The Making of the English Working Class

“Too often events in England in the 1790s are seen only as a reflected glow from the storming of the Bastille. But the elements precipitated by the French example—the Dissenting and libertarian traditions—reach far back into English history. And the agitation of the 1790s, although it lasted only five years (1792-6) was extraordinarily intensive and far-reaching. It altered the sub-political attitudes of the people, affected class alignments, and initiated traditions which stretch forward into the present century. It was not an agitation about France, although French events both inspired and bedevilled it. It was an English agitation, of impressive dimensions, for an English democracy.”

This passage summarizes much of Part 1, which highlights the Englishness of English Radicalism in the 1790s. Few would disagree with seeing 19th century English Radicalism as a predominantly English phenomenon, but to make the same claim for the 1790s is to challenge prevailing historical assumptions. Without ignoring the obvious impact of the world-changing French Revolution, Thompson emphasizes aspects of the English experience that distinguish English Jacobinism from its French counterpart. In its emphasis on the English working man’s active role (as opposed to a simple reaction to the French example), this quotation supports the theme “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity.”

“Here is something unusual—pitmen, keelmen, cloth-dressers, cutlers: not only the weavers and labourers of Wapping and Spitalfields, whose colourful and rowdy demonstrations had often come out in support of Wilkes, but working men in villages and towns over the whole country claiming general rights for themselves. It was this—and not the French Terror—which threw the propertied classes into panic.”

In this passage, Thompson challenges a prevailing historical assumption: that the English ruling class adopted repressive, counter-revolutionary measures out of fear that France’s bloody Reign of Terror, complete with all the horrors of the guillotine, would spread to England. Thompson argues that it was the identity and aspirations of the people who comprised the new English mob of the 1790s—"working men” inspired by the arguments of Thomas Paine—that triggered ruling-class “panic.” This quotation supports the theme Counter-Revolution.

“England differed from other European nations in this, that the flood-tide of counter-revolutionary feeling and discipline coincided with the flood-tide of the Industrial Revolution; as new techniques and forms of industrial organisation advanced, so political and social rights receded.”

This passage takes a broad view of events and developments between 1780 and 1832, highlights the uniqueness of the English experience in an era marked by revolutions, and identifies that uniqueness in the combination of political counter-revolution and industrialization. This quotation supports the themes Counter-Revolution and Exploitation.

“In the end, it is the political context as much as the steam-engine, which had most influence upon the shaping consciousness and institutions of the working class.”

In the previous quotation, Thompson identifies political counter-revolution and industrialization as the twin engines of English ruling-class oppression. Here, he argues that the political context was at least as important as the industrial context in the making of the working class. Most historical studies have assumed a mathematical relationship, as if a combination of steam power and factory organization alone produced the working class. One of Thompson’s major contributions is to show how the ruling class’s political repression of 1795-1820 and industrial capitalists’ methods of maximizing and regimenting labor worked in unison to help forge a working-class consciousness. This quotation supports the themes Counter-Revolution and Exploitation.

“The objection to the reigning academic orthodoxy is not to empirical studies per se, but to the fragmentation of our comprehension of the full historical process. First, the empiricist segregates certain events from this process and examines them in isolation. Since the conditions which gave rise to these events are assumed, they appear not only as explicable in their own terms but as inevitable. The Wars had to be paid for out of heavy taxation; they accelerated growth in this way and retarded it in that. Since this can be shown, it is also implied that this was necessarily so. But thousands of Englishmen at the time agreed with Thomas Bewick’s condemnation of ‘this superlatively wicked war.’ The unequal burden of taxation, fund-holders who profited from the National Debt, paper-money—these were not accepted as given data by many contemporaries but were the staple of intensive Radical agitation.”

