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This article examines the relationship between club affiliations by members of the House of Lords and their political and social backgrounds. The odds of being a club member and the networks of association created by clubs are positively associated with ascriptive, educational, occupational and political variables. The communities created by clubs augment inequalities in Lords' representativeness. The evidence is incompatible with arguments that the British political elite is unified or that clubs integrate functionally differentiated groupings. The evidence is consistent, however, with clubs offering social unity to elites with vested interests in traditional status structures. A British establishment is still evident in the club community.

Elite theory critiques of corporate political action rest on the claim that it advances the political interests of elite status groups. This article examines that claim by investigating the relationship between a British corporation's propensity to make donations to the Conservative party and its directors' educational backgrounds and social club affiliations. Using a structural equivalence blockmodel, it is shown that among the largest 250 British corporations in 1995 there was a set with directors who came from elite educational backgrounds and were members of elite social clubs. These corporations made a disproportionate number of donations. I argue that these results support the elite theory critique.

Abstract
Historical accounts of the British aristocracy argue its economic decline was owed to anachronistic characteristics, declining land values, and inheritance taxes. We find disconfirming evidence based on the hereditary peerage's probates 1858 to 2018, showing: decline only began after World War I; no links between aristocratic wealth and farmland prices; and a greater role for tax avoidance with respect to inheritance taxes. Aristocrats also followed the rich with their share of wealth dwindling over the 20th century. Together, these arguments suggest the British aristocracy detached economic interests from status characteristics enabling them to persist more effectively than previously thought.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics on 24th September 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/19406940.2015.1088050. ; Through semi-structured interviews with 11 practising referees registered to one English County Football Association (FA), this article examines their experiences of officiating since the English FA implemented a Respect Campaign in 2008. Despite this high-profile public information campaign focusing on the role of the referee, the results outline that little has changed for those officiating at the youth and adult grassroots level. Referees highlight continuing verbal and physical abuse and argue that County FAs need to demonstrate greater levels of support towards them when dealing with cases of misconduct. Overall, the article illustrates that whilst the Respect Campaign remains a relatively new initiative, it requires further proactive development and improvements due to the unwelcome experiences that remain for referees when officiating matches.

AbstractBusiness has played a central role in the debate over Britain's place in the European Union. This paper examines the socio‐economic characteristics of directors of Britain's largest corporations who affiliated either to Business for Sterling or Britain in Europe. It reports associations between directors' social backgrounds and their probabilities of affiliation. Elite university education, club membership, wealth and multiple directorships were all associated with higher propensities to affiliate. The associations are consistent with the idea that directors' social resources allow them to overcome collective action problems as well as supplying them with the motivations to affiliate. They also indicated that directors form a privileged group in that they have a number of very powerful actors who can take unilateral political actions.

Business has played a central role in the debate over Britain's place in the European Union. This paper examines the socio-economic characteristics of directors of Britain's largest corporations who affiliated either to Business for Sterling or Britain in Europe. It reports associations between directors' social backgrounds and their probabilities of affiliation. Elite university education, club membership, wealth and multiple directorships were all associated with higher propensities to affiliate. The associations are consistent with the idea that directors' social resources allow them to overcome collective action problems as well as supplying them with the motivations to affiliate. They also indicated that directors form a privileged group in that they have a number of very powerful actors who can take unilateral political actions.

Large economic corporations play a central role in the economies of modern societies. Much of what we consume is produced and marketed by corporations, and many of us are employed by them. Our economic fates appear to be inextricably linked to their actions. Not for the first time, however, corporations are facing pressures to expand the scope of their concerns even further. Two cases neatly illustrate the nature of these pressures. First, movements promoting corporate social responsibility exert pressures on corporations to take account of the negative and positive consequences of their actions to third parties; they are requesting that corporations act as more than pure profit maximisers. Second, political parties of the centre left, influenced by Third Way (Giddens 1998) thinking, have begun perceiving corporations as partners in the implementation of their policy objectives. A British example is the centrality of corporations to the delivery of New Labour's policies such as the New Deal and the Private Finance Initiative. It appears that trends are developing that could lead to corporations playing a larger role in our lives than they already do.