The Making of the English Working Class

by E.P. Thompson

This account of artisan & working-class society in its formative years, 1780-1832, adds an important dimension to our understanding of the 19th century. E.P. Thompson shows how the working class took part in its own making & recreates the whole life experience of people who suffered loss of status & freedom, who underwent degradation & who yet created a culture & political consciousness of great vitality. "Thompson's book has been called controversial, but perhaps only because so many have forgotten how explosive England was during the Regency & the early reign of Victoria. Without any reservation, The Making of the English Working Class is the most important study of those days since the classic work of the Hammonds."--Commentary "Mr Thompson's deeply human imagination & controlled passion help us to recapture the agonies, heroisms & illusions of the working class as it made itself. No one interested in the history of the English people should fail to read his book."--Times Literary Supplement

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, Sociology, European History, Labor

Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Edward Palmer Thompson was an English historian, writer, marxist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class (1963). He also published influential biographies of William Morris (1955) and (posthumously) William Blake (1993) and was a prolific journalist and essayist. He also published the novel The Sykaos Papers and a collection of poetry.

Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Although he left the party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he nevertheless remained a "historian in the Marxist tradition," calling for a rebellion against Stalinism as a prerequisite for the restoration of communists' "confidence in our own revolutionary perspectives". Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the late 1950s. He was a vociferous left-wing socialist critic of the Labour governments of 1964–70 and 1974–79, and during the 1980s, he was the leading intellectual light of the movement against nuclear weapons in Europe.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this whilst at University in 1979; all 900 pages of it. I thought then, and I still think that it is one of the best academic history books ever written. It has its faults and controversies, but it changed the way history was studied following its publication in 1963. Thompson put at the centre the study of class and looked at those outside of the powerful elites of church and state and most closely at the lives of ordinary people; the Luddites, the weavers, early Methodists, followers of the prophetess Joanna Southcott (ever heard of her?), the mob, papists, artisans, agricultural workers, the new factory workers, trade unionists and so on. This is commonplace now, but it wasn’t then.
Thompson was a Marxist intellectual in the same tradition and generation as Christopher Hill and Eric Hobsbawm; but in my opinion a better historian. Thompson was a communist, who left the party in 1956 following the invasion of Hungary; as did many others. He was interested in the nature of class and the nature of Englishness; the working class being a in struggle with the middle class/bourgeoisie. He was interested because he brought his ideas into the present; he was a strong critic of the labour governments of the 60s and 70s and in later life concentrated on the campaign against nuclear weapons.
There are too few women in the book (working class women were even more invisible than working class men); but Thompson’s principal of ignoring “the enormous condescension of posterity” and looking at the lives of the Luddites, followers of “Captain Swing”, Joanna Southcott and the like and taking them seriously still holds. There are parallels; today’s political parties have ignored white working class men in recent years just those people who are now most likely to swallow the ideas of mavericks like Nigel Farrage and vote UKIP. Thompson is interested in why there was no revolution in England and whether Methodism was responsible and in the beliefs and struggles of workers in the industrial revolution.
One of the most interesting analyses in the book for me was the dissection of early Methodist worship which has application to all forms of emotional religious worship. At the time I was struggling with my own beliefs and this came as a breath of fresh air. It also caused great controversy, especially one particular line. Thompson referred to emotional religious worship as:

“a ritualised form of psychic masturbation"

You can imagine how that played with the fundamentalists! Thompson also subjects the language of Methodist hymnody;

Come, O my guilty brethren come,
Groaning beneath your load of sin!
His bleeding heart shall make you room,
His open side shall take you in ....

to a psychological analysis and puts it in a political and social context. He also develops Lecky’s argument that fundamentalist religion (in particular Methodist evangelicalism here) is a system of religious terrorism and looks at why it was so popular. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, but only a small part of the book. Thompson ranges across the whole plethora of ideas developed from the Civil War and the French Revolution. The pages are full of strange and startling characters. Joanna Southcott is particularly interesting (the last Southcottian died in 2012), but there are many others. Thompson is especially strong in his description of working class organisations. This is well worth reading and I found it a lead into so many other topics.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was first published the year I was born. That ought to perhaps speak against it being a book worth reading today – not because the year I was born was a particularly hopeless one, but because 55 years is a significant amount of time and often, on a topic like this one, new research makes a book like this a bit obsolete. This is also quite a long book, so you might think there could easily be a newer, leaner and snappier version of this somewhere. And there probably is. The point here is that this book will continue to be read even if such an alternative recent book proves to be better aimed at our diminished concentration spans and so on. That will be due as much to the method used in this book, rather than just its literal content. But we will get to that at the end of this review.

I’m not going to spend any time on the relationship this book has to Methodism, other than to say that while Methodism doesn’t come out of this book terribly well, and I can definitely see that if I were a Methodist the thought of a dartboard with this guy’s face on it would seem pretty appealing, this book is probably kinder to Methodism than Methodists might come away thinking. He makes it clear that Methodism was in a difficult position since it was trying to be the religion of both the capitalist class and the working class – and as the interests of those two classes diverged, that made Methodism being one thing to all sides increasingly difficult. There were stands that needed to be made, and sides that needed to be taken – and too often those stands were going to put one side off in equal measure to how they made the other side happy.

