The Making of the English Working Class

by E.P. Thompson

So far from being backward-looking in its outlook, Owenism was the first of the great social doctrines to grip the imagination of the masses in this period, which commenced with an acceptance of the enlarged productive powers of steam and the mill.

On the one hand, there was a consciousness of the identity of interests between working men of the most diverse occupations and levels of attainment, which was embodied in many institutional forms, and which was expressed on an unprecedented scale in the general unionism of 1830–4.

On the other hand, there was a consciousness of the identity of the interests of the working class, or “productive classes”, as against those of other classes; and within this there was maturing the claim for an alternative system

The twenty-five years after 1795 may be seen as the years of the “long counter-revolution”; and in consequence the Radical movement remained largely working-class in character, with an advanced democratic “populism” as its theory.

The industrial bourgeoisie desired, with heart and soul, that a revolution should not take place, since they knew that on the very day of its commencement there would be a dramatic process of radicalisation, in which Huntite, trade unionist, and Owenite leaders would command growing support in nearly all the manufacturing centres.

The middle-class reformers fought skillfully on both fronts. On the one hand The Times came forward as the actual organiser of mass agitation:

On the other hand, the riots at Nottingham, Derby and Bristol in October 1831 underlined

the dual function of the Political Unions on the Birmingham model:

The fact that revolution did not occur was due, in part, to the deep constitutionalism of that part of the Radical tradition3 of which Cobbett (urging the acceptance of half a loaf) was the spokesman; and in part to the skill of the middle-class Radicals in offering exactly that compromise which might, not weaken, but strengthen both the State and property-rights against the working-class threat.

The Whig leaders saw their rôle as being that of finding the means to “attach numbers to property and good order”. “It is of the utmost importance,” Grey said, “to associate the middle with the higher orders of society in the love and support of the institutions and government of the country.

The great body of the people,” Place wrote, “were self-assured that either the Reform Bills would be passed by Parliament, or that they should, by their own physical force, obtain much more than they contained, if they were rejected.…’2 It is the threat of this “much more” which hung over both Tories and Whigs in 1832, and which enabled that accommodation to be made, between landed and industrial wealth, between privilege and money, which has been an enduring configuration of English society.

The fruits of Reform are to be gathered. Vast commercial and agricultural monopolies are to be abolished. The Church is to be reformed.… Close corporations are to be thrown open. Retrenchment and economy are to be enforced. The shackles of the Slave are to be broken.

But the content of this renewed agitation was such that the vote itself implied “much more”, and that is why it had to be denied.

But in the context of the Owenite and Chartist years, the claim for the vote implied also further claims: a new way of reaching out by the working people for social

control over their conditions of life and labour.

At first, and inevitably, the exclusion of the working class provoked a contrary rejection, by the working class, of all forms of political action. Owen had long prepared the ground for this, with his indifference to political Radicalism. But in the post-1832 swing to general unionism, this anti-p...

This collective self-consciousness was indeed the great spiritual gain of the Industrial Revolution, against which the disruption of an older and in many ways more humanly-comprehensible way of life must be set.

Segregated in this way, their institutions acquired a peculiar toughness and resilience. 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 battle-ground of class.