More specific methods were used to maintain the hostility of the poorer classes to delinquents (the use of ex-convicts as informers, police spies, strike-breakers or thugs). There has been a systematic confusion between offences against common law and those offences against the severe legislation concerning the livret (work record), strikes, coalitions, associations,22 for which the workers demanded political status. Workers’ action was regularly accused of being animated, if not manipulated, by mere criminals (cf., for example, Monfalcon, 142). Verdicts were often more severe against workers
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