However, this is a book about the making of the working class, and in many ways that class was made by the organisational structures the members of that class were able to bring to what was the nascent trade union movement. And those organisational structures seem to have been borrowed from those of the Methodist churches.

One of the things I found particularly interesting here was the discussion of the Luddites. I’ve been taught about the Luddites since high school and the story is always pretty much the same. The Luddites weren’t particularly wrong for feeling screwed over by the new machines that were taking their jobs, but what their efforts proved beyond any doubt was the utter pointlessness of standing in the path of ‘progress’. Like the story of King Canute and the tide, taking arms against the rise of the machines is an exercise in utter futility at best, and self-defeating insanity at worse, since ultimately to win would be to lose more. Luddite today means a pointless protester against the inevitable forward progress of the machine.

The problem here is that we have virtually no voice from those who were Luddites able to speak to us now, since they were often illiterate while also being organised in extremely illegal and therefore remarkably secretive societies. History, therefore, has only left us the voices of those who despised them, those whose machines they had destroyed. Rarely has the phrase ‘history is written by the victors’ seemed more apt.

What is made plain here is that the Luddites were not merely pointlessly protesting that their jobs were being replaced by machines – rather, they didn’t even feel this was quite the case. The work they did was highly skilled and so also very well remunerated. The work the machines did lacked the quality of these workers skills, but it was being sold as if it was of the same quality – and so this outpouring of a lower quality product also lowered the esteem in which their own craft would be held. Often all they were asking for was for the lower quality product to be referred to as lower quality. Furthermore, the capitalists who were introducing the machines that were turning this lower quality product out were simultaneously depressing the wages of these artisans’ fellow workers, to levels where it was inevitable there would be a severe conflict between the workers and their employers. What is made clear in this history is that those employers that continued to pay their workers a fair wage were spared having their machines destroyed, even while the machines in the workplaces around them were destroyed. In short, this was about wages more than it was about machines.

The other point to be made here is that even workers meeting as a group of people at this time was frequently to be seen (and treated) as a criminal act. That is, there was no means available for those who became the Luddites to further their own interests other than by illegal means. There was no way to apply pressure on their employers and so the only means available to them were violent protests and the smashing of the property of the employers. Rather than this being an act of rebellion against modern technology – that is, how Luddites are currently remembered – this was a protest against absolute power in the hands of employers over their employees – and this was therefore an early form of trade union activity – that is, an early form of working class solidarity and an expression of working class identity.

Thompson makes it clear that there isn’t a single ‘thing’ that is the working class – but rather that all classes in society only exist in relation to one another. That is, classes are not born as a series of pre-decided characteristics, but rather they are born out of their relationships with the other classes in society, and it is only in those relationships that the interests of one class become clear when compared to those of another – that is, in life, rather than as pre-decided statements of fact. For the Luddites, a highly paid group of people who were, nonetheless, required to sell their skills to the highest bidder, the actions of the capitalist class undermined their ability to provide themselves with a livelihood or to protest against changes that directly impacted them. The smashing of machines was anything but a random act of seeking to hold back the tide of history, but rather an act of self-defence.

Now, even though I found this fascinatingly interesting, it isn’t really why this book ought to continue to be read today – although, like I’ve said already, I’ve read lots of book that mention the Luddites and very few of them put them in this sort of context. The reason why this book is so interesting is that to uncover this history the book couldn’t really rely solely on the official history of the period. That history, as I’ve already said, was written by the enemies of the Luddites. He has gotten some material from court records, statements and so on of those who had been captured as Luddites and that is part of the official historical record. However, many of these people had taken oaths to remain silent – and the secret nature of the organisation also meant that many of them didn’t know the extent of the organisation anyway. This was effectively a guerrilla movement, they are called Luddites after ‘General Ludd’, someone how didn’t actually exist, but was used as a rallying point for those who fought with this general. And so the organisation had many layers of secrecy and clearly remarkable levels of loyalty too. And as I’ve said, many of those involved in the movement were illiterate, or able to read, but not to write, something we often forget are quite different skills.

Because of all this, standard historical sources only allow us to go so far in understanding the motivations and even actions of these people. However, beside the official material available, there is also a rich oral tradition, including a folk tradition of ballads and poetry, and this is used here to remarkable affect. This broadening of the source material available to be used in constructing a history of this kind not only provides the voiceless with a voice, but it gives us that voice in remarkable richness, depth and passion. We are given here a history influenced by the early expressions of cultural theory – and it is one that takes seriously the voices of the people while seeks it out where it is most likely for us to be still able to hear those voices.