Firstly, this passage identifies one of Thompson’s major objections to prevailing scholarship on the Industrial Revolution. and 2) the vitality of England’s Radical-libertarian tradition. While data-driven studies of complex historical phenomena invariably assume “fixed” or “given” conditions such as war, the people who lived through those phenomena, however, did not regard such conditions as “fixed” or “given” but instead fought very hard to change them. Many Englishmen in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, drawing upon libertarian tradition, understood that wars resulted in debts, debts required taxes, and taxes enriched wealthy men who profited from war. This libertarian critique of war, for instance, is one of many factors that elude empirical analysis. This quotation supports all three major themes, but due to its emphasis on ineffective scholarly approaches it is most relevant to the theme “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity.”

“When we discuss the minutiae of finance we sometimes forget the crazy exploitive basis of taxation after the Wars, as well as its redistributive function—from the poor to the rich.”

Modern readers may assume that taxation redistributes wealth from rich to poor. Government spending, however, nearly always redistributes wealth upward (particularly in wartime and/or where a large national debt exists). Thompson refers to taxation “after the Wars,” but the rationale is the same as in wartime: To pay for the Wars against the French Republic and later against Napoleon Bonaparte, the English government had to borrow money from wealthy people, so after the Wars the government had to repay those creditors with interest. Since these particular Wars began as a reaction against the French Revolution, and since wars of every kind always benefit the rich and hurt the poor, this quotation supports the themes Counter-Revolution and Exploitation.

“His own share in the ‘benefits of economic progress’ consisted of more potatoes, a few articles of common clothing for his family, soap and candles, some tea and sugar, and a great many articles in the Economic History Review.”

This sentence is Thompson at his snarkiest. “His” refers to the English working man whose “share” in the Industrial Revolution’s presumptive material benefits has been grossly exaggerated by economic historians—all he’s gotten for his troubles are a “great many articles” in economic history’s leading academic journal. This quotation supports the theme “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity.”

“But it was not the factory only—nor, perhaps, mainly—which led to the intensification of child labour between 1780 and 1830. It was, first, the fact of specialisation itself, the increasing differentiation of economic roles, and the break-up of the family economy. And second, the breakdown of late 18th-century humanitarianism; and the counter-revolutionary climate of the Wars, which nourished the arid dogmatisms of the employing class.”

This passage highlights one of the book’s major arguments: Industrial technology and the factory system alone cannot account for the era’s ugliest features. Nothing was uglier than child labor. In the pre-industrial world, much economic activity occurred in a domestic setting. 19th century concentrations of capital and pursuit of profit destroyed the old family-based economy, while at the same time the era’s repressive political climate undercut older paternalistic relationships. This quotation supports the themes Counter-Revolution and Exploitation.

“Parliamentary investigations took place as a routine response to petitions; as a means of ‘handling and channelling’ discontent, procrastinating, or fobbing off ill-behaved M.P.s; or purely from an excess of utilitarian officiousness. Ireland’s decline through misery after misery to the seemingly inevitable climax of the Great Famine was accompanied by the absence of any important measure of alleviation—and by an average of five parliamentary enquiries per year.”

This passage illustrates the “breakdown of late 18th-century humanitarianism” (334). It also asserts that scholars who encounter evidence of Parliament’s “investigations” and “enquiries” have been too easily fooled into believing that such evidence reveals genuine interest in social amelioration on the part of the ruling class as a whole. This quotation gives indirect support to all of the book’s major themes, but it most directly supports the theme “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity.”

“In truth, the deep-rooted folk memory of a ‘golden age’ or of ‘Merrie England’ derives not from the notion that material goods were more plentiful in 1780 than in 1840 but from nostalgia for the pattern of work and leisure which obtained before the outer and inner disciplines of industrialism settled upon the working man.”

This sentence highlights scholars’ over-emphasis on the Industrial Revolution’s material benefits. It also refers to a much-altered “pattern of work and leisure” that many of Thompson’s working-class subjects regarded as a catastrophic change. This quotation supports the themes “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity” and Exploitation.

“The factory system demands a transformation of human nature, the ‘working paroxysms’ of the artisan or outworker must be methodised until the man is adapted to the discipline of the machine.”

