Book summary “The making of the English working class”: summary

Introduction

You often view social class as a fixed economic category defined strictly by income or property ownership. This static view hides how human beings actually live, fight, and shape their own historical destinies through conflict and shared experience.

Class is not a static structure or a given category, but a dynamic historical happening that occurs when men and women live through a common set of inherited experiences and articulate their antagonism against other classes.

E. P. Thompson demonstrates how the English working class made itself between 1780 and 1832. The book traces this development across three major parts: the inheritance of radical traditions and eighteenth-century plebeian culture, the profound economic trauma of the Industrial Revolution, and the explosive rise of a mature working-class political consciousness.

• How did ordinary people forge a unified political identity from disparate trades and local grievances?
• What role did the factory system play in destroying traditional customs and creating new forms of collective discipline?
• How did religious movements and radical underground networks shape the minds of working men and women?

1. The Liberty Tree

Popular political consciousness emerged in the 1790s through indigenous radical traditions, the London Corresponding Society, and the explosive impact of Tom Paine's writings.

You find that early political organization broke with traditions that restricted politics to property owners or elite factions. On January 25, 1792, nine men met at The Bell tavern off the Strand, including shoemaker and founder Thomas Hardy, to discuss the dearness of life and Parliamentary Reform. Thomas Hardy held 8d as the entire funds of the organization after the first meeting for paper. The London Corresponding Society claimed 2,000 members six months after its founding.

You can trace the foundational rules adopted by these early reformers:

• Be thoroughly persuaded that every rational adult not incapacitated by crimes should have a vote for a Member of Parliament
• Pay a weekly subscription of one penny
• Keep membership numbers unlimited to avoid exclusiveness

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man shattered century-old taboos by rejecting the authority of dead generations, mocking the hereditary principle, and exposing class power. You see that Paine demonstrated the absurdity of hereditary rule by noting that while a common mechanic requires talent, being a king requires only the animal figure of a man. He estimated the expense of sending abroad for foreign monarchs who understood neither laws nor language at 1 million a year.

Planting the Liberty Tree

The democratic agitation of the 1790s was not merely a reflection of the French Revolution but an indigenous English movement. By 1793, an estimated 200,000 sales of the Second Part of Rights of Man occurred in a population of 10 millions. In Sheffield, 2,500 mechanics enrolled in the Constitutional Society, and every cutler reportedly owned a copy of Paine's work. This followed 1,400 subscribers for a pamphlet edition of the First Part of Rights of Man in Sheffield.

Working-class reform societies implemented rigorous internal organization methods. The Sheffield Society originated from a gathering of five or six mechanics conversing about high provision prices, growing rapidly to nearly 2,000 members organized by delegates.

You can observe the structural method used to organize members into disciplined groups:

• Divide members into small bodies or meetings of ten persons each
• Appoint a delegate from each group of ten
• Form secondary meetings from ten of these delegates
• Reduce the delegates to a proper number to constitute the Committee or Grand Council

The British government used charges of high treason and violent intimidation to crush the early democratic and radical societies. On May 12, 1794, the King's Messenger, Bow Street Runners, and Home Secretary Dundas's private secretary arrested Thomas Hardy, while a pregnant Mrs. Hardy remained in bed as her home was ransacked. Henry Eaton, the 14-year-old boy who confronted Pitt during his Privy Council interrogation, joined others in facing state hostility. Despite the danger, the treason trial of Thomas Hardy lasted 9 days before his acquittal on Guy Fawkes Day, 1794.

2. The Curse of Adam

The Industrial Revolution subjected working people to intense exploitation, the destruction of customary rights, and the harsh discipline of the factory system.

Observers from conservative, radical, and socialist backgrounds all connected the emergence of steam power with a profound transformation of the population into dense, urban masses with unprecedented organizational potential and class consciousness. The physical instruments of production, such as the steam-mill and cotton-mill, were viewed by contemporaries as directly generating new social relationships, habits of thought, and a new working class. An aristocratic traveller visiting Aysgarth in 1792 was alarmed by a new cotton mill, viewing it as a symbol of social destruction and rebellion, while Karl Marx famously noted that the steam-mill brings society with the industrial capitalist.

While statistical averages and per capita consumption of certain goods may show a slight material improvement between 1790 and 1840, workers simultaneously suffered intensified exploitation, loss of status, insecurity, and a catastrophic disruption of traditional community life. The long-standing standard-of-living controversy conflates quantitative changes in material consumption with qualitative transformations in the human way of life and experiences of freedom.