This really is a remarkable piece of work. I enjoyed it very much.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, it took me darn near a month to finish this monster (800+ pages) of a book. Can't say I regret the experience, though. Truly , this is a masterpiece, both in terms of its substance and its approach. I could quite easily write more then a thousand words on this book, but hey, this is Amazon, right?
Before I begin, I would like to state up front that I am not a historian or a graduate student of history. Please forgive me if my review contains incorrect statements.

"The Making of the English Working Class" is precisely what its (awkward) title describes: a history of the developments leading to the emergence of the modern industrial working class in England (and Scotland, sort of. Wales and Ireland are excluded, although Irish immigrants living in England to figure in some parts of the book). The time period covered is roughly the 1790's to the 1840's. Thompson starts with a description of "Dissent", discusses the influence of the French Revolution on that tradition (Dissent), spends a good chunk of the book describing the effect of the industrial revolution on the lives and lifestyles of the workers in industrial England, and then spends an equal amount of time describing the reaction of the workers and their leaders to this adjustment in circumstances.

Along the way, Thompson takes a hatchet to historians on the left, right, and center. His section on the change in circumstances of the workers in England is most critical of writers like F.A. Hayek, i.e. those writers who try to say that the industrial revolution "wasn't that bad" or "wasn't bad at all" for the workers. He devotes a good part of Part II of the book to attacking the methods of statistical or economic history. His preference is to use documentary evidence of the time. In this way, the book (published in the 60's) is a forerunner of historical "postmodernism"(Oh, please forgive me for the term), where authors abandon "objective" evidence (economic statistics) in favor of "subjective" evidence (pamphlets, letters and newspapers).

I guess that's hardly a revolutinary arguement now-a-day, but back then, I can hardly imagine.
His section on the reaction of workers to the industrial revolution is rather more critical to historians of the left and center, who sought to discount the violence associated with the Luddite movement as somehow unrepresentative of the working class movement in England. Thompson's revisionist history of the Luddite movement is a tour de force. Really, it's breathtaking.

In my opinion, the book kind of loses steam after that section. Thompson has some harsh words for the London based "leaders" of the workers movement, and I felt his discussion of Owenism left too much to the readers imagination. I don't suppose this book was meant for someone with only a loose grounding in English history, but none the less, that's what I have, so I'm just stuck.

To the extent that I have anything critical to say about this book, it's that Thompson at times presupposes a graduate level education in English history. I haven't read AJP Taylor or Hayek or any of the other authors Thompson attacks. IN the end, though, I felt like it didn't hurt my enjoyment of this book. I would highly recommend it, although you should set aside a good chunk of time to make your way from beginning to end.

[Renin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacobin’in “Casualties of History” isimli podcast’ini de dinlemenizi öneririm kitapla birlikte. Hem podcast, hem de her bölümde verdikleri okuma listeleri çok faydalı oldu benim için.

[Jan-Maat]

Somehow I suspect that more ink has been spilled on the insignificant Battle of Waterloo - insignificant because if not defeated ten miles south of Brussels on the 18th of July Napoleon would have been beaten somewhere else at a later date - than on Primitive Methodism yet to my thinking it is Primitive Methodism and other similar religious movements has had more of an impact on the outlooks, worldviews and cultures of millions of English lives (all the more so considering the knock on impacts on voting patterns and participation in public life). It is those millions who, to varying extents, get some coverage in this book.

The downside of Thompson's book was having read it I didn't have any sense of there having been an English Working Class that came to be through a given historical process (except possibly indirectly by implication).

The upside of this book is it is a hugely wide-ranging (Methodism, Primitive Methodism, Chartism & reform of Parliament, Joanna Southcott & her followers etc etc) look at England at the beginning of the 19th century from a perspective other than that of the Government and generally other than that of the Upper classes. That is reason alone to read it.

This is the perspective on being governed, being spied upon, having agents provocateur work among you and upon you. Something that thanks to this book we can see has been a constant thread in British history since the French revolution yet rarely comes to the surface thinking here of the spying on A.J.P. Taylor presumably for his support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, spying on Christopher Hill and Hobsbawm in contrast seems par for the course. Also undercover police activities among various groups that have come up in the courts of late.

I came away with a sense of the vibrancy, diversity and activity of masses of people who can easily be passed over in political histories or who are only glimpsed as they are transported to Australia, charged by the yeoman cavalry or ignored altogether in favour of the elegance of the Regency era.

Another view

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read this book since having it recommended to me by older high school students during the sixties. Its size and the fear that it would be highly technical put me off. Ironically, I misjudged, just as I had with Das Kapital. Neither Thompson nor Marx were as difficult as I'd expected.

Thompson's book is, as it says, about the English--not the Scottish, not the Welsh, not the Irish, except insofar as they worked in England--lower orders from approximately 1789 (the inspiration of the French Revolution) until about 1832 (the Reform Bill). I write "lower orders" as the notion of a working class arose, according to Thompson, during this period. And this, "the working class", is not, in his acceptation, in the retrospective sense imposed by subsequent sociologists and historians exploring the origins of such. No, rather, as the title suggests, it is in the sense of what some of the lower orders made of themselves during this period. Very much this book is about the self-consciousness and agency of English working men and women.

