Trendless Fluctuation: a Reply to Crewe

TLDR: In this paper, the authors report new evidence which substantially strengthens their original conclusions and are grateful to Crewe for providing them with this opportunity to consolidate their argument, and they also point out that Crewe's vigorous but extravagant critique is actually confined to one chapter of How Britain Votes-the chapter on class dealignment (Chapter 3).

Abstract: There must be two books bearing the title How Britain Votes. One of them, an ingenious but implausible book which is marred by logical, conceptual and measurement flaws, was reviewed by Ivor Crewe in the December 1986 issue of Political Studies.’ The other version of the book, the one we wrote in 1985, is doubtless also flawed in many respects, but happily not in the way eagerly attacked by Crewe. Indeed, following Crewe’s own suggestions, we report in this paper new evidence which substantially strengthens our original conclusions. We are grateful to Crewe for providing us with this opportunity to consolidate our argument. Crewe’s vigorous but extravagant critique is actually confined to one chapter of How Britain Votes-the chapter on class dealignment (Chapter 3). Such a narrow focus might have been expected to lead to well-targeted criticism. But alas, Crewe’s target must have been Chapter 3 of that other offending book, not ours. Otherwise he would surely have noticed and understood the statistical