The Making of the English Working Class

Citation

Thompson, E. P. (2013). The Making of the English Working Class. Penguin Books (Penguin Modern Classics).

Chapter Summary

First published in 1963, the book is an account of English working people between about 1780 and 1832. It runs to more than 900 pages in a preface, three parts and sixteen chapters, with a note on further reading. Its central claim, stated in the preface, is that in these years most English working people came to feel an identity of interests among themselves and against those whose interests differed from theirs. Thompson insists that class is something people do over time, not only something done to them, and he treats the working class as taking part in its own making. The 2013 Penguin Modern Classics edition adds a new introduction by Michael Kenny.

Part One, The Liberty Tree (Chapters 1–5)

The chapters are Members Unlimited; Christian and Apollyon; "Satan's Strongholds"; The Free-born Englishman; and Planting the Liberty Tree. The part sets out the inherited traditions, religious and political, that working people brought to the period, and the radical societies and ideas of the 1790s. Thompson discusses popular movements such as Jacobin societies like the London Corresponding Society.

Part Two, The Curse of Adam (Chapters 6–12)

The chapters are Exploitation; The Field Labourers; Artisans and Others; The Weavers; Standards and Experiences; The Transforming Power of the Cross; and Community. This is the largest part: it follows the changes in working life under early industrialisation across agricultural labourers, artisans and weavers; sets out material standards and experience, including food, housing and children; considers the discipline and the hopes of Methodism in two sections; and concludes with a chapter on community life, including leisure, mutual aid and the Irish.

Part Three, The Working-Class Presence (Chapters 13–16)

The chapters are Radical Westminster; An Army of Redressers; Demagogues and Martyrs; and Class Consciousness. They follow the political and industrial activity of the Napoleonic and post-war years: popular radicalism in Westminster, the Luddite movement and the struggles over combination, croppers and stockingers, Hampden Clubs, Peterloo and the Cato Street conspiracy, and finally the radical culture of the 1820s and the figures of Cobbett, Carlile, Wade, Gast and Owenism. In the last chapter Thompson takes the story to the point where a working-class consciousness is visible in the early 1830s.

Key Concepts

Part One: The Liberty Tree

• Inherited traditions: dissenting religion, the idea of the free-born Englishman and popular constitutionalism as the raw materials of later radicalism.
• Radical societies: the corresponding societies and Jacobin-style clubs of the 1790s.

Part Two: The Curse of Adam

• Exploitation and experience: the contrast between economic change and how it was lived.
• Methodism: treated as both a moral discipline and a response to despair.
• Community: leisure, mutuality and local solidarity.

Part Three: The Working-Class Presence

• Luddism and combination: industrial protest and its suppression.
• Popular radicalism: from Hampden Clubs to Peterloo and radical culture.
• Class consciousness: the shared sense of interest that Thompson argues emerged by the early 1830s.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A reconstruction of lived experience. Thompson says he is seeking to rescue the stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the obsolete hand-loom weaver and the utopian artisan from "the enormous condescension of posterity", and the chapters on standards, experience and community give weight to everyday life.
• A view of class as process. The book argues that class is formed in relationships and over time, and uses the singular "working class" deliberately to emphasise the growth of consciousness; this argument has been highly influential. Reviewers have called it a landmark in English historiography and one of the most influential works of postwar history.
• Breadth of groups. It covers artisans, weavers, labourers and radicals, with chapters on religion and community as well as politics and work.
• Clear three-part design. The movement from inherited traditions to lived experience to political and industrial action gives a long book a recognisable shape.

Limitations

• Length and density. At more than 900 pages the book is a major commitment, and its argument is spread through detailed narrative.
• Questions about representativeness. Geoffrey Best, reviewing it in The Historical Journal, called it valuable and exciting but asked how large a part of the working class the artisans on whom the evidence depends really formed, and noted the neglect of a conservative, patriotic side of popular opinion.
• Mixed reception. Robert K. Webb described it as both very important and extremely exasperating; readers should expect a committed argument rather than a neutral survey, and should read it with the critical literature it has provoked.
• Period and place. It is about England, and mostly about 1780–1832; later developments such as Chartism lie outside its scope.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the economic and social history list, this is the classic study of the formation of a social class through culture and politics. Peter Stearns's The Industrial Revolution in World History and the Persson, Sharp and Lampe An Economic History of Europe supply the economic frame, including what industrialisation involved; Robert Allen's Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction asks why some regions became rich, and Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence pursues a comparative question between Europe and China. Thompson asks a different kind of question: not why growth happened but how people experienced and responded to it. Peter Burke's A Social History of the Media is a further example of social and cultural history in the list.

It therefore works best after one of the economic surveys, as a case in which the economic story is seen from below.

How to Use This Book

It suits undergraduates in social history, labour history and modern British history, and readers interested in historical method, especially the history of class and culture. Some knowledge of the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution is helpful.

A practical reading plan:

• Core: the Preface, which states the aims, followed by Chapter 16 on class consciousness, which draws the argument together.
• Part One for the traditions and radical societies, and Part Three for politics and protest from the Luddites to Peterloo.
• Part Two is the longest and can be read selectively: Chapters 6–9 for work, Chapters 10–12 for living standards, Methodism and community.
• Alongside: read a short economic survey for the statistics of living standards that Thompson's chapters contest or complicate, and some of the critical responses to the book.