling vessels out of the water for maintenance and repair and returning them to the water upon completion; the anglicized forms came ultimately from the Hindi ख़लासी (xalāsī), from the Classical Persian خلاصی (xalāsī).  Class is a noun, verb & adjective, classism & classer are nouns, classist & classful are nouns & adjectives, classable, classy, classless & classlike are adjectives, declass is an adjective, classed is a verb, classing is a noun & verb, classwide is an adjective & adverb and classward is an adverb; the noun plural is classes

Classy look: Lindsay Lohan rendered in the style of nineteenth century Impressionism by Gemini.ai.  The digital version was based on a photograph of her in a Jil Sander (b 1943) gown while attending the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, Anaheim, California, August, 2024.  On the day, although the environment was not optimized for photography, the light and even the breeze cooperated, the gown’s fabric swishing in a way the Impressionists would have painted, even had the air been still.

In the context of a group of people sharing the same social, economic, or occupational status, the term “class” implies usually a social and economic hierarchy in which those of higher class standing have greater status, privilege, prestige, and authority. Western societies traditionally have been divided into three classes: the upper (or leisure), middle (bourgeoisie) & lower (working) class (for Marxists, the significant classes were the bourgeoisie and proletariat although neo-Marxists have for decades adjusted the theory to accommodate changes).  Most associated with the writings of English-born US sociologist Michael Mann (b 1942), classicide (the construct being class + (hom)icide) describes the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a social class through persecution and violence.  In that it may be compared to genocide (envisaged originally as the mass killing of defined ethnic or religious groups).  Between the two there can be overlap (such as in the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge regime in Democratic Kampuchea) but the emphasise in classicide is on the premeditated mass killing of a group based on their (perceived) social status; in that its similar to politicide (in which the targets are defined by their political activity) but in that case, the critical factor was what people do rather than what they are.  Very much at the heart of the French Revolution (1989), classicide was a feature of the “terrible twentieth century” and events able to be classified as such occurred in the Soviet Union under comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in the PRC (People's Republic of China) under comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) & paramount leader of the PRC 1949-1976) and in Kampuchea under Pol Pot (Saloth Sâr; 1925–1998; dictator the communist (Maoist) state of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) 1975-1979).  The related “social cleansing” (the removal of certain classes from certain places but (in theory) not involving mass killing) has the same relationship to classicide as ethnic cleansing has to genocide.

USS Defiant, the lead ship in the proposed Trump Class of guided missile cruisers to enter service in the 1930s.

The design has little in common with the historic battleships of the twentieth century but it's believed President Trump is drawn to the word "battleship" because they were the "biggest warships" he calls the Trump Class "battleships".  The future of surface fleets and their configurations is currently the subject of much discussion on the basis the likelihood of threats from massed swarms of autonomous or controlled UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles (drones)) may render them too vulnerable to risk.  

With machines, “class” came to be used of a “type” or “run” of units of similar (though not necessarily identical) units.  The practice pre-dated mass-production of consumer goods (on the model Henry Ford’s Ford (1863-1947) Model T (1908-1927) made famous) and most influential was the UK’s Royal Navy that in the 1870s & 1880s standardized the use of “class” for designs of capital ships, the convention being the name adopted was the first laid down (and usually, though not always, launched).  By the time of the coming of the upsurge in warship construction that marked the naval “arms race” of the early twentieth century, naval architects in many nations had adopted the scheme of designation.  The “class” referred not to a ship’s “type” but the set of design parameters (dimensions, weight, firepower, propulsion etc) distinguishing the ships from others.  With the smaller warships (destroyers, light cruisers etc), there might be a dozen or more of the class while the big ships (battleships, battlecruisers etc) typically were built in batches of no more than four and the occasional class did consist of a single vessel.  Because it was an “arms race”, ships could be approaching obsolescence not long after being launched and succeeding classes incorporated new innovations and, in the case of the battleships: more of everything, the most famous example being the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought, the first “all big-gun” battleship that rendered obsolete every battleship then afloat (including all others in the British fleets).

HMS Temeraire at anchor, 1909.  She was one of three Bellerophon-class Dreadnought battleships built between 1906-1909, all of which survived World War I (1914-1918) and were scrapped in 1921-1922.

