The Making of the English Working Class

An apprenticeship is a term of employment, often unpaid, in which an unskilled apprentice learns a trade from a master. While the apprentice develops new skills under the master’s tutelage, the master in turn benefits from the apprentice’s labor. When the apprenticeship ends, the apprentice enters the trade and often becomes a master. Before the existence of trade schools, apprenticeship was the primary method of instruction in most crafts, protecting masters from unskilled frauds whose shoddy work cheapened their products, and from an influx of craftsmen who would flood the market and devalue the masters’ skill. The English government’s repeal of centuries-old apprenticeship laws constituted a major grievance among the skilled artisans. Thompson views the abandonment of apprenticeship protections as a form of industrial-capitalist exploitation and a factor in the making of the English working class.

An artisan was a skilled laborer—a master craftsman who enjoyed both status and independence in the pre-industrial economy. The factory system degraded artisans, in part by destroying their task-oriented workday rhythms and replacing those rhythms with monotonous, clock-oriented labor. Thompson attributes the nascent working-class’s intellectual culture, including its political consciousness, to artisans.

An influential doctrine that emerged early in the Protestant Reformation, Calvinism taught Christians that salvation came only from God’s grace and only to a handful of Elect saints. Puritans, by far the most numerous of England’s 17th-century dissenting sects, adopted this Calvinist tenet. Thompson notes that Calvinism’s exclusive approach to salvation prevented it from appealing to the nascent working class.

Capitalism is an economic system in which individuals (capitalists) own the means of production. While laborers work for a predetermined wage, capitalists earn the profits from their labor. Thompson’s critique of capitalism is twofold. First, while capitalism celebrates economic freedom and unrestrained competition, without rules, the system allows for exploitation of the most vulnerable. Second, capitalism degrades workers and demands their submission. Thompson regards capitalism’s exploitative character as the primary reason historians encounter so much evidence of working-class misery amidst (modest) material prosperity.

In 1820, Radical conspirators led by Arthur Thistlewood planned to assassinate members of the Cabinet. Through its network of spies, the government discovered the plot and executed five conspirators, Thistlewood included. Thompson sees the Cato Street Conspiracy as angry Radicals’ desperate response to the government’s post-Peterloo repression. Thompson also notes that this event put an end to several years of oscillations between constitutional and conspiratorial Radicalism. From 1820 onward, Radicals adopted the constitutional approach.

The Church of England was the established church, which meant that it had the sanction of the government and was tax-supported. As the official state church, it was not the sort of institution that would appeal to revolutionaries. Methodism, however, which grew out from the Church of England, did appeal to the nascent working class, not necessarily for doctrinal reasons but because of its democratic approach to membership: all were welcome.

In simplest terms, a class is a large group of people who share similar identities, experiences, and especially economic interests. For the purpose of generalizing about complex phenomena, discussions of class historically have acknowledged the existence of two or (at most) three classes in any given society. Unlike many social scientists who treat class as a structure or an object for empirical analysis, Thompson views class as a historical relationship between human beings that develops over time.

The Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 prohibited organized trade unions. Thompson views these Acts as a product of both laissez-faire capitalism, which imposed on labor the doctrine of free competition, and counter-revolutionary panic inside the ruling class, which viewed large gatherings of working men as politically suspicious. The Combination Acts forced workers to organize in secret. Parliament repealed the Acts in 1824 due to their ineffectiveness in preventing industrial combinations.

Communitarianism is a system of beliefs that emphasizes the community over the individual. In Thompson’s book, it appears as a general anti-capitalist ethos that includes everything from artisan wistfulness for a pre-industrial economy to the communal experiments inspired by Owenism.

Constitutionalism has two meanings. First, it refers to the belief in an ancient, mostly unwritten, English Constitution that protected both liberty and property rights. In the 18th century, most politically conscious Englishmen regarded the balance between monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, institutionalized by the King or Queen, House of Lords, and House of Commons, respectively, as their Constitution’s most important feature. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man attacked the very ideas of monarchy and aristocracy, inspired English Jacobins to challenge their long-cherished Constitution, and threw the ruling class into a counter-revolutionary panic that lasted for decades. Second, constitutionalism also refers to a strategy, adopted by many Radicals, of working within the law to achieve political reform.

