The Making of the English Working Class

by E.P. Thompson

whole communities, in particular of weavers and stockingers, had come to combine their Methodism and their Chartism.

But this was not preached at, but by, the poor. In this and other sects, the local preachers made the Church their own; and for this reason these sects contributed far more directly to the later history of trade unionism and political Radicalism than the orthodox Connexion.

The chapel in the agricultural village was inevitably an affront to the vicar and the squire, and a centre in which the labourer gained independence and self-respect.

Let them go to those men who preached Christ and a full belly, Christ and a well-clothed back—Christ and a good house to live in—Christ and Universal Suffrage.1

The urban culture of 18th-century England was more “rural” (in its customary connotations), while the rural culture was more rich, than we often suppose. “It is a great error to suppose,” Cobbett insisted, “that people are rendered stupid by remaining always in the same place.” And most of the new industrial towns did not so much displace the countryside as grow over it.

But this was a conscious resistance to the passing of an old way of life, and it was frequently associated with political Radicalism.1 As important in this passing as the simple physical loss of commons and “playgrounds”,2 was the loss of leisure in which to play and the repression of playful impulses. The Puritan teachings of Bunyan or Baxter were transmitted in their entirety by Wesley: “Avoid all lightness, as you would avoid hell-fire; and trifling, as you would cursing and swearing. Touch no woman …”. Card-playing, coloured dresses, personal ornaments, the theatre—all came under Methodist prohibition. Tracts were written against “profane” songs and dancing;3 literature and arts which had no devotional bearing were profoundly suspect; the dreadful “Victorian” Sabbath began to extend its oppression even before Victoria’s birth.

It is clear that between 1780 and 1830 important changes took place. The “average” English working man became more disciplined, more subject to the productive tempo of “the clock”, more reserved and methodical, less violent and less spontaneous.

While many contemporary writers, from Cobbett to Engels, lamented the passing of old English customs, it is foolish to see the matter only in idyllic terms. These customs were not all harmless or quaint.

The passing of Gin Lane, Tyburn Fair, orgiastic drunkenness, animal sexuality, and mortal combat for prize-money in iron-studded clogs, calls for no lament.

Where the Methodists were a minority group within a community, attitudes hardened on both sides; professions of virtue and declamations against sin reveal less about actual manners than they do about the rancour of hostilities.

The discussion is unrewarding, not because of the paucity of evidence as to family life and sexual behaviour, but because the evidence tells us so little about essential relations between parents and children, or between men and women.

Even animalism might be preferable to cold and guilty sexuality; while, as sexual conduct in the early 19th century became more inhibited and secretive, so also, in the great towns, prostitution grew.

Working people discovered in the Industrial Revolution a moral rhetoric which was authentic and deeply expressive of their collective grievances and aspirations, but which seems stilted and inadequate when applied to personal relations.

I find it very generally … the case, that where the mills and factories are nearly free from mothers of illegitimate children, there the streets are infested with prostitutes; and on the contrary, where the girls are permitted to return to their work, after giving birth to a child, there the streets are kept comparatively clear of those unhappy beings.

The working-class community of the early 19th century was the product, neither of paternalism nor of Methodism, but in a high degree of conscious working-class endeavour. In Manchester or Newcastle the traditions of the trade union and the friendly society, with their emphasis upon self-discipline and community purpose, reach far back into the 18th century. Rules which survive of the Manchester small-ware weavers in the 1750s show already meticulous attention to procedure and to institutional etiquette. The committee members must sit in a certain order. The doors must be kept locked. There are careful regulations for the safe-keeping of the “box”. Members are reminded that “Intemperance, Animosity and Profaneness are the Pest and Vermin that gnaw out the very Vitals of all Society.”

In the very secretiveness of the friendly society, and in its opaqueness under upper-class scrutiny, we have authentic evidence of the growth of independent working-class culture and

institutions. This was the sub-culture out of which the less stable trade unions grew, and in which trade union officers were trained.

Mr. Raymond Williams has suggested that “the crucial distinguishing element in English life since the Industrial Revolution is … between alternative ideas of the nature of social relationship”. As contrasted with middle-class ideas of individualism or (at their best) of service, “what is properly meant by ‘working-class culture’… is the basic collective idea, and the institutions, manners, habits of thought, and intentions which proceed from this”.

It is an error to see this as the only effective “working-class” ethic. The “aristocratic” aspirations of artisans and mechanics, the values of “self-help”, or criminality and demoralisation, were equally widely dispersed.

But by the early years of the 19th century it is possible to say that collectivist values are dominant in many industrial communities; there is a definite moral code, with sanctions against the blackleg, the “tools” of the employer or the unneighbourly, and with an intolerance towards the eccentric or individualist.

The poor, when suffering and dissatisfied, no longer make a riot, but hold a meeting—instead of attacking their neighbours, they arraign the Ministry.

This growth in self-respect and political consciousness was one real gain of the Industrial Revolution. It dispelled some forms of superstition and of deference, and made certain kinds of oppression no longer tolerable.

No single explanation will suffice to account for the evident alteration in manner of the working people.3 Nor should we exaggerate the degree of change. Drunkenness and uproar still often surged through the streets. But it is true that working men often appear most sober and disciplined, in the twenty years after the Wars, when most in earnest to assert their rights.

in Newcastle in the Chartist years thousands of artisans and engineers were convinced freethinkers.

In the years before and after ’98, the Dissenters of Ulster, the most industrialised province, were not the most loyal but the most “Jacobinical” of the Irish; while it was only after the repression of the rebellion that the antagonism between the “Orangemen” and “Papists” was deliberately fostered by the Castle, as a means of maintaining power.

