Because of the wholesale integration of the theory and practice of the party into the national cultural formation, at no time did it promote its working-class constituency as an agent of social change.

The Hackney Borough councilor, with his working-class, immigrant constituency, has to live with the thought that as a kid he thought "colored people" were purple, with red eyes and yellow feet.

"It served a largely poor and working-class constituency," he said, "and it traveled through some neighborhoods that didn't have a lot of residents or were perceived as high-crime, which kept ridership down."

Wrye, who represented a large working-class constituency, was appointed Minister of Labour on June 26, 1985.

Thanks to his strong personal following he held onto what was a working-class constituency in Cathcart, one of only two Conservative seats in Glasgow in the 1970s.

He was from a trade-union background, and represented a strongly working-class constituency during his time in office.

Apparently, as a hardworking council candidate, who stressed community politics, he had increased the vote in an unpromising working-class constituency.

Mr. Deri, who represents a working-class Sephardic constituency, was convicted of accepting $155,000 in bribes for steering millions of dollars in public funds to a yeshiva whose directors paid him off.

But now the Alliance leaders sense that the decline of union membership and the expansion of the middle class has eroded Labor's traditional working-class constituency and clouded its future.

That tradition began around the turn of the century, when the Tammany Hall machine won the loyalty of its immigrant working-class constituency with generous helpings of public relief.