Although Thompson is usually identified as a Marxist and Communist, he displays none of the bad habits of either. There is no hidebound rhetoric here, nor Procrustrean schemata. This is real historical scholarship, well-documented, as coherent as a fair appraisal of the evidence would seem to allow. It is also, the minds of people being of central concern, a cultural history. While generally dry and matter-of-fact, occasionally the author's humanity, his motive to begin this kind of work in the first place, is made explicit. Insosfar as Marx and Engels (for whom this period was also history, albeit recent history) are mentioned, and it isn't often, it is often to criticize or qualify their testimony.

A warning to American readers: This is an Englishman's history of an England of two centuries ago. Just as one of them might not know of the Battle of Breed's (Bunker--sic) Hill, so it is quite likely that the general American reader might not already know much that the author takes for granted. Peterloo? Cato Street?--I kept a copy of The Columbia Desk Encyclopedia close at hand.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly excellent work of history. I'd had this on my mental "to read" list for a very long time. I'm glad I finally read it. Thompson pulls together a massive amount of research to show how the working class became a group that saw itself as a group. But he shows in great detail the ups and downs of different movements as well as those prominent in them.

[David M]

Been thinking about this book again. I'm thinking we - that is, American society - could use an encyclopedic work called The Makings of a Permanent American Underclass. It would sort of be like Thompson's classic in reverse; rather than the story of how various bonds of solidarity formed against a background of intense material deprivation, it would start with a situation of general affluence and show how class war then recommenced from above, eroding all social bonds to the point where we practically lack the concept of solidarity anymore. This is the story of neoliberalism, I think.

I floated this idea to an old commie friend of mind, and he got back to me with some insight (he's about the same age as me)

As I see it, the emergent underclass has no clear analogue in all of human history. There are older people living on reduced incomes but who own houses and have no student debt, yes. But it is primarily the very young who constitute this giant, unruly mass. The older generation at least has some memory of group solidarity (unions, churches, bowling leagues); but, for the young, I fear the worst. It seems to me that in our condition does indeed revert back to that of the early English working class, the days when riots, rather than strikes, were the dominant mode of political contention. It seems to me that we are inevitably reverting back to an era when riots MUST be the dominant mode of political contention: unemployment, underemployment, deskilling, and the decimation of organized labor make it inevitable that the strike-form will die out sooner rather than later.

As I see it, the need for electoral strategy emerges from the inevitability of the riots to come. Rather than leaders who will merely suppress the next anti-cop riot, we need officials who are willing to communicate with social movements. The issue, then, is two fold: a lack of acceptable politicians that fit this bill (Sanders, Keith Ellison would be two) and a complete lack of meaningful leadership that can reasonably claim to represent and articulate the demands of riotous social movements. Anarchists often speak as if it is necessary to "organize" riots - they are coming one way or the other, and anarchists will play, at best, a trivial role in them. The important thing for activists, then, is to make the state recognize riots as part of political discourse, and respond accordingly. The legacy of bread riots is kept alive across most of the world: a founding (if often suppressed) myth in France and Russia, for instance. And these riots have been on-going across the Global South since the onset of political modernity. The US, however, a perpetual land of affluence from the beginning, has no real sense of the bread riot in its collective memory or its collective political imaginary. For us, the riot can really only be the race riot.

As I see it, the catastrophe of the Trump presidency is that future suppression will be swift and brutal, and it is really only a matter of time before he follows Obama's own precedent to its logical conclusion and uses drones on American citizens on US soil. Even worse, it seems clear to me that something even worse is around the corner: if the Tea Party was a reaction to disappointment with neocon leadership, and Trump is a reaction to anger at the Tea Party, what will come when Trump's staunchest supporters are confronted with the reality of a man who doesn't appear to be very interested in following through with some of his more dire promises? Of course the deportations will continue and perhaps accelerate, but Trump must surely realize the economic devastation that would occur if he actually tried to rapidly deport 3 million people. It seems clear to me that, ultimately, Trump can never live up to his grandiose pledges on simply removing Latinos and on disciplining blacks. What happens when his dumbfuck supporters realize as much?

I'm mostly just trying out some ideas here, I guess. I wonder how much the rabble - a largely suppressed concept in political modernity, but a prominent one for the ancients (and Machiavelli!) - will become significant again. It seems clear to me that a major strategic mistake of the original Black Panthers was to focus on organizing the lumpen elements of the proletariat rather than industrial workers - this left them with a constant distraction of criminality and absurd internal violence. What comes now, when the industrial proletariat has ceased to exist and all that remains is a young, largely urbanized, underclass?

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

EP Thompson’s “The Making of the English Working Class” is a cornerstone of intellectual history and for good reason.

