The Making of the English Working Class

Chapter 1 establishes the historical context for all of Part 1. It opens with a quotation from the “leading rules” of the London Corresponding Society (LCS), a group of pro-democracy reading and debating clubs: “That the Number of our Members be unlimited” (17)—a feature that marked the LCS as “a new kind of organization” (21). 

The LCS rule of unlimited membership was significant because it was a direct counter to suffrage laws that had been in place since the mid-17th century. After the English Civil War of the 1640s, Puritan soldiers insisted that the Glorious Revolution they had just won earned them the right to vote for representatives to Parliament, but newly installed Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell maintained that only men who owned property could be permitted to vote. The ensuing constitutional settlement of 1688-89 reinforced the connection between property and voting rights, a connection that endured for more than a century. The LCS and other popular societies inspired by the French Revolution challenged this settlement.

The chapter concludes by identifying three problems that illustrate the complexities of English social and political traditions near the end of the 18th century: religious dissent, in particular the influence of Methodism; the role of the mob; and the concept of liberty as an Englishman’s birthright.

England’s dissenting religious tradition had a profound influence on the popular political movements of the 1790s. Thompson identifies John Bunyan’s novel Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) as “one of the two foundation texts of the English working-class movement” (31)—the other being Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1792). The chapter’s title refers to two of Bunyan’s principal characters. On his journey to the Celestial City, Christian, the book’s protagonist, encounters “aristocratic enemies” and fights the monstrous Apollyon, who represents “the powers of the State” (32-33). 

In contrast, Methodism had a complex and sometimes contradictory influence. On the one hand, Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, operated from inside the established Church of England and thus rejected egalitarian social or political ideas. On the other hand, Wesley adopted the evangelical practice of preaching to the poor and offering them the hope of salvation, which Calvinism denied to all but a few elect. Furthermore, notwithstanding his High-Church Toryism, Wesley created Methodist societies that were open to all who wished to join.

Communitarianism and millenarianism, enduring elements of the dissenting tradition, also had significant influence upon the popular movements of the 1790s and beyond. Thompson deems English dissent’s “complexity” as that tradition’s “most important characteristic” (51). 

Chapter 3 describes the “sub-political” consciousness of the “inarticulate” (55): prostitutes, pub-goers, and petty thieves who left little or no evidence of their existence outside of crime records. In light of ruling-class paternalism and a draconian legal code, these records pose problems for historians interested in learning how the poor and voiceless understood their own experiences.

Thompson sees evidence of their rising class consciousness in the behavior of the 18th-century mob, which took two different forms. The first and most common form of mob action was the food riot, which occurred during times of extreme privation due to famine. Food riots, however, also served to enforce popular notions of fair pricing. Food rioters targeted those who engaged in “exploitative action calculated to raise the price of provisions” (67), particularly of bread. The second form of mob action was political in nature, called forth by an external agent seeking to apply pressure toward a political end. In such cases, the crowd’s sentiments, however sincere, were controlled. These incidents, such as the Wilkite riots of the 1760s and the Gordon Riot of 1780, sprang from a combination of spontaneity and manipulation. They were also the last of their kind in London. After the French Revolution, mobs consisted of either political Radicals or hired thugs sent by the government to intimidate them.

Chapter 4 establishes the crucial political context in which English Jacobinism emerged in the 1790s. The Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 produced a constitutional settlement that endured for more than a century. England’s unwritten constitution amounted to a set of judicial precedents and institutional arrangements that had evolved over centuries. Its key features included a constitutional (rather than absolute) monarchy, regular Parliaments, and limited-yet-meaningful protections for certain individual freedoms. In the 18th century, it was widely believed that the English Constitution guaranteed English liberty, and every “Free-born Englishman” knew that liberty was his “birthright” (79). All political conversations, debates, and behavior occurred within the framework of this constitutional consensus. Even the sincerest reformers sought to purify rather than replace the English Constitution.

Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1792) changed everything. In 1790, Edmund Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which extolled the virtues of the English Constitution and denigrated poor people by describing them as the “swinish multitude” (90). In response, Paine attacked the hereditary principle on which the English Constitution was based, declaring that all kings are robbers and tyrants, that corrupt aristocrats and courtiers enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, and that the English Constitution represents only privileged social orders, though it should represent people, who are, after all, the only proper source of authority. Furthermore, Paine argued, human nature is not fundamentally depraved, as Burke suggests. A democratic regime, in Paine’s view, might adopt social legislation (he proposes universal public education and even something akin to Social Security). It also might put a stop to the ruling class’s costly, destructive, and endless wars. In short, Paine’s arguments transcended the narrow bounds of constitutionalism and infused the English Jacobin movement with both optimism and energy.