“The Making of the English Working Class”by E.P. Thompson, 1963 Part 4 Sketch: (pgs. 515 to 780)
Thompson turns to the illegal
struggles in England between 1799 and 1824, during which the English government
made any labor ‘combination’ illegal. The government used new laws, old Elizabethan
/ Tudor laws about ‘leaving work undone’ or common laws against ‘conspiracy’ in
the battle with people’s political and industrial organizations and work strikes. This repressive ‘laissez faire’ approach forced
political and labor groups underground and also together, resulting in illegal
movements in parallel with fruitless and expensive appeals to Parliament.
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| General Ludd's Army |
Luddism
This was a period of midnight “Black
Lamp” meetings in the Midlands, oaths, arms caches, military training in the
woods, food riots and secret societies opposing unemployment, starvation wages,
high taxes, soaring food prices and the continuing war. In 1801-1802 a revolutionary ex-solider, Edward
Despard, was executed for organizing an underground army to fight for civil,
political and religious rights and against flogging, along with the
independence of Ireland. The ostensible plan was to kill the king, free
prisoners in the ‘Bastilles’ and occupy the Tower and the Bank in London. The afore-mentioned Spencer societies in
London used ‘diffuse,’ non-organization anarchist methods to spread their
ideology of land nationalization in the back rooms of taverns and
hidey-holes.
Years of this legal and
illegal struggle against the government resulted in the Luddite Rebellion in
the Midlands of Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, West Riding and Yorkshire in
1811-1812 and 1816. Due to the high levels of secrecy involved in Luddism,
Thompson has to parse through the liberal historians who discounted it and the
government’s flawed informers, who many times lied. He also refutes two Fabian
historians who either erred through microscopic academic ignorance or specious
and obvious political pleading. His
method is to take a step back and see what is underneath the smoke and fire.
Hundreds of weavers, cloth
workers, stockingers, framework knitters and others broke power looms, shearing
frames, stocking looms and gig mills to protect their jobs and maintain the
apprentice system against cheap labor. They
were backed by whole communities, smaller masters and other trades against the
factory and mill system. Factories were
attacked or burned by men with blackened faces and bludgeons. The mill owners garrisoned their mills and
won two bloody fights when their mills were attacked in Rawfolds' and Burton's mills.
Direct
Action’s Strengths and Weaknesses
Support weakened when one Luddite resorted to assassination. Their
successes in blunting the looms - destroying over a 1,000 - left them fewer but harder targets. The jailing and execution of supposed members
of Ned Ludd’s Army of Redressers didn’t help either. Whitehall had sent 12,000 soldiers and many
spies and provocateurs to stop the rebellion. Gravenor Henson was one of the
suspected Luddite leaders, who was active for over 40 years in various
struggles. But no one left a long memoir
telling the story from the inside due to the legal ramifications. Nor was a real person called Ludd ever discovered.
Thompson contends that class
collaborationism, while pushed by moderate Constitutional reformers, never took
hold in this period in England. This is
unlike the U.S. context, where unions such as the UAW make it policy and have
for some time. Rightist reformers like
Place were against the Combination laws - but not because they stopped labor, but
because he saw them as provoking strikes, political upheaval and unionization,
which he was actually against. This was
one of many examples of middle-class ‘reformers’ opposing the labor movement, which should remind present day leftists of people in our own day.
The English Government removed
all protective legislation and paternal laws in 1809 that shielded the trades, while protecting
landlords with the Corn Laws and mercantile capitalists with guaranteed prices. When Scottish weavers struck in 1812 over
owners ignoring and not paying a local legal minimum wage, their Glasgow leaders were
jailed trying to enforce this law. This was another ‘straw.’ Luddism
became the dominant tendency in the labor movement after these events.
The
Demands
The factory system ultimately
destroyed the craft system. Thompson
sees Luddism as a form of “transitional conflict” and “quasi insurrectional” as
the two systems collided. Besides its direct action tactics, Ned Ludd’s Army
called for: a minimum wage; free trade
unions; jobs for the unemployed; against shoddy products and opposed the
super-exploitation of women and children.
Some of Ludd’s proclamations called for an
overthrow of the Government. They harked back to a prior time when the ‘trades’
were somewhat protected, and this memory was part of their agitation. It saw no other way to oppose brutal capitalist
laissez faire except through organized and direct struggle, a tendency that again
emerged in the 1840s with ‘physical force Chartism.’
Luddites were armed, engaged
in military sorties, attacked in consistent ways across many villages, were
disguised, bashed down doors with a special large hammer and passed over small
masters who did not break Luddite rules.
But they had no national organization or social plan beyond bringing
down the Government or the factory system somehow, except vague ideas of a ‘general
uprising.’ The lack of a national
approach is similar to the efforts of the Mexican revolutionaries Zapata and
Villa, or the local efforts of activists all over the U.S. who remain locked in their cities. In a way it marked its rural roots and distance from London, the political center of the country.
Thompson gets a dig in
against Charlotte Bronte’s middle class story “Shirley” that insulted and distorted the Luddites.
The
Official Reformers
Thompson goes on to describe
the efforts of the Parliamentary gentlemen Radicals – William Cobbett, Henry Hunt
(who spoke at Peterloo), Burdett, Thistlewood, Cartwright, Bamford, Watson and
their organizations like the Hampden Club
- based in London, sometimes borrowing from Libertarianism. According to Thompson, London was not a
national reform center until 1832. The ‘rump’ Westminster Committee had moved
to the right, while leaders and writers in London rose and fell frequently.