Thompson, in great detail, challenges the commonly held belief that the industrial revolution resulted in progress that made all lives better. Using deep and detailed primary source research, he instead unveils the stories of those workers who had their lives turned upside down by the creation of laissez fairs capitalism and who, in turn, found themselves destitute and starving while industrialists forced them to work in their factories for hours on end. Tracing underground trade unions, banned political literature, and militias of workers breaking public assembly laws, Thompson shows how the industrial revolution created an underclass of English people who in turn fought for many of the democratic institutions (public assemblies, a free press, etc) that have been previously thought to be the work of middle- and upper-class intellectuals.


Thompson’s master work certainly requires prior knowledge of English history, and for this lack of accessibility I’ve knocked down what is otherwise one of the most important works of history written in the 20th century.

[Steve]

Outstanding literature deserves special recognition; I regret being inadequately schooled for this task. Professor Thompson’s substantial work is commendable for depth of scholarship and human perspective. Recounting the story of our elites is relatively easy as archives bulge with the annals of English-speaking rulers. The ruled are another matter. The voices of the oppressed masses through the millennia are mostly lost to our ears today, although it is not difficult to imagine miseries extending to a distressing level across time. Professor Thompson restores a measure of those voices for us with this volume, a history focused on the period from the French Revolution to the beginning of Chartism.

Following the French Revolution, the English propertied class had good reason to worry. What happened in France was apparent to all England, learned and illiterate. Writers like Thomas Paine offered a sharp dagger to the aggrieved, encouragement to have off with a few heads in the name of liberty. England could easily have followed France into revolution. Why didn’t that happen, especially in a country on the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution, where it is possible the number of disgruntled workers was on the rise? In partial answer, the English reactionary forces were aligned to a far greater degree than their French counterparts. The English governors levied and enforced a broad series of capital offences, along with ready suspension of habeas corpus, to maintain control against the governed. In addition, Professor Thompson explains at length the effects of Methodism on rural populations, a religion that was equally friend and foe to social change – the net effect, however, was to dampen revolutionary zeal. Through the corresponding societies, Hampden Clubs, Luddite activism, the Spa Fields riots, the Pentridge Rising, the Peterloo Massacre, and the Cato Street Conspiracy, English society never reached its tipping point, the forces of order prevailed.

As evidence of the quality of Professor Thompson’s writing, note the following commentary on the reformer John Thelwall, member of the London Corresponding Society:

After the decline of the movement [English Jacobins] it became customary to disparage "poor Thelwall": in the early 19th century he was a figure of pathos—vain, haunted by a not unjustifiable sense of persecution, earning his living as a teacher of elocution. He also had the misfortune to be a mediocre poet—a crime which, although it is committed around us every day, historians and critics cannot forgive. De Quincey, who was brought up "in a frenzied horror of jacobinism . . . and to worship the name of Pitt" was only expressing the opinion current amongst the next generation of intellectual radicals when he referred to "poor empty tympanies of men, such as Thelwall". The opinion has followed him to this day.

The author is not afraid to level criticism against any actor in this drama, regardless of position, conduct I endorse, provided it is deserved.

Reactionary forces can operate in surprising synchronicity. We know from the French and Russian revolutions that established interests are never exempt from destruction, or even death, but in civilization’s casino, the odds are heavily tilted in favor of Old Corruption. And thus we have an impressive history of an English repression that overcame a potent Jacobin threat, and then in the United States, the successful counter-Reconstruction that continues still. These outcomes may seem enriched ground for conspiracy theories to take root and thrive. But there is no grand plan afoot, no Secret Society for the Perpetual Dominance of the Few over the Many. Rather, what we do see is human nature – selfish human nature – over and again. At heart is a question of narrow property interests, the haves versus the have-nots. How masterfully the haves have outplayed the have-nots – but not always. That uncertainty makes for both interesting reading and future possibilities.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been my Everest.

It was first shown to me by my lovely husband who has very different reading habits and a very different class background to me. To me nanny is ya ma's ma. To him his nanny was someone employed by his mum and dad to watch him when they were at work....you get the drift.

He reads a LOT of non-fiction and loves this kinds of deep, trying tome whereas I am a lover of fiction, but he pointed it out as a really important text for understanding the deep class issues ingrained in the history of our English heritage. So he bought it for me...like 2 years ago. And here we are I finally finished it!

This book does exactly what it says on the tin with nobs on. Do you want to know everything there is to know about the working class in England between the 18th and 19th century that shaped the way we see class today? Then buy and read this book.

By no means is this a fun and frothy beach read, this is a series academic text and has been incredibly useful in my own literary studies to provide evidence for otherwise spurious claims. If you're an academic in history, literature, sociology etc interested in the 17th, 18th and 19th century or in how class is constructed via religion, laws and revolution then this is the book for you. Great for dipping in and out of as it's very well indexed and contains more than enough references to other texts to keep you going forever.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant work of research; not the easiest book to read although if people are used to reading Marx, they may find it relatively easy. It is definitely worth reading, although I'm afraid that much of this self-identification of the working class has been lost over the past 40 years, that is, since the defeat of the 1984-85 miners' strike in the UK. This happened simultaneously with the Labour Party, which Lenin described as a "bourgeois workers party" losing the ties to the working class that made it a workers party in any sense. Some people I know were taken in by Jeremy Corbyn's petty-bourgeois radicalism, which mostly takes the form of anti-Semitism, but these are the same people who get taken in by every bit of every petty-bourgeois radicalism in the United States, even if they haven't yet voted for the Democrats. If one goes to every demonstration that is called for the purpose of advancing the Democrats' electoral fortunes, or those of some Democrats over other Democrats, one might as well be voting for them. There is more than one way to cross a class line.

