The Making of the English Working Class

How did the English government’s prolonged counter-revolution (1795-1820) contribute to the formation of a working-class consciousness?

To what extent did the Industrial Revolution help make the English working class?

Why were the English government and its industrial-capitalist allies so successful in suppressing Radicalism?

Why does Thompson identify John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1792) as the “two foundation texts of the English working-class movement” (31)?

Discuss Thompson’s treatment of religion during the period he writes about.

Thompson argues that industrial capitalism required a “transformation of human nature” (362). Explain.

What was the illegal tradition? How did it contribute to the making of a working class?

Why did the Peterloo massacre of 1819 happen? What were its short- and long-term consequences?