To understand fully Thompson’s critical phrase “transformation of human nature,” it is important to read between the lines. Writing in part from a Marxist perspective, Thompson no doubt was familiar with the common (and reasonable) anti-communist critique of collectivism and forced suppression of individualism as violations against human nature. While successive communist catastrophes have confirmed this criticism, Thompson notes that the Industrial Revolution also featured collectivism and forced suppression of individualism, albeit to a different end, and in this respect also committed violence against human nature. This quotation supports the theme Exploitation and indirectly supports the theme “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity.”

“From this aspect, Methodism was the desolate inner landscape of Utilitarianism in an era of transition to the work-discipline of industrial capitalism.”

Thompson views Methodism as a repressive tool in the hands of factory-system theorists who sought to maximize industrial efficiency; the bureaucratic obsession with efficiency is one of Utilitarianism’s conspicuous features. This quotation supports the theme Exploitation.

“It is clear that between 1780 and 1830 important changes took place. The ‘average’ English working man became more disciplined, more subject to the productive tempo of ‘the clock,’ more reserved and methodical, less violent and less spontaneous.”

Putting the word “average” in quotation marks is a cynical reference to the way empiricists and economic historians posit that statistical averages can accurately assess the English working man’s well-being. Thompson, of course, views the Industrial Revolution’s destructive work-discipline as a more meaningful measure of the working man’s experience. This quotation supports the themes “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity” and Exploitation.

“It is neither poverty nor disease but work itself which casts the blackest shadow over the years of the Industrial Revolution.”

This sentence offers the clearest and simplest statement of Thompson’s major argument regarding the Industrial Revolution’s violent transformation of work. It supports the theme Exploitation.

“The First Empire struck a blow at English republicanism from which it never fully recovered. The Rights of Man had been most passionate in its indictment of thrones, Gothic institutions, hereditary distinctions; as the war proceeded, Napoleon’s accommodation with the Vatican, his king-making and his elevation of a new hereditary nobility, stripped France of its last revolutionary magnetism. Ca Ira faded in the memories even of the Nottingham crowd. If the Tree of Liberty was to grow, it must be grafted to English stock.”

While Part 2 focused on the industrial context, this passage highlights Thompson’s resumption of the political narrative in Part 3. Napoleon Bonaparte’s betrayal of the French Revolution’s egalitarian ideals meant that English Radicals eager for reform or revolution had no choice but to seek inspiration in their own history and traditions. As a reminder of Europe’s general reaction against the French Revolution, this quotation supports the theme Counter-Revolution.

“To isolate and terrorise potential revolutionaries, it was possible to adopt a policy of deliberate provocation. In this sense, it was the policies of Pitt, in repressing the corresponding societies, which set in motion the logic which led to both Oliver the Spy and the Pentridge Rising of 1817. These years reveal such a foul pattern of faked evidence, intimidation and double agents, that it is possible to regret that the logic did not work itself out to its proper conclusion. If the Cato Street conspirators had achieved their object in the assassination of the Cabinet, the Cabinet would have been slain by conspirators whom their own repressive policies had engendered, and their own spies had armed.”

This passage is Thompson at his angriest. Sometimes it is difficult even for professional historians to read about the millions of people across the world who have been lied to, spied on, silenced, imprisoned, and/or murdered by their own governments without feeling “regret” at the failure of revolutionary conspiracies. This quotation supports the theme Counter-Revolution.

“For this reason the secret political tradition appears either as a series of catastrophes (Despard, Pentridge, Cato Street), or else as a trickle of propaganda so secretive and small-scale, and so hemmed in by suspicion, that it scarcely had any effect, except in those places where it effected a junction with the secret industrial tradition. Such a junction took place in the Luddite movement, and in Nottingham and Yorkshire the Luddites resisted permeation by spies with extraordinary success. Here the authorities were faced with a working-class culture so opaque that (unless a Luddite prisoner broke down under questioning and in fear of the scaffold) it resisted all penetration.”