The British working class, and the American working class will rise again. (In the meantime, let me recommend reading Trotsky's brilliantly witty writings in 'Where is Britain Going,' formerly published as On Britain84474].

Trotsky's writings on the American working class are not found in one place, but the most important parts can be found in The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution plus Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions.

For the position of the US working class now, read The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.

I am currently reading a collection 'The Dignity of Chartism' by E.P. Thompson's wife, Dorothy Thompson. It seems clear from the style that all their work was collaboration, some more directly than others. I am reading the book on Chartism at the same time as I'm rereading Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution. After learning English (with some help from Shakespeare), some of the first comrades and friends the Marx family and friends made in England were, naturally, Chartists.

Back to Thompson: He has a radically different interpretation of the Luddites than most do, but I'll let him explain that.

(Thompson quit the Communist Party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Peter Fryer, who was sent to report on Hungary by the British 'Daily Worker' found some reactionaries, but mostly he saw what looked to him like soviets--workers councils! He was expelled for his writings on Hungary, which he put together as a pamphlet, 'Hungarian Tragedy,' which I have a copy of, downloaded from the Internet. Well worth reading.).

This has changed from a review to various notes having to do with other books I'm reading, but it has gotten a number of "likes."

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, it's been on my currently-reading shelf for a long time. When I seemed to stall out at around p. 632, I know many of you were worried I would never finish it. But never fear, I braved the final 200 pages and made it all the way to the end.

A book so long contains many different things. Some passages were indeed difficult to get through. But many were absolutely fascinating.

The final chapter, about the Reform Bill of 1832, seemed particularly poignant in the light of the current debacle of health care reform. That is, a story of reform being co-opted by all the wrong people and, having begun with hopes for universal franchise, ending with an alliance between the aristocracy and the new middle-class designed to cut out the working class. Not quite sure if there are exact parallels, but somehow it feels timely.

[Wendy Liu]

took me forever to finish but, worth it!

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review will inevitably be slight and unworthy of its subject, as I am hungry and want to go home and eat supper. Moreover, there is so much to this book that I hardly know where to start. Perhaps this is its greatest strength - it shows a diversity of experiences and details many geographically specific events, building up a fascinating picture of England from 1794 to 1832. I was delighted to discover how much revolutionary sentiment and upheaval took place during the period, as my fascination with the French Revolution stems in part from disappointment at the UK’s more stolid political history. Thompson does talk at times of the reasons why there wasn’t a revolution in England, despite the strong potential for one at times. Geography seems to have played a part: Paris was at the centre of France economically and administratively, as well as in location. London could not claim quite the same; the areas undergoing greatest economic transformation were around Yorkshire. London’s economy and underground political opposition was highly fragmented, struggling to communicate with radical organisations further north. (All that is gross oversimplification, of course.)

Out of the whole book, I would pick the account of Luddism (which I previously knew very little about) as a highlight. The exciting story is told, whilst retaining the caution that historians still know relatively little about how the movement worked. Its antecedents and implications are explored in a really compelling fashion. In fact, considering the length, this is a highly readable book. I now feel much better informed about the heterogenous nature of the Industrial Revolution and efforts to agitate and unionise in response to its cruelties. Although some specific figures are profiled, the book avoids the dangerous trap of ‘Great Man’ history, of concentrating on a few people as personifications of events. That is clearly inappropriate when the history of class formation is being told.

I also appreciated Thompson ending on this note, which still rings all too true:

'Class also acquired a peculiar resonance in English life: everything, from their schools to their shops, their chapels to their amusements, was turned into a battleground of class. The marks of this still remain, but by the outsider they are not always understood.'

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the truly great pieces of British history in which Thompson, in his own words, set out ""to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the 'obsolete' handloom weaver, the 'utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southgate, from the enormous condescension of posterity' and does so brilliantly. An enormous powerful book that helped reshape British social history, refocused English labour history, and shifted Marxist British history in fundamental ways. And on top of that, quite brillliant.

[Parsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

این حجم از اطلاعات و دقایق تاریخی در کنار تفسیر و بررسی آنها آدم را به تعجب وا میدارد. تعجب برای هزار صفحه

[Aaron Watling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thompson is a legend. Reading this book is essential to understanding England. One of the greatest historical works ever. Bosh!

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to actually read this monster because Ian Bone recommended it so highly in Bash The Rich. 937 pages later (not the edition pictured), I feel like I climbed a mountain.