Before navies crystallised the system of “class” warships had tended to be described by “rate” or “type” (first-rate ship of the line, frigate, corvette, etc) but individual names were invoked, phrases such as “ships of the Iron Duke type” or “the Majestic battleships” being common in oral use and routine in Admiralty documents.  So the concept of “classes” had crept in before the system was formalized and, in the late 1800s, it was three factors that encouraged the shift: (1) Industrialised naval construction (steam power, iron and steel hulls and increasingly capable machine tools made designs expensive meaning a run of standardized units was a way to amortize the investment), (2) Serial production (with an arms race in progress, navies were ordering more warships and, as Henry Ford soon would demonstrate, batches of machines with identical (or near-identical) specifications could be produced faster and more cheaply than bespoke creations and (3) Navies were becoming more bureaucratic (as the fleets expanded, so did the establishment & dockyard facilities and, with ships becoming more complex and maintenance intensive, Admiralties needed precise accounting, training, logistics, and doctrinal categorisation.  “Class” already had a long history in engineering (especially in railway workshops) and taxonomy so was the natural administrative solution and at the time, Britain was the world’s leading naval power so, as went the Royal Navy, others followed.

Classes on four wheels

BMW promotional shot of 1964 BMW 1800 Neue Klasse.

The monument in the background is the Siegestor (Victory Gate), located on the on the boundary between the districts of Maxvorstadt & Schwabing in Munich, Bavaria Germany.  Completed in 1852, it was commissioned by Ludwig I (1786–1868; King of Bavaria 1825-1848) to honor the Bavarian army but after suffering severe damage in World War II (1939-1945), it only narrowly avoided demolition.  BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Works) and the company has been based in Barvaria since formation in 1910.

As body types and other forms of differentiation proliferated in the twentieth century, cars were often sorted into “classes”, variously by manufacturers, dealers, registration authorities or reviewers.  The categories used from time to time numbered in the dozens but literal use of the word “class” has been rare in formal nomenclature although terms like “the 1.5 litre class” or “the family car class” were and remain common.  BMW’s Neue Klasse (1962-1970) became well-known outside Germany as the company’s first “mainstream” product on four wheels BMW and although always appearing in English as “New Class”, the literal translation of Neuse Klasse is “new cash register”; given the significance of the range in restoring the company to profitability (in 1960 it was a loss-making concern on the verge of being sold to avoid a declaration of bankruptcy) and ensuring its survival, the true meaning wholly is appropriate.  BMW’s Neue Klasse’s range was neither innovative or especially distinctive but was well-executed and the specification was perfect for the a point in the Wirtschaftswunder (the post-war “economic miracle” experienced by the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990))) at which a critical mass of the middle class had become sufficiently prosperous to trade in their Volkswagen Beetle for something “a class above”, just as a decade earlier they’d shifted from a motorcycle to one of the “microcars” built by BMW and others that had in the 1950s “put Germany back on wheels”.

BMW 1800 TI/SA, 1965 24 Hour Race, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Francorchamps, Stavelot, Wallonia, Belgium.

The Neue Klasse tag was never used by BMW; the cars always given a designation based on engine displacement (1500; 1600; 1800; 2000) and the range was important also as the ancestor of the 3 Series, since 1975 the model that internationally has been the backbone of the company’s sales.  The model was noted too for it being the first time a “Hofmeister Kink” appeared on a BMW; although the motif had been seen for more than a decade in both Europe and the US, it became such a brand signature it came to be named after Wilhelm Hofmeister (1912–1978), BMW’s design chief 1955-1970.  Although in the 1960s the company never Neue Klasse part of its corporate language, so enduring did it become that in the 2020s it’s its latest generation of EVs (electric vehicle) is now officially the BMW Neue Klasse.  With Chinese manufacturing of EVs seemingly a juggernaut and thus facing troubles potentially as serious those the original Neue Klasse surmounted, the Bavarians hope history repeats itself.

Mercedes-Benz W116, the first S-Class: 1976 450 SEL 6.9.

Unlike BMW, Mercedes Benz did with the release of the W116 (1972-1980) sedans formalize use, the S Class (Sonderklasse, sometimes abbreviated as S-Klasse and translated as “Special Class”) the first instance of what would later became a convention (S Class, E Class, C Class etc).  The new name also encouraged retrospective use, the earlier “big” sedans (W111/112 (1959-1968) & W108/109 (1965-1972)) also sometimes referred to thus although this was never adopted by the factory.  A landmark achievement in its time, the original S-Class was the first recognizably "modern" Mercedes-Benz sedan and its design elements would be carried forward for two decades.

Mercedes-Benz advertising.  Although never explicitly labelling previous models as "S-Class", the factory does like to to hint and frankly, by 2026, the past was looking better than the future.