By contrast, the heavy manual occupations at the base of industrial society required a spendthrift expense of sheer physical energy—an alternation of intensive labour and boisterous relaxation which belongs to pre-industrial labour-rhythms, and for which the English artisan or weaver was unsuited both by reason of his weakened physique and his Puritan temperament.

Thus to an extraordinary degree the employers had the best of a labour supply from the pre-industrial and the industrialised worlds. The disciplined worker at heart disliked his work; the

same character-structure which made for application and skill erected also barriers of self-respect which were not amenable to dirty or degrading tasks. A building employer, explaining why the Irish were confined to labouring rôles, gave evidence: They scarcely ever make good mechanics; they don’t look deep into subjects; their knowledge is quick, but superficial; they don’t make good millwrights or engineers, or anything which requires thought.… If a plan is put in an Irishman’s hand, he requires looking after continuously, otherwise he will go wrong, or more probably not go on at all.

The Irish emigration into Britain is an example of a less civilized population spreading themselves, as a kind of substratum, beneath a more civilized community; and, without excelling in any branch of industry, obtaining possession of all the lowest departments of manual labour.

These Irish were neither stupid nor barbarians. Mayhew often remarked upon their generosity, their “powers of speech and quickness of apprehension”. They adhered to a different value-system than that of the English artisan; and in shocking English proprieties one feels that they often enjoyed themselves and acted

up the part.

the most enduring cultural tradition which the Irish peasantry brought—to the third and fourth generation—into England was that of a semi-feudal nationalist Church. In the most squalid cellars there might still be found some of the hocus-pocus of Romanism, the candlesticks, the crucifix, and the “showy-coloured prints of saints and martyrs” alongside the print of O’Connell, the “Liberator”.

it is not the friction but the relative ease with which the Irish were absorbed into working-class communities which is remarkable.

There were, of course, many riots, especially where Irish and English unskilled labour was in direct competition—in the building industry or on the docks. In the 1830s and 1840s pitched battles, with mortal casualties, took place among railway navvies. In London in particular anti-Catholic and anti-Irish feeling remained strong; each stage in the long parliamentary contest for Catholic Emancipation (1800–29) took place against a background of scurrilous anti-Papal broadsheets and ballads, while as late as 1850 the appointment of Catholic bishops led to effigy-burnings and the outcry of “Papal Aggression”.

there were many reasons why English Radicalism or Chartism, and Irish nationalism, should make common cause, although the alliance was never free from tensions.

There is thus a clear consecutive alliance between Irish nationalism and English Radicalism between 1790 and 1850,

there can be no doubt that some of the immigrants brought with them the traditions of these secret organisations. Their influence will be noted in 1800–2, and during the Luddite years.

If many of the peasantry brought their revolutionary inheritance with them, the priesthood did not. It was no part of the Church’s desire to attract attention to the growing Catholic minority in Britain or to bring further disabilities down upon it.

The Irish influence is most felt in a rebellious disposition in the communities and places of work; in a disposition to challenge authority, to resort to the threat of “physical force”, and to refuse to be intimidated by the inhibitions of constitutionalism.

the price which had to be paid was the confluence of sophisticated political Radicalism with a more primitive and excitable

revolutionism.

Values, we hope to have shown, are not “imponderables” which the historian may safely dismiss with the reflection that, since they are not amenable to measurement, anyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s. They are, on the contrary, those questions of human satisfaction, and of the direction of social change, which the historian ought to ponder if history is to claim a position among the significant humanities.

The historian, or the historical sociologist, must in fact be concerned with judgements of value in two forms. In the first instance, he is concerned with the values actually held by those who lived through the Industrial Revolution. The old and newer modes of production each supported distinct kinds of community with characteristic ways of life. Alternative conventions and notions of human satisfaction were in conflict with each other, and there is no shortage of evidence if we wish to study the ensuing tensions.

In the second instance, he is concerned with making some judgement of value upon the whole process entailed in the Industrial Revolution, of which we ourselves are an end-product. It is our own involvement which makes judgement difficult....

“romantic” critique of industrialism which stems from one part of the experience, and by the record of tenacious resistance by which hand-loom weaver, artisan or village craftsman confronted this experience and held fast to an alternative culture. As we see them change, so we see how we became what we are. We understand...

Any evaluation of the quality of life must entail an assessment of the total life-experience, the manifold satisfactions or deprivations, cultural as well as material, of the people concerned. From such a standpoint, the older “cataclysmic” view of the Industrial Revolution must still be accepted. During the years between 1780 and 1840 the people of Britain suffered an experience of...

They moved less by their own will than at the dictate of external compulsions which they could not question: the enclosures, the Wars, the PoorLaws, the decline of rural industries, the counter-revolutionary stance of their rulers.

The experience of immiseration came upon them in a hundred different forms; for the field labourer, the loss of his common rights and the vestiges of village democracy; for the artisan, the loss of his craftsman’s status; for the weaver, the loss of livelihood and of independence; for the child, the loss of work and play in the home; for many groups of workers whose real earnings improved, the loss of security, leisure and the deterioration of the urban environment.

New skills were arising, old satisfactions persisted, but over all

Once again, Radicalism was not extinguished. But the terms of argument shifted beyond recognition. Former Jacobins became patriots, as eager to denounce Napoleon for his apostasy to the republican cause as legitimists were to denounce him for his usurpation from the House of Bourbon.