Democracy is a system of government predicated on basic human equality, in which citizens vote for public officials. Democracies do not permit privileged orders such as hereditary monarchs and aristocrats. In the late-18th and early-19th centuries, the English Constitution featured a semi-democratic component, the House of Commons, but it was far from a democracy. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man argued in favor of a fully democratic government and social structure, which appealed to England’s nascent working class.

When capitalized, “Dissent” refers to England’s centuries-old tradition of religious nonconformity. It encompasses all religious groups and doctrines outside the established Church of England. Methodism, to which Thompson devotes nearly two full chapters, originated inside the Church of England, but is distinct from it, so Methodism falls within the dissenting tradition.

In the broadest sense, empiricism refers to a belief that knowledge comes only from observation and experiment. Thompson does not quarrel with empiricism as a system of belief, but he does regard empirical studies of history that reduce human experience to measurable data as insufficient to explain historical events. More specifically, he believes that economists and economic historians have relied too much on quantifiable factors, such as standard of living, in their celebratory studies of industrial capitalism.

For many centuries, English peasants enjoyed access to land held in common. The enclosure movement, which intensified in the 18th century, transferred by law common land into private hands. Thompson views enclosure as a form of capitalist exploitation.

Also known as a “benefit society,” a friendly society was an organization of working men who pooled resources for the purpose of helping individual members during times of need. A friendly society might assist a working man during a period of prolonged illness, for instance, or it might contribute to funeral costs. At a time when formal trade unions were either suspect or illegal, friendly societies organized and met in secret. Thompson views friendly societies as “authentic evidence of the growth of independent working-class culture and institutions” (421).

In 1688-1689, Dutch armies invaded England and helped English Protestants overthrow King James II. Most Englishmen regarded the Glorious Revolution as a triumphant moment in the history of the English Constitution, for the ensuing constitutional settlement resulted in a limited monarchy, regular meetings of Parliament, and a bill of rights, among other things. This settlement endured unchallenged for more than a century before Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man argued for the abolition of all privileged orders, including kings and aristocrats.

In the English legal tradition, a writ of habeas corpus (Latin for “show me the body”) prevents authorities from detaining prisoners indefinitely without presenting charges to a court of law. On several occasions during the French Revolution and its associated wars, Parliament made war on English Radicalism by suspending habeas corpus, in effect allowing the government to detain suspected insurrectionaries while ignoring detainees’ legal rights.

Hampden Clubs were political organizations formed by Radicals to promote reform. Major John Cartwright established the London-based Hampden Club in 1812, and the Clubs quickly spread to England’s industrial North. The English government treated the Hampden Clubs as seditious gatherings and suppressed them by force.

In the English government, the Home Office oversees domestic affairs, including security. Thompson conducted a significant amount of research in the surviving Home Office records, which reveal both the scope of revolutionary activity and the ferocity of counter-revolutionary repression.

During the long era of counter-revolution, which Thompson defines as 1795-1820, the English government prohibited both trade unions and large gatherings of any kind, which forced the nascent working class to organize and operate in secret. Thompson identifies a continuous illegal tradition stretching from the mid-1790s, when the government adopted the repressive Two Acts, through the early decades of the 19th century. This illegal tradition strengthened community ties and played a significant role in the formation of a working-class consciousness.

The Industrial Revolution, which occurred in England in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, effected a dramatic change in the relationship between human beings and the means of economic production. Its most significant features include the introduction of the factory system and the invention of labor-saving machinery. Industrialization improved manufacturing efficiency and made material goods widely available, but it also created significant tension between the capitalists who owned the means of production and the laborers who worked for them. Thompson regards the Industrial Revolution as a component of a much broader industrial-capitalist system of exploitation.

In 1798, thousands of revolutionaries led by the United Irishmen, who hoped to establish an Irish republic, rebelled against English rule. The English government suppressed the Irish Rebellion with particular ruthlessness. Casualties numbered in the tens of thousands. Thompson explains the Irish Rebellion as a product of Jacobinism, which, though stifled in England by the Two Acts, survived into the 19th century and spawned revolutionary conspiracies.