Thompson steers a course between older, "sentimental" historians who paint the English workers and artisans of the early 1800s as lovable sweethearts who never planned insurrections or sabotage and "ideological" historians who view the horrors of the industrial revolution and the development of modern capitalism as inevitable and resistance is not only futile but also just plain wrong. Instead of those poles, Thompson finds the half that's never been told and prepares the way for future "people's histories."

It's probably ridiculous to write a goodreads-sized review of this thing, so I'll just focus on the bits that impressed me the most. The oath taking stuff is cool. I think we should do more of that in our organizations today. The story of "Oliver," an agent provocateur whose import is large enough to occupy a sizable part of the book, is incredible. The Irish are, as always, awesome. The Luddites... man, nobody uses that word correctly nowadays... that was an exciting chapter. Finally, the concluding chapter had me looking in other reference sources for some of the fascinating demagogues Thompson analyzes.

Yeah, it's long, and jumps right in to details that seem strange if, like me, you don't already have some grounding in that period in England, but the subject matter is exciting stuff. Rebels and hangings and secret societies and cults and the occasional uprising... well worth the effort.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A seminal book that I first read at uni and I have come back to three times since. It is a book with an agenda whose author makes no pretense at hiding his sympathies and for which I remain an admirer. It looks at the cultural basis for the evolution of the workers into a class in the factory environment of Victorian Britain. In so doing he describes the class response of the wealthy and privileged to the aspirations of the poor and their traditional reaction of repression.

It is still a pleasure to read, tempered only by a recognition that the defence of property and privilege remains the base motivation of British government - otherwise why no effective wealth tax and why the continued protection of tax avoiders?

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this about 30 years ago and it led me to major in history. I read it again in grad school while studying for prelims and it helped me think about how to write materialist cultural history. I'm reading it again now because it's the 50th anniversary and find myself writing down many quotations whole as I take notes. It contains some of the most provocative and thoughtful observations on historical change, class consciousness, and human experience that I've encountered in any book in any field.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who ever wanted to know more about the other 99% of the British population - those who actually worked for a living - this is THE BOOK. While the overall size of the book may turn people away, at several hundred pages long, it is packed with information that will keep you glued to the pages and not wanting to put it down - and, it is NON-FICTION. I absolutely loved this book, it now has a place in my bookcase because it is just that good.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

it took me SIX MONTHS to read this, but I regret nothing

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was compulsory reading in my university years. Meticulous study, but a little tidy.

[Brendan Campisi · Rating 5 out of 5]

in 'Thinking About History,' Sarah Maza writes that this is a hard book to read today because it's eight hundred pages long, haphazardly organized, and assumes a great deal of background knowledge of 18th/19th century British history. That's all true, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a truly titanic work. On this reading it was clearer than ever why it was so fertile in setting directions for future research; so much historical work in the last 60 years has in some way been following up on a stray insight or suggestion of Thompson's.

[Mardin Aminpour · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson sets out to “rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.” The book serves as a response and a reinterpretation of history against the claims of scholars like T. S. Ashton who sought to demonstrate empirically the improvement of the English working class under the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century England. In order to restore agency to the working class, lost to statistical research and a set of data with which to gauge the dynamics of the period, Thompson offers a radical redefinition of class-consciousness as a historical relationship grounded in the experience of the working class. In other words, “class,” according to Thompson “is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition.” The working class emerges out of the pages of Thompson’s book as a class that “made itself as much as it was made.”
Covering the years from 1790s to 1830s, Thompson views this period as a crucible for the emergence of the industrial working class crippled by a combination of economic exploitation and political oppression. He traces the roots of working class radicalism to the Jacobins of the 1790s, arguing that the economic and political tensions along with the tightening hold of a rigid disciplinarian Methodism over the English society led to a series of protests. The London Corresponding Society (L.C.S.), a radical association founded by artisans, figures prominently in the book as a group that championed Thomas Paine’s advocacy of natural rights and equality in the 1790s. The L.C.S sought to apply the ideas in Paine’ The Rights of Man to British constitutionalism. Their radicalism, however, alarmed the government to the threat of an impending revolution in England similar to the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror in France prompted the English aristocracy and the newly emerging class of industrialists to enter into an alliance against the English Jacobins such as L.C.S. A fierce crackdown ensued and the counter-revolutionary movement ushered in a catastrophic phase for the working class.
Displaced from a familiar world where they worked their professions, weavers, artisans, shoemakers, and others burst onto the political scene with furor and demanded a larger share in parliamentary representation. Thompson describes this period as the resurgence of the Putney Debates among a generation that grew up on the anti-aristocratic morals of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The 1811-13 Luddite crisis embodied resistance against the machine as an Apollyon that devoured jobs. The devastating impact of Napoleonic Wars led to an increase in political radicalism that resulted in the Peterloo Massacre of 1816. The agitation continued unabated through “proliferation of trade union activity, Owenite propaganda, Radical journalism, the Ten Hours Movement, the revolutionary crisis of 1831-2; and, beyond that, the multitude of movements which made up Chartism.” Thompson’s The Making humanizes the working class by giving them voice. The criticism levelled against its Marxist theoretical framework fades into the background in the face of its enormous contribution to the field of social historiography. After the publication of The Making, numerous books made of it a perfect model to follow in writing history ‘form below.’