Despite that, Mercedes-Benz has in S-Class advertising (the model now in its seventh generation, the W223 introduced in 2020) often shown an array of previous generations of its “big” sedans including models like the W111/112 & W108/109 which, in period, never carried the designation and even the 600 (W100, 1963-1981), a model in the Grosser rather than S-Class lineage.  Although as early as 1968, a distinct range of smaller sedans had augmented the W108/109, (the range expanded further in 1983 by an even more compact model), the now familiar nomenclature (C Class, E Class, S Class) wasn’t standardized until 1993 when the alphanumeric names were inverted (500E becoming E500 etc), a change necessitated by the proliferation of models rendering the old system (dating from the 1920s) so prone to ambiguity it has become unmanageable.

Newspapers, advertisers and readers

Before the internet did what it did, for centuries it was print publications (newspapers, magazines and other periodicals) that were the prime vector for the distribution of news, information and entertainment; film, radio and television all had their effects (television notably contributing to the extinction of most afternoon newspapers) but generally, much of the established print media and what was then the “new media” managed a form of peaceful co-existence that was sometimes synergistic, newspaper proprietors and editors quickly expanding their coverage of what appeared on television because that was what their readers wanted, some buying the copies for no other reason.  In those jurisdictions that allowed the same corporation to publish newspapers and operate television stations in the same market, the techniques of cross-promotion became highly refined.

Unlike many mass-produced products, selling more newspapers did not necessarily increase profits; it was a matter of what class of readers were attracted.

Newspapers and magazines were historically unusual because the cover (or even subscription) price charged often would not be enough to pay for the paper alone, let alone the overall cost of production & distribution.  What covered the costs and provided centuries of sometimes vast profits was advertising revenue and although readers tended to think of themselves as buying “a product”, in reality they were the product being delivered to advertisers, exactly the same strategy that works so well for Facebook, TikTok etc.  However, an additional layer of complexity for the print media was that unlike a manufacturer of widgets, increasing sales did not always translate to greater profits.  It’s true the accountants at the widget factory also had to calculate if the extent of additional demand made worthwhile an investment in increased production (ie a night shift, an additional production line or factory etc) but one simplicity was that every dollar paid by a widget buyer (rich or poor) translated on the balance sheet in the same way.  What made print titles unusual was not all buyers were created equal and while the dollars paid by poor people for their newspapers were banked in the same way and had the same nominal value, they weren’t of necessity “worth having” because selling newspapers to the poor (ie of a lower socio-economic class) could be counter-productive for the business model (ie the more you sold to them, the greater the loss).

In the West, mainstream newspapers by the mid twentieth century had become polarized, the “popular” (ie tabloid) titles at one end and the “quality” press (ie broadsheet) at the other.  Because commercial success depended on being able to deliver to advertisers the “right” readers, an industry of market research emerged to perfect the analysis of working out which titles delivered the “right audience at the lowest cost”.  This research was both quantitative & qualitative because it mattered much to advertising agencies whether a title’s buyer lived in the south east, owned two cars, played golf on Saturdays and took an annual overseas holiday or lived in the north, took the bus to a football match on Saturdays and never left the country.  In many ways, they were separate populations and while both demographics might be attractive to those wishing to advertise products, in many cases they’d be different products and in some, exclusive to each.  By combining this data with advertising rates, agencies were able to work out for their clients which media (print, radio, television etc) could deliver the desired market segment at the cheapest rates.  In the case of national newspapers, the segmentation that mattered most was social class and what evolved in the UK was a metric to handle these calculations.  Developed by the industry collective, JICNARS (Joint Industry Committee for National Readership Surveys, a body owned jointly by publishers, advertisers & agencies), because the occupation of a household’s main breadwinner (chief earner) largely determined the spending pattern of that household, social class was determined primarily the their jobs and for this purpose there were six classes:

Class A: The upper middle class (by the mid 1970s in the UK around 20% of all households) with the chief earner (head of the household) typically a successful businessman, professional (lawyer, doctor, chartered accountant etc) or senior civil servant, living in a large detached house or high-priced apartment.  At the time, that class included headmasters of large public (ie private) schools, executives near board level in large companies, leading figures in local government, newspaper editors, senior journalists, professors and Church of England bishops.  As that list indicates, by the 2020s, the composition of Class A shifted a bet.  For the JICNARS’s purposes, the “upper class” (the so-called “1%”) were included in Class A.

Class B: The middle class, then some 10% of households.  These were often people holding “senior” positions who were financially stable and living lives of “quiet respectability” and although with neither the incomes or accumulated wealth (or, not infrequently, debt) of the Class A members, the significance was that in manners and cultural matters, their tastes and habits often overlapped, meaning their attention was sought by the same advertisers.  The Class B membership included vicars, headmasters of smaller schools, senior executive officers in the civil service, university lecturers, matrons of smaller hospitals, pharmacists, directors of smaller companies and qualified librarians in charge of smaller libraries.