The Field Labourers and Enclosures

Enclosures acted as a form of class robbery that systematically dismantled the subsistence economy and customary rights of the rural poor. Cottagers without legal proof received no compensation, while those with claims received plots too small to survive alongside high enclosure costs, effectively tearing down the curtain keeping labourers from utter proletarianization. An anonymous threatening letter sent to Oliver Cromwell of Cheshunt Park in 1799 regarded parish enclosure rights.

Following the loss of the commons, the parish poor-rates became the labourer's last remaining inheritance and the center of a long war of attrition. Farmers used the poor-rate system to maintain a permanent cheap labour reserve, turning men off during frosts and taking them back when work opened. Joseph Carter and other Hampshire villagers from Sutton Scotney were sentenced to transportation after the 1830 revolts, with £40 held at one time by Joseph Carter as treasurer for funds collected during the protests.

The New Poor Law of 1834 and its administration imposed a doctrine of psychological deterrence and strict institutional discipline designed to terrify the poor. Assistant Commissioners under the Poor Law sought to make workhouses as repulsive and prison-like as possible through severe routines, silence, restricted diet, and the total separation of families. Dr Kay recorded his success in Norfolk unions by enforcing minute routines, religious exercises, and taking away paupers' personal boxes and china, which prompted twelve women to leave and choose outdoor labor instead. There were 78,536 workhouse inmates in 443 Unions in 1838, rising to 197,179 workhouse inmates by 1843.

You can observe how the new institutions forced destitution through rigid administrative steps:

• Confiscate paupers' personal possessions, boxes, china, and extra clothing into the store-room
• Enforce minute and regular observance of routine, religious exercises, and silence during meals
• Implement total separation of sexes and family members
• Impose a strict dietary and complete confinement

The breakdown of artisan protection led to a bifurcated market split between honourable society shops and dishonourable cheap sweatshops operated by garret-masters and middlemen. Unapprenticed and unemployed mechanics were pushed into dishonourable trades characterized by long hours, family labor, sub-contracting, and cheap ready-made goods. William Lovett experienced the hostility of cabinet-makers who threatened to set Mother Shorney at him—a term for destroying tools and work—because he had not served a regular apprenticeship, paying 7s. or 8s. a week out of his guinea for drink, fines, and shop scores.

3. The Working-Class Presence

Working people built an independent class consciousness through Luddite resistance, underground conspiracies, radical print, and mass constitutional agitation.

Skilled wool-dressers known as croppers fiercely resisted the introduction of labor-displacing machinery that threatened to destroy their privileged status. Croppers controlled the finishing processes of cloth using heavy hand shears and teazles, earning high wages and maintaining strict apprenticeship rules. The introduction of gig-mills and shearing-frames threatened to reduce them to unskilled laborers, prompting them to form a powerful secret institution and wage a long legislative and physical battle.

The croppers' heavy hand shears weighed 40 pounds and measured 4 feet in length from handle to blade. Between 1803 and 1806, Yorkshire croppers and weavers raised 10,000 to 12,000 pounds for legal expenses. All the croppers employed by Gott, the largest woollen manufacturer in Leeds, struck in September 1802 over the employment of underage apprentices.

Working-class organizations maintained internal solidarity and secrecy through elaborate initiation ceremonies, solemn oaths, and theatrical props. To prevent infiltration by spies and enforce compliance, trade union lodges and Luddite groups administered terrifying oaths on the Bible, often in the back rooms of sympathetic inns. Initiates were blindfolded, made to pass under drawn swords or paintings of death, and warned with eternal damnation against betrayal. Members paid 3 weekly pence for the use of the private lodge room. A Leeds branch meeting at the Bay Mare pub used iron sheets to make a rumbling noise, blindfolded initiates, and made them swear obedience before a picture of death.

You can trace this ritual structure through specific steps:

• Blindfold the new member before conducting them into the Lodge
• Require the member to give the assigned password
• Walk the member round the room amidst a rumbling noise made by a sheet of iron
• Remove the bandage to reveal a picture of death bearing the inscription Remember Thy End beneath a drawn sword
• Order the member to kneel beside a table with their hand placed upon a large Bible
• Read Psalm 94 and administer the oath of absolute obedience and secrecy

Luddite frame-breaking was not a blind destruction of machinery, but a highly selective and disciplined enforcement of fair trade practices and traditional prices. The Luddites carefully targeted only those frames that produced inferior, underpriced goods or bypassed apprenticeships, leaving properly made goods untouched. They operated under strict military-style discipline enforced by commanders styled after General Ludd, relying on watchwords, guards, and coded signals.

Between March 1811 and February 1812, 1,000 frames were destroyed in Nottinghamshire. The major phase of Nottinghamshire Luddism caused 6,000 to 10,000 pounds in estimated damage costs. During night raids in Nottingham and Yorkshire, frames making cheap cut-ups or operating below standard prices were systematically smashed, while machines belonging to fair employers were left unharmed.

