The Making of the English Working Class

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1963

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Part 1, Chapter 4

Part 1, Chapter 5

Part 2, Chapters 6-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-12

Part 3, Chapters 13-14

Part 3, Chapter 15

Part 3, Chapter 16

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 3, Chapter 16Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “The Working-Class Presence”

Part 3, Chapter 16 Summary: “Class Consciousness”

Chapter 16 traces the history of popular Radicalism through the 1820s. The chapter is divided into five subsections: “The Radical Culture,” “William Cobbett,” “Carlile, Wade and Gast,” “Owenism,” and “‘A Sort of Machine.’”

The first three subsections focus on Radicalism’s literary culture. Richard Carlile, for instance, led the fight for freedom of the press. As editor of The Republican, Carlile “hoisted the black ensign of unqualified defiance and, like a pirate cock-boat, sailed straight into the middle of the combined fleets of the State and Church” (720). He suffered years of imprisonment for his trouble. Other printers simply evaded the stamp tax imposed by the Six Acts. Satirists lampooned the government. Each new publication chipped away at counter-revolutionary censorship and helped create the literary culture of the 1820s. William Cobbett occupies the most exalted place among Radicalism’s polemicists for providing the tone and language necessary to help Radicals understand and fight Old Corruption. Other notable publications include John Wade’s Gorgon, a penny paper that considered Utilitarianism as a possible solution to the plight of the working class, and John Gast’s Trades Newspaper, which touted the prospects of labor unions and rejected Malthusianism.

Another component of the intellectual history of the 1820s was communitarianism. The fourth subsection describes Owenism, a movement named for mill owner Robert Owen, who founded the communitarian experiment at New Lanark. Owen’s ideas reflect a curious combination of paternalism, Utilitarianism, and millenarianism. The broader communitarian movement Owen inspired, however, included working-class initiatives such as the Equitable Labour Exchanges of London and Birmingham. All of these communities failed, but for Thompson, what’s important is that these communities reflected a working-class consciousness. In “‘A Sort of Machine,’” Thompson declares that “the limits of this study have been reached” and the working class “has been made” (807).

Part 3, Chapter 16 Analysis

By the standards of 1810-19, the 1820s were quiet years. This is not a measure of Radicalism’s newfound strength, as well as its increasingly working-class identity.

After a quarter-century of counter-revolutionary repression, Radicals secured a free press, via the exertions of Richard Carlile and others, and the freedom of assembly—the result of Peterloo. These were substantial victories. Thompson summarizes: “There is perhaps no country in the world in which the contest for the rights of the press was so sharp, so emphatically victorious, and so particularly identified with the cause of the artisans and labourers” (720). While Carlile became the face of the fight to achieve freedom of the press, other newspaper editors and publishers added substance to debates over public policy. Disagreements over Utilitarianism, for instance, show that Radicalism was by no means monolithic.

Thompson describes Owenism as the Methodism of communitarian living. Much as Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, had his own ideas of what Methodism should mean to church members, Robert Owen had his own reasons for establishing a communitarian experiment. Thompson describes Owen as sincere in his desire to help working people but also as a “preposterous thinker” (786) who “had a vacant place in his mind where most men have political responses” (783). Working people gravitated toward Owenism in spite of its founder, just as they gravitated toward Methodism in spite of Wesleyan doctrine.