In 1792-93, Jacobins emerged from France’s lower class and helped radicalize the French Revolution. English Jacobins shared their French counterparts’ republican aspirations. Thompson notes, however, that English Jacobins, though inspired by the French Revolution, were shaped primarily by English experiences and hoped to establish an English republic.

Laissez-faire is an economic philosophy of minimal government interference. Often associated with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), laissez-faire emphasizes the benefits of economic freedom. Smith wrote Wealth of Nations to demonstrate the foolishness of mercantilism, a prevailing 18th-century economic theory that justified both imperialism and government protection of domestic industries on grounds that all wealth is finite and resources scarce. Industrial capitalists, however, seized upon Smith’s theory as an argument for the removal of all economic restraints, in particular those designed to protect labor. Thompson, therefore, treats laissez-faire as an instrument of exploitation.

The London Corresponding Society was an organization of English Jacobins open to all who supported the French Revolution and the ideas of Thomas Paine. In 1794, its leaders were arrested and its activities made illegal. Thompson introduces the LCS in the first paragraph of the first chapter because he regards its “members unlimited” principle as a harbinger of a new kind of nascent working-class organization.

In 1811-1812, Luddites engaged in violent resistance to counter-revolution and exploitation. Concentrated in the three industrial areas of Nottingham, Lancashire, and the West Riding (Yorkshire), Luddism traditionally has been viewed as a backlash against labor-saving machinery that displaced human workers. Thompson, however, treats the Luddites as aspiring revolutionaries who blended political and industrial grievances. In 1812, the English government deployed 12,000 troops to suppress the Luddite insurrection.

Libertarian political philosophy emphasizes the danger of concentrated and unrestrained government power. Although Thompson writes from a Marxist perspective, he also emphasizes English Radicalism’s libertarian character. William Cobbett’s critique of Old Corruption, for instance, highlights war, debts, and taxes as the primary methods of government oppression, as well as of the upward redistribution of wealth.

Malthusianism, based on the writings of English economist Thomas Malthus, is the belief that population growth could curtail the availability of resources. For this reason, advocates of Malthusianism argue for population control. While Malthusianism can take different forms, Malthusians historically have focused their efforts on reducing the number of children born to poor people. Thompson regards Malthusianism as a manifestation of class hatred.

In 1817, authorities in Manchester formed a militia regiment called the Yeomanry to counter what they perceived as a growing Radical threat in the area. On August 16, 1819, the Yeomanry, which included cavalry on horseback, attacked a large crowd of demonstrators at St. Peter’s Fields, killing 11 and wounding hundreds. This massacre became known to English history as “Peterloo.”

Marxism, based on the writings of 19th century German philosopher Karl Marx, is the belief that history is defined by class struggle, oppressors versus oppressed. It emphasizes in particular the exploitative character of industrial capitalism and predicts a worldwide revolution of the working class. Although he rejects totalitarian communism, Thompson shares Marx’s internationalism and accepts Marx’s critique of industrial capitalism. As evidenced by his harsh treatment of Methodism, Thompson also shares Marxism’s disdain for organized religion.

Established in the late 18th century by the Anglican minister John Wesley, Methodism, as Thompson describes it, became the preferred religion of both industrial capitalists and the nascent working class. In its emphasis on discipline and order, Methodism suited the purposes of industrial capitalism. In its democratic approach to membership, however, it appealed to the working class by providing a center of community. Thompson devotes nearly two full chapters to Methodism as a formative influence on the working class.

Old Corruption is the pejorative term Radicals used to describe the English government’s most conspicuous defects, in particular its unrepresentative electoral system and its veritable army of bureaucrats, including “pensioners” or “placemen” with exorbitant salaries and no public utility, most of whom received offices as a reward for loyalty to the Ministry. As William Cobbett described it, Old Corruption thrived on the government’s endless wars, which resulted in a national debt that provided the excuse to raise the taxes that paid for the Ministry’s minions in the bureaucracy. The more English working men read about Old Corruption in Cobbett’s Political Register and elsewhere, the more they came to view their government as hostile to their interests.