While the previous quotation highlighted (and lamented) the English government’s political repression, this passage introduces the other side of that coin. Thompson’s reading of historical evidence suggests that England’s nascent working class did indeed have both a secret political tradition and a secret industrial tradition; that these traditions came together in the Luddite movement of 1811-1817; and that the English government, for all its success in suppressing a general insurrection, struggled to quell popular Radicalism, particularly in the Luddite counties. This quotation supports the theme Counter-Revolution. 

“On the other hand, the men faced the fire of their employers, who gained every day fresh reinforcements from the disciples of laissez faire. The Corn Laws of 1815 were to reveal how far the aristocracy and gentry were from real assent to these doctrines. But the war-time Ministry found it convenient to accept the arguments of ‘free competition,’ in so far as they militated against working-class, rather than landed, interests, out of sheer counter-revolutionary opportunism.”

The most powerful members of the English ruling class adopted laissez-faire principles only when it suited them, and it did not suit the landed aristocracy to abandon protections for their own privileged position. This quotation supports the themes Counter-Revolution and Exploitation.

“Its true heroes were the local booksellers and newsvendors, trade union organisers, secretaries and local speakers for the Hampden Clubs and Political Unions—men who did not expect to become honoured life-pensioners of the movement as a reward for imprisonment, and who, in many cases, were too obscure to do more than leave a few records of their activity in the local press or the Home Office papers. These men provided the platform without which their disputatious, protestant leaders would have been impotent; and they often watched the quarrels among the leadership with dismay.”

Radicalism’s “disputatious, protestant leaders” (by “protestant,” Thompson means individualistic or unconnected to any larger group—it’s not a reference to the Christian denomination) failed to organize the movement at a national level, in part from their own vanity, but primarily due to the government’s repressive measures. Hence, much credit for Radicalism’s endurance and growth belongs to obscure actors at local levels who have left little trace of their activities in the historical record. Read as a critique of scholars who neglect these “true heroes,” this quotation supports the theme “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity.”

“The Government wanted blood—not a holocaust, but enough to make an example.”

The English government’s desire for “blood” and “to make an example” of revolutionary conspirators explains why its agents not only helped provoke the abortive Pentridge Rising of 1817, but also allowed the Rising to proceed until suppressed by troops. This quotation supports the theme Counter-Revolution.

“In 1817 this world was passing. By 1819, in whole regions of England, it had passed. The defences of deference had been weakened by Dissent and (despite itself) by Methodism. They had been challenged by Luddism and Hampden Clubs.”

For centuries, England’s aristocrats had grown accustomed to receiving deference from those they considered their social inferiors. This is the “world” that “had passed” by 1819 thanks to democratizing forces in religion, industry, and politics. This quotation supports the themes Counter-Revolution and Exploitation by noting the consequences of those two forces.

“We shall probably never be able to determine with certainty whether or not Liverpool and Sidmouth were parties to the decision to disperse the meeting with force. But we can no more understand the significance of Peterloo in terms of the local politics of Manchester than we can understand the strategic importance of Waterloo in terms of the field and the orders of the day. If the Government was unprepared for the news of Peterloo, no authorities have ever acted so vigorously to make themselves accomplices after the fact.”

In the aftermath of the 1819 Peterloo massacre, the government adopted more repressive legislation (the Six Acts). Whether or not the Ministry approved the decision that led to the massacre, its response to the bloodshed left no doubt of its hostile attitude toward mass demonstrations on the part of the nascent working class. This quotation supports the theme Counter-Revolution.

“But what the counter-revolution sought to repress grew only more determined in the quasi-legal institutions of the underground. Whenever the pressure of the rulers relaxed, men came from the petty workshops or the weavers’ hamlets and asserted new claims. They were told that they had no rights, but they knew that they were born free. The Yeomanry rode down their meeting, and the right of public meeting was gained. The pamphleteers were gaoled, and from the gaols they edited pamphlets. The trade unionists were imprisoned, and they were attended to prison by processions and bands with union banners.”

This passage, which appears on the book’s penultimate page, highlights Radicalism’s resilience. It supports the theme Counter-Revolution. In an indirect way, it also supports the theme “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity” by emphasizing the role working-class people played in shaping their own movement.