Under the pressure of military suppression and capital felony laws, industrial Luddism frequently evolved into broader underground revolutionary and political conspiracies. As industrial sabotage became punishable by death, local groups formed secret committees, administered illegal oaths of secrecy, seized arms, and drilled at night. These networks connected disgruntled artisans, weavers, and Irish refugees with broader radical aims of overturning the existing government. During the summer of 1812, 12,000 troops were deployed in disturbed counties. The Army of Huddersfield alone claimed 2,782 sworn heroes. In Yorkshire and Lancashire, after direct machine-breaking faced severe military counter-measures and executions, underground committees stepped up night raids for weapons, practiced military drill, and engaged in widespread oath-taking.

Demagogues and Mass Movements

Francis Place and the Westminster Committee created a disciplined, highly efficient electoral machine based on strict electoral austerity and grassroots street canvassing. Operating out of a gin shop called the Britannia Coffee House, Francis Place worked from dawn until midnight without pay, collating canvass returns and coordinating street-by-street and court-by-court efforts. The committee strictly banned paid agents, treating, cockades, and bribery, proving that voluntary organization could defeat establishment wealth. Francis Place spent three weeks of uncompensated work in the committee-rooms. Former L.C.S. member Mr Lemaitre entered Paull's committee-rooms and worked from early morning until midnight to organize an effective plan of canvass that saved the campaign.

The committee operated under explicit rules of engagement:

• Have no paid counsellors, attorneys, inspectors, or canvassers
• Prohibit all bribing, paying of rates, treating, and cockades
• Employ no paid constables, excepting two to keep the committee-room doors

Radical reformers adopted strict disciplines of cleanliness, sobriety, and peace to refute accusations of being a ragged, disorderly mob. To counter government taunts, organizers instituted early morning drillings, distinctive badges like sprigs of laurel, brass bands, and elaborate embroidered banners presented by Female Unions, transforming a raw crowd into a disciplined class. St Peter's Fields assembled 60,000 to 100,000 people. The Times estimated that 300,000 people were in the London streets for Hunt's entry. Samuel Bamford and the Middleton and Rochdale contingents marched in precise files with fife and drum, while Henry Hunt made triumphal entries into London preceded by meticulously ordered processions.

Public demonstrations followed clear organizational rules:

• Incorporate cleanliness, sobriety, and peace as primary injunctions for public meetings
• Appoint a leader for every hundred men distinguished by a sprig of laurel in his hat
• Deploy bands, embroidered banners, and contingents of young women at the front of processions

The government rushed the Six Acts through Parliament in December 1819 to suppress military training, search homes, ban large meetings, and heavily tax periodicals. The Six Acts served as an extension of the repression of 1795 and 1817, prohibiting military training and unauthorized assemblies over fifty people, increasing stamp duties on periodicals to price them out of reach, and streamlining seditious libel laws. The fourth Act raised the cost of periodicals to 6d. and above. Following the acts, the government launched a massive wave of state prosecutions and imprisonments against radical leaders such as Hunt, Carlile, Wooler, and Edmonds.

The legislation enacted severe restrictions across society:

• Prohibit drilling and military training under the first Act
• Authorize justices to enter and search houses without warrants on suspicion of arms under the second Act
• Prohibit public meetings exceeding fifty persons with specific exceptions under the third Act
• Increase stamp duty on periodical publications to raise their cost to sixpence and above under the fourth Act

The working classes developed a vibrant political culture through self-education, reading groups, and the active discussion of radical periodicals. Despite high illiteracy and scarce leisure, laborers, weavers, and artisans instructed themselves individually or in groups. They learned to interpret society through a political lens, seeing their struggles as a conflict between the industrious classes and an unreformed parliament. Two out of every three working men were able to read after some fashion in the early part of the century. At its peak, Cobbett's Twopenny Register ran at between 40,000 and 60,000 copies each week. A Cheltenham shoemaker regularly visited W. E. Adams to have Feargus O'Connor's letters read aloud while preserving Cobbett's books in wash-leather cases.

You can adopt their educational methods directly:

• Instruct oneself severally or in groups using available reforming literature
• Meet at pubs, houses of call, or reading rooms to hear editorials read aloud and discussed
• Form penny-a-month clubs to buy radical newspapers and periodicals

Richard Carlile's uncompromising defiance against the prosecution of blasphemous and seditious publications broke the state's censorship monopoly. Unlike other editors who moderated their tone to evade the Six Acts, Carlile hoisted absolute defiance, republishing forbidden works like Thomas Paine's writings. When he was imprisoned, a succession of volunteer shopmen and women stepped forward to keep his Fleet Street shop open despite facing lengthy prison sentences. Carlile received the help of 150 volunteers who collectively served 200 years of imprisonment to keep the shop running.