[Timothy Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a masterpiece of social, political history. It would be too difficult to summarize in the length that it deserves.
As far as readability and attention keeping, there were only two sections that were a bit too detailed and too well researched that dragged this book out. The rest of this book was drenched in research, both secondary and primary sources.

The first section of the book was notable for it was the history of just post French Revolution Britain when a small segment of the working population sought to organize for change while the counter revolutionary goons and fear mongers pushed English isolationism and fear. There were very real riots and dust ups on a large scale during this time when the "God and King" crowd fought to instill fear in the masses. The last part of the book was also fabulous. It centered around the movements cohesiveness in the 1820's and early 1830's when trade union power and organization evolved. This era marked when the middle classes and semi-reformers finally became disgusted with many governmental activities like spying on organizations, entrapping members to commit crimes, and of course the Peterloo massacre of unarmed protestors.
This book details every working class movement, protest, philosophy and leader during one of the most important periods of activism in the western world. Coming with the growth of machinery and the large scale destruction of traditional craftsman, movements sprang up, gained traction, got crushed by the government, or religious bureaucracy, or the Poor Laws, got violent, became aware of the dangers, lost and then gained the middle class moral members of society.

[Asa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Considered by academics to be THE 'exemplar' work of English social history. Also considered a core part of any 'left text' Reading list.

Despite it's status as likely the most intellectually important English history book ever written, this is not a universal history of England. It is about the development of English artisan and working class society from 1780 to 1832.

This very humanist book saved the forgotten impoverished, sometimes utopian, sometimes mystical workers of England of this fundamental period from historical oblivion. These are the years when the working class realized that their interests are fundamentally opposed to the upper class. United by their hatred towards the new industrialism (they were going through what people now call the Industrial Revolution). Yes, they were often fantasy-oriented, backwards-thinking, but we can't relate. Some things like Methodism, probably a more negative influence than positive. But the people of England had their entire way of life turned upside-down and we must empathize, even admire.. and above all, learn.

Who is Joanna Southcott? What is Luddism? Jacobinism? The London Corresponding Society? Read it and learn...

This book proved class was worthy of historical investigation, and began a wave of New Left labor historians. Similar Works can be found on the American working class.

Thompson was indeed a Marxist, but equally important no Stalinist. He sees Marxism as fundamentally humanistic and democratically socialist.

50 years later this book remains at the top of academia. No small feat.

[Chris Caden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m normally reluctant to touch anything larger than 500 pages but The Making, at 900-odd pages, is a readable masterpiece throughout. I kept questioning how it was possible to research something which included so much detail about the individual lives of ordinary people alongside arguments which passionately, and often morally, assessed the major trends of the period.

The horrors of industrialisation, class warfare, the loss of customs and traditions, English radicalism, Thomas Paine, battles over freedom of the press and the early days of industrial trade unionism all appear here next to detailed local stories of oppression and resistance and, when combined, these stories show the formation of working class consciousness.

The book was especially interesting when analysing Methodism and Owenism and how, when the working class applied these theories to their specific communities and circumstances, they transformed them into more empowering creeds than originally intended.

First published in the early 60s, the book has some obvious weaknesses and looks most outdated for its lack of serious analysis of working class women during this time.

I found this book particularly relevant for showing how radical technological change, combined with repressive politics and an exploitative economic system, drove inequality and impoverished a lost generation who had no protections against unrestrained capitalism. I couldn’t help but think of present technological developments and the choices we, as a society, will have to make when managing the consequences of automation.

[Dan Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant combination of good writing, an innovative approach to studying the past, and insightful conclusions about British society during the Industrial Revolution.

For a Marxist, Thompson has a profoundly non-determinist understanding of social class. He believes class emerges from specific human interactions, not preordained social factors. Thompson doesn’t think class is a static historical entity, but he doesn’t write class off as merely an idea, either. There is something there, in his telling: “Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition” (11). The book studies the formation of workers’ social relations in England between 1780 and 1830, in opposition to ruling elites. He regards the Jacobin movement, the work ethic and laborers’ experiences during the Industrial Revolution, Methodism, and “plebeian Radicalism” that began with the Luddite movement as the foundations for the 19th-century working class. Egalitarian traditions among workers figure into the narrative, but Thompson omits Welsh, Scottish, and Irish labor conditions, as he thinks these countries had distinct labor environments. (He does touch on Irish who moved to England.) By bringing culture into the conversation, Thompson shows how Marxists were wrong to look at economics to the exclusion of other historical factors. This is the method by which Thompson weaves an engrossing yarn of workers' struggles, innovations, and dreams for fulfilling work.