In 1938, with his parents about to divorce, Westergaard moved to Denmark with his mother and was sent to boarding school in Copenhagen; his experiences under Nazi occupation and his mother's attachment to the Danish resistance movement during the Second World War encouraged an opposition to authority and a belief in socialism.
He was briefly a censor in the British Army of the Rhine and then completed a sociology degree at the London School of Economics (LSE), graduating in 1951.
He retired in 1986 amid funding cuts and declining student numbers which had led to the sociology honours degree course falling into abeyance at Sheffield.
His early retirement – and that of Eric Sainsbury (Chair in Social Administration) – was carried out to ensure that junior staff did not lose their jobs.
[1] Alan Walker wrote that "He championed the study of class inequality as a defining feature of capitalism, long before its importance became more widely acknowledged, and played key roles in the development of the sociology profession.