You can apply these principles of press freedom in hostile environments:

• Openly defy unjust laws regulating the press without regard to personal consequences
• Volunteer as a shopman or newsvendor to distribute banned radical texts despite the risk of imprisonment

4. Methodism and the Shaping of Working-Class Culture

Methodism functioned as a powerful moral machinery that reinforced capitalist work-discipline by instilling habits of obedience, frugality, and submission among the industrial working class.

John Wesley created a highly disciplined, centralized religious movement that reached the poor and trained them in organizational methods, despite its official political conservatism. Wesley combined democratic local participation in self-sustaining societies with strict authoritarian oversight. Upon Wesley's death in 1791, an estimated 80,000 people made up the Methodist societies. Robert Peel noted in 1787 that works under the management of Methodists served him excellently well. Dr. Andrew Ure highlighted in 1835 how religious moral machinery was essential to secure steady hands and watchful eyes in factories.

Methodist conversion rituals subjected the working-class psyche to intense emotional torment, breaking rebellious pre-industrial habits through terror and the demand for absolute submission. When you study these revivals, you find believers passing through predictable stages of emotional distress:

• Acknowledge aboriginal sinfulness and personal corruption
• Subject oneself to intense emotional intercession and wrestling with temptation
• Attain a state of utter abasement and self-despair at the foot of the Cross
• Experience sudden deliverance and feel a new kingdom of righteousness planted in the heart

The conversion of the sailor Joshua Marsden in the 1790s involved severe illness and a shipwreck leaving him trembling with horror. He underwent an agonizing session at a Methodist love-feast where he lay on the floor of the pew until deliverance came.

The Transforming Power of the Cross

Evangelical Sunday schools utilized severe emotional bullying and terrifying imagery of eternal damnation to shape the character of working-class children. Primers taught the aboriginal sinfulness of infants and used horrifying stories of divine retribution to enforce strict obedience. A Sunday school erected in Stockport in 1805 boasted by 1832 that its discipline had secured peaceful town decorum.

Despite its authoritarian theology, Methodism inadvertently fostered radical working-class resistance because local lay preachers and communities reinterpreted biblical symbolism. Christian radical Ben Rushton, a hand-loom weaver and New Connexion local preacher, used fiery biblical eloquence during the Chartist movement until his death in 1853.

Rituals of Mutuality

Workers created their own independent institutions, such as friendly societies and box clubs, which enforced strict internal self-discipline, mutual insurance, and democratic self-rule. Friendly society membership grew from 648,000 members in 1793 to 704,350 in 1803, and reached 925,429 in 1815. Friendly societies in Newcastle and across industrial towns enforced strict rules among glass-makers, cordwainers, and joiners. Members faced fines for missing meetings, speaking out of turn, or disclosing secrets.

You can see how these mutual aid associations operated by reviewing their internal bylaws:

• Maintain strict order and procedure during meetings with locked doors and assigned seating
• Impose fines for intemperance, profanity, calling members by-names, or violating club rules
• Contribute regular dues to insure members against sickness, unemployment, and funeral costs

10 Key Ideas

1. Class is a dynamic historical happening that occurs when men and women live through a common set of inherited experiences and articulate their antagonism against other classes.
2. Popular political consciousness emerged in the 1790s through indigenous radical traditions, the London Corresponding Society, and the explosive impact of Tom Paine's writings.
3. The Industrial Revolution subjected working people to intense exploitation, the destruction of customary rights, and the harsh discipline of the factory system.
4. Enclosures acted as a form of class robbery that systematically dismantled the subsistence economy and customary rights of the rural poor.
5. Working people built an independent class consciousness through Luddite resistance, underground conspiracies, radical print, and mass constitutional agitation.
6. Luddite frame-breaking was not a blind destruction of machinery, but a highly selective and disciplined enforcement of fair trade practices and traditional prices.
7. The government rushed the Six Acts through Parliament in December 1819 to suppress military training, search homes, ban large meetings, and heavily tax periodicals.
8. Methodism functioned as a powerful moral machinery that reinforced capitalist work-discipline by instilling habits of obedience, frugality, and submission among the industrial working class.
9. Workers created their own independent institutions, such as friendly societies and box clubs, which enforced strict internal self-discipline, mutual insurance, and democratic self-rule.
10. E. P. Thompson demonstrates how the English working class made itself between 1780 and 1832 through conflict, shared experience, and independent political organization.