These Radicals operated in a
context where the majority of the community, and certainly in London, in
various classes and strata within classes, all opposed the Government. They
were mostly Whiggish, middle-class types, though not all, disdainful of the working class, and
might seem familiar to anyone in the present U.S. context. Yet they were appalled by the treatment of
the plebeian masses. The London execution
of a poverty-stricken sailor named Cashman was especially gruesome and gathered mass anger. They gave speeches, wrote treatises, published in the press and traveled
the country making appearances.
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| Crown and Anchor Public House Where Radicals Met |
The Spencean or Depardian pubs,
taverns and proletarian clubs of London were a far cry from the drawing rooms
of the Hampden set. This class
difference among the 'reformers' always lurked. Hunt was a preening
egoist, well caught in Mike Leigh’s film “Peterloo.” Thompson calls him a demagogue, but also courageous
and the most influential journalist for 30 years. To Thompson, vanity was the
great problem of Radical leaders, based on their self-congratulatory
personalism, full of quarrels, intolerance and disagreements. Yet the Hampden Clubs expanded
beyond London. Cobbett’s pamphlet Address to the Journeymen and Labourers flourished
across the country, much like Paine’s Rights
of Man had previously. References to revolution peppered liberal Whig
statements, perhaps only as literary flourishes, but still. Most of them ignored the question of real
organization or illegal acts, though not all. This weakness for
middle-class Radical heroes did not bode well for the popular movement, as it
sowed discord, disorganization and weakness.
The Hampden clubs convened a
national meeting at the Crown and Anchor
public house in London. Several great
rallies at Spa Fields in December 1816 occurred just prior, attended by many
discharged and unemployed soldiers and sailors, out of which some incoherent and drunken rioting took place led by a fraction of the incompetent leadership. The Crown
& Anchor meeting proceeded in this context, endorsing the working-class
demand of the male franchise over the middle-class demand of the ‘householder’
franchise (only those with permanent addresses). Nothing else was achieved, the meeting ended
in confusion and the movement was subsequently smashed by government edicts due to the Spa Field riots. Cobbett then decamped and declared all
organization suspect. Much like so many present podcasters and leaders who ignore organization and remain basically journalists.
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| Mike Leigh's Peterloo Film |
PENTRIDGE
& PETERLOO
Thompson goes on to describe continuing
Radical self-organization in the factories, mills and rural towns back in the
Midlands with an impressive flurry of names, organizations, towns, quotes and events –
unfortunately separated 200 miles from London. Insurrectionists waited on
London; London waited on the Midlands; the pathetic happened. This
resulted in the failed 1817 Pentridge Uprising – 300 armed workers in Yorkshire,
along with several hundreds in other areas, egged on by a government agent in
London, Oliver, who claimed London too would rise. The Government got its wish and its
convictions, executing one Pentridge leader, Brandreth, who was probably a former Luddite. Thompson calls this the first
exclusively proletarian armed attempt in English history.
The Pentridge rising
undermined the legitimacy of physical force methods, leading directly to 1819 Peterloo rally's mass reformist
content. The violent attack on the rally illustrated that the primitive English regime was beginning to
shatter. Thompson claims a revolution
was possible in 1819 due to the extreme isolation of the English government
from nearly all groupings and classes except the most upper. This was the heyday of Radicalism and many reform and radical periodicals that spread across the country, like The Black Dwarf.
Disciplined mass meetings started
to be held in large cities, in defiance of the laws. Unions began to openly
display their banners in processions. A
National Convention had been proposed based on male suffrage, to challenge the
government as a form of dual power. At St.
Peter’s Fields in Manchester, the 60-100K of ‘rabble’ had become an organized
class – a prospect even more terrifying to the owners and elite. The ‘Peterloo’
massacre in Manchester on St. Peter's Fields was an attempt to stop this working class movement
nationwide, the Government calling it ‘treason.’ Thompson thinks concessions by the ruling class would have led to some
kind of working-class victory, as the middle-class reformers were too weak.
Hussars and “Yeomanry” on
horses (the Yeomanry were local gentry, owners, shopkeepers - the 'Whites; of their day...) slashed and
killed defenseless men, women and children from horseback – 11 dead, 571 injured. This was a
major historic turning point in English history. 300,000 greeted Hunt as he was
conveyed to London for trial after his arrest, as the whole country was angry or upset. The massacre conjured up huge demonstrations
all over the country, in defiance. 100k
pitman demonstrated in the coal field shires.
Military drilling and guns resumed in the Midlands. But again, the stupid
weaknesses of Radical leaders like Hunt, the lack of national organization, the
split between revolutionary and Constitutionalist wings; the repression of the
Government made it all come to naught.
Subsequently dozens of leaders were
imprisoned in 1820. Thistlewood, a more left leader who wanted to revenge Peterloo, was executed for the desperate London ‘Cato Street’
conspiracy. More scattered attempts at insurrection surfaced in the north,
Scotland and the Midlands. But it was
done.
Prior blog reviews on this
subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive,
using these terms: “Making of the English Working Class” (Parts 1,2 and 3);“Class – the New Critical Idiom,” “Chavs – the
Demonization of the Working Class,” “Class Against Class – the Miner’s Strike”
(Matgamna); “Left Confusion on Brexit,” “The City” (Norfield); “Pride,” “Mr.
Turner” (Leigh); “Coming Up For Air”(Orwell); “Monsters of the Market”
(McNally); “The Football Factory” (King); "The North Water,” “The Young
Karl Marx.”
Red Frog
February 8, 2022
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