Class C1: Just over 15% of households, the C1 families were the lower middle class, trades-people (employed or self-employed) and non-manual workers, “white-collar” workers such as articled clerks, owners of small businesses, clerks, typists, telephonists, curates and nurses.  A recent trend has been a marginalisation of the white collar component of the C1s by a number of factors, most obviously technology although this is spreading upwards to B and even A more than downwards.  Of the trades, despite recent rises in their economic value to advertisers, they’re considered culturally static so while their purchasing power has increased, they don’t identify with AB tastes.

Class C2: Intriguingly, many of those in Class C2 (about a quarter of households) enjoyed higher incomes than many in the C1 cohort and this was because, as the skilled working class, their economic value was higher because they contributed directly (and measurably) to productivity in a way an accountant’s clerk did not.  The C2 membership included foremen, fitters, knitters, plumbers, shop assistants with supervisory responsibilities, pastry-cooks and prison officers.

Class D: Although it probably wasn’t true statistically, for the purposes of the JICNARS, those is Class D were considered all manual workers, semi-skilled or unskilled; that didn’t mean the latter had no skills, it meant to an economist those skills could be quickly learned and required no formal education or structured training.  Some 20% of households were in Class D and typical employment profiles would include labourers, fishermen, bus conductors, traffic wardens and window cleaners.

Class E: Some 10% of households, the Es operated at the “lowest level of subsistence” and survived through precarious, low-paid employment, petty crime and transfer payments; they would now be classed as “welfare-dependent”.  Although the membership was diverse, the JICNARS for illustrative purposes listed migrants, those with substance abuse issues, families of old age pensioners, widows and those dependent on social security.

Predictably, the 30%-odd of the population in Class A & Class B tended to buy the “quality” papers, titles like the Financial Times, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian collectively drawing almost half their readership from the ABs, this declining to around 40% for the Sunday editions.  What this affluent readership did was attract high-priced advertising, enabling the titles to remain profitable despite a low cover price and circulations that were tiny compared with the mass-market tabloids.  Of note too is that it was these publications (along with The Economist (a newspaper that looks like a glossy magazine) that were most read by decision makers in government and industry.  So, it was the quality newspapers that tended to provide informed discussion on public issues, political affairs, business and the arts; although the record of their influence on public policy was patchy, what they tended to do was “set the agenda”, another attraction for advertisers.

What made the pre-internet newspaper business unusual was that there was sometimes a conscious attempt to reduce sales, a discussion usually not heard in boardrooms or among members of management committees.  In 1968, The Times had embarked on a major promotional drive and, using conventional techniques, sales indeed did spike and that was most pleasing until the research revealed some 60% of its readers were now in the undesirable C1, C2, D & E classes, something the advertising agencies to quick to notice.  Accordingly, the paper’s editorial direction shifted back, ensuring as many as possible of the intruders were shed and the bias towards the AB was restored.  Profitability was thus also improved because with each copy of The Times sold at a nominal loss (based on the cost of production & distribution), selling more made sense only if the rising readership attracted more high-value advertising.  With the less desired classes forming a majority of the leadership, not only were the traditional advertisers less attracted, those seeking to reach the C1, C2 and D classes (few except tobacco companies and their ilk chased the E class) were not willing to pay the high-rates charged by the Times.  The Times did not repeat the mistake and that different news appeared in different papers to attract different audiences was hardly surprising for as Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) put it in Scoop (1938): “They all have different policies, so of course they have to give different news.”

Nye Bevan and his wife Jennie Lee (1904–1988), London, 1934.

Waugh’s point of course can be considered as a matter of both cause and effect because whatever might happen on a publications profit & loss statement, there are also political consequences.  Until scared off, more than one government in the post-war years proposed increasing public expenditure in a way that would increase the burden only on taxpayers earning 2-3 times the national average and, without exception, these have been criticized by the “quality” press, usually on the basis not of such a fiscal package being “unfair” but that it would “alienate the political centre”.  As the JICNARS understood, in electoral terms, this was highly improbable because only about 10-12% of the population would lose out in such a redistribution but that sliver of the electorate was in the AB Class at the centre of the quality press’s readership and this dictated the response.  In his book In Place of Fear (1952), the Welsh Labour Party politician Aneurin "Nye" Bevan (1897–1960) pondered: “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”  As political parties came to understand, it was possible to convince the poor to vote against their own economic interests if the “culture wars” dangled before their eyes could be made to seem enough of a threat, thus the weaponization in the US of guns, God, pickup trucks, trans rights, abortion, gay marriage and much else.