In 1817, a group of insurrectionaries near Nottingham launched a rebellion designed to overthrow the English government. The Rising was quickly suppressed by troops. The English government knew of the Rising in advance thanks to a well-placed spy named William Oliver. Traditional accounts emphasize Oliver’s role in instigating the insurrection, and Thompson notes that the government often resorted to such dirty tricks in an effort to expose Radicals and make examples of them. Thompson also acknowledges, however, that the Rising began in one of the Luddite strongholds, and there is further evidence of a wider revolutionary conspiracy.

On August 16, 1819, tens of thousands of men, women, and children gathered at St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester to hear Radical speakers and to demonstrate for the right of public assembly. Manchester authorities dispersed the crowd by force, killing 11 and wounding hundreds more. This massacre endures in English memory as “Peterloo,” an event that revealed the English government’s counter-revolutionary ferocity. Whether or not it knew about the decision to attack the crowd in Manchester, the government gave the massacre its retroactive stamp of approval by adopting the tyrannical Six Acts and embarking on a fresh wave of persecution.

On the theory that poor people required forceful incentive to labor, the Poor Law of 1834 imposed a Malthusian and Utilitarian vision of poor relief by creating workhouses akin to prisons. If conditions inside these workhouses were sufficiently appalling, the poor would be motivated to avoid them by seeking and finding work. Although the Poor Law of 1834 falls just outside the period covered by the book, Thompson uses this law as a grotesque example of class legislation and an encapsulation of ruling-class attitudes.

Radicalism describes a wide range of reformist ideas that appealed to the nascent working class. In the 1790s, Jacobinism emerged as a revolutionary and republican ideology rooted in the arguments of Thomas Paine. After counter-revolution forced Jacobins underground and Napoleon Bonaparte deprived Jacobins of their noble French example in the early 19th century, Jacobinism’s remnants blended into a more broad-based tradition that Thompson calls Radicalism. Radicalism’s defining feature is its resistance to political counter-revolution and/or industrial-capitalist exploitation.

A monumental event in English political history, the Reform Act of 1832 extended voting rights to some members of the middle-class and eliminated certain unrepresentative elements of Old Corruption. Undemocratic by modern standards, the Reform Act of 1832 nonetheless stands as a landmark moment of political liberalization in England. The Making of the English Working Class concludes in 1832, not because the Reform Act met working-class demands, but because the agitation surrounding the debate revealed that the working class, in fact, had been made.

Adopted in the aftermath of Peterloo, the Six Acts added warrantless searches and a new stamp tax to the government’s set of counter-revolutionary tools. Thompson describes these acts as precursors to “the most sustained campaign of prosecutions in British history” (700). The Six Acts, however, also mark a counter-revolutionary apex, as Radical defiance of the stamp tax in particular throughout the 1820s effectively established a free press.

Toryism refers to a conservative social and political tradition that emphasizes order and places immense value on historical institutions and practices. English Tories generally supported both the monarchy and the established Church of England. Tories and Radicals might not seem like natural allies, but Thompson notes that Tory paternalists often objected to the same exploitative economic practices as did the Radicals. William Cobbett, for instance, harbored both Tory and Radical sympathies.

A trade union is an organization of workers in a particular industry who combine for the purpose of advancing their shared interests. As opposed to the unskilled unions of the later 19th century, early trade unions consisted of skilled artisans—craftsmen who had been displaced and degraded by industrial capitalism and the factory system. Under the Combination Acts, trade unions were illegal from 1799 to 1824, but many thrived in secret.

In 1795, in response to the perceived threat of revolutionary Jacobinism, the English government criminalized anti-government speech and prohibited public gatherings of 50 or more people. These Two Acts marked the beginning of a counter-revolution that lasted for 25 years.

Most often associated with the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarianism ascribes morality to actions that result in maximum happiness for the greatest possible number of people. An act’s “utility,” or usefulness, thus derives from the act’s consequences rather than the actor’s intentions. In the public realm, Utilitarians attempt to formulate policy based on factual analysis rather than prevailing theories. 19th-century Utilitarians, for instance, embraced both Malthusianism and the doctrine of supply and demand. For this reason, according to Thompson, Utilitarianism appealed more to